"Croaking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rose from the dewy ground, and as they neared a marshy pool, a low, musical whining and croaking told that the frogs which made the stagnant place their home had a full belief that before long ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... very unearthly poet whose story Shelley has written? Do they think that they are going to make a hearty meal upon me this evening or to-morrow morning? I remain quite still, pleased at the thought of cheating the greedy, croaking scavengers of Nature, and hoping that they will grow bold enough to settle at length somewhere near me. But they are too suspicious; perhaps with their superior sight they note the blinking of my eyes as I look upwards at the dazzling sky, or instinct may tell them that I am not lying down ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... jaundiced, in the centre of a great, empty room, where, shivering with cold, he did not let his voice exceed a croaking whisper though there was panelling and no arras on the dim walls. But, to his ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... happiest tunes; and the oriole sang a lullaby to her hanging cradle that rocked in the wind. I heard the twitter of skimming swallows and the scattered covey's piping call; I heard the robin's gay whistle, the croaking of crows, the scolding of blue-jays, and the melancholy cooing of a dove. The swaying tree-tops seemed vocal with bird-song while he played, and the labyrinths of leafy shade echoed back the chorus. Then the violin sounded the hunter's horn, and the deep-mouthed pack of fox hounds opened ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... that which does not belong to it—no two gods must we serve; but (as one has seen in some old portraits) the horrible glazed eyes of Necessity are always fixed upon you; fly away as you will, black Care sits behind you, and with his ceaseless gloomy croaking drowns the voice of all more cheerful companions. Happy he whose fortune has placed him where there is calm and plenty, and who has the wisdom not to give up his quiet in quest ...
— George Cruikshank • William Makepeace Thackeray
... mebbe she'll lie over till Saturday after all. They say Bully's dead set on getting th' Cup. He might hang back. . . . Some excuse—short-handed or something!" Gregson was the one for "croaking." ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... heard beyond the cry of a stray florican, or guinea-fowl, which has lost her mate, or the hoarse croaking of the frogs in the pool hard by, or the song of the crickets which seems to lull the day to rest; inside our camp are heard the gurgles of the gourd pipes as the men inhale the blue ether, which I also love. ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... hearth glow, a gaunt vertebrate body scarcely expanded by ribs, but covered by a red blanket, and a head with deathlike features overhung by strips of hair. This vision of famine leaned forward and indented Michel with one finger, croaking again,— ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... German, looming up before us through the darkness. 'But, sapperment, what a cawing and croaking, like a rookery at sunset! You English are a strange people—yes, donnerwetter, a very strange people! There are no two of you who think alike upon any subject under Himmel! The Cavalier will have his gay coat and his loose word. The Puritan will cut your throat rather ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... happened quite suddenly, as these things will. One moment the other sentry was craning his neck for another look at what was going on elsewhere. The next he was down on his knees, croaking through a compressed throat, with The Barbarian's arm under his chin and a driving knee ready to smash at the back ...
— The Barbarians • John Sentry
... all answer "yes" to this question asked by one of our fine writers on our social amenities: "Don't you get awfully tired of people who are always croaking? A frog in a big, damp, malarial pond is expected to make all the fuss he can in protest of his surroundings. But a man! Destined for a crown, and born that he may be educated for the court of a king! Placed in an emerald world with a hither ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... no better than the croaking of your carrion crow," said the elder lady: "these are not like the songs we used to hear in hall and bower at Dunham Massey. Then "—the old lady forgetting that her own ears had played her false, and her ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... had it not been for features too heavily accentuated in nose and chin, she might have produced an impression of eternal spring-tide. As it was, the comic papers would have found her cruelly easy to caricature, had she been a statesman. The parrot screamed at her approach, croaking out an air, slightly off ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... girl is flirting on the beach, With a him. And the damboy is a-climbing for the peach, On the limb; Yes, the bullfrog is a-croaking And the dudelet is a-smoking Cigarettes; And the hackman is a-hacking And the showman is a-cracking Up his pets; Yes, the Jersey 'skeeter flits along the shore And the snapdog—we have heard it o'er and o'er; Yes, my poet, Well we know it— Know the spooners how ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... this was not right, that they should have a king and a proper constitution, so they determined to send up a petition to Jove to give them what they wanted. "Mighty Jove," they cried, "send unto us a king that will rule over us and keep us in order." Jove laughed at their croaking, and threw down into the swamp a huge Log, which came down—kersplash—into the water. The Frogs were frightened out of their lives by the commotion made in their midst, and all rushed to the bank to look ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... slightest inspection, not to emancipation, but to the illegal continuance of slavery, under the cover of its legal substitute. Not the slightest reference to the rash act, whereby the thirty thousand slaves of Antigua were immediately "turned loose," now mingles with the croaking which strives to defend our republican slavery against argument and ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... glowed just behind the hemlocks, and the gypsy bands came home, I would see their sentinels posted here and there among the hemlock tips—still, dark, graceful silhouettes etched in sepia against the gorgeous after-glow—and hear the mothers croaking their ungainly babies to sleep in the ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... empire. The Emperor determined that it should adorn the dome of the invalids, at Paris. During the work it was remarked that a great number of ravens kept flying round this cross, and that Napoleon, weary of their hoarse croaking, exclaimed, that "it seemed as if these flocks of ill-omened birds meant to defend it." We cannot pretend to tell all that he thought in this critical situation, but it is well known that he was accessible ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... Anthony he heard the Duke making some French compliment in his croaking harsh voice. Behind came the crowd of ladies, nodding, chattering, rustling; and Anthony had a swift glance of pleasure from Mistress Corbet as she went by, talking at the ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... of a general strangeness because he was so completely an urban product. Yet he and Holden were vastly less aware of the real strangeness about them than men of previous generations would have been. They did not notice the oddity of croaking sounds, like frogs, coming from the tree-tops. When they had threaded their way among leaning charred poles and came to green stuff underfoot and merely toasted foliage all around, Cochrane heard a sweet, high-pitched trilling which came from a half-inch hole in the ground. But he was ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... as balmy as though it had been an evening in June. Somewhere in the trees by the fence a pair of wakeful birds was chirping. From the swamp below the hill came the hoarse croaking of bull-frogs. Above the summit of the wooded slope that lay toward Chestnut Hill the full moon was climbing, and, aslant the road, the maples cast long ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... whip or spur. By the time I had crossed the river into El Afroun, I found my horse so entirely knocked up, that it was clearly impossible to proceed. So, of necessity, I turned into the auberge, and had a very good dinner, enlivened by a serenade from a legion of frogs, croaking dolefully in the ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham
... scarcely master of his own kingdom. 10. The finished hero was all but finished, in a very commonplace and vulgar way. And, 11, the man worthy of immortality was just at the point of death, without a friend to soothe or deplore him; only withered old Maintenon to utter prayers at his bedside, and croaking Jesuit to prepare him, with heavens knows what wretched tricks and mummeries, for his appearance in that Great Republic that lies on the other side of the grave. In the course of his fourscore splendid miserable years, he never had but one friend, and he ruined ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... into smiling, Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust, and door; Then upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking Fancy into fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore— What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore Meant in croaking "Nevermore." ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... queer, hollow, croaking voice, "Paul Lessingham." I was dreadfully startled. To hear a perfect stranger, a man in his condition, utter that name in such a fashion—to me, of all people in the world!—took me aback. The policeman ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... were lofty, and its domes were shining; its rivers were running, its trees were fruitful, and its gardens bore ripe produce. It was a city with impenetrable gates, empty, still, without a voice but the owl hooting in its quarters, and the raven croaking in its thoroughfare-streets, and bewailing those who had been ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... at sea during the whole night, which was stormy; and when approaching the shores of his own sacred island the following morning, a vast number of ravens were observed flying over the boat, chasing another of extraordinary large size. The croaking of the ravens awoke the Saint, who had been sleeping; and he instantly exclaimed that the son of Connal had just expired, which was afterwards ascertained ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... me, and set your feet where I set mine," said Nerina to the little soldier of the Abruzzo, and she put down her foot on the first pile, sunk almost invisible under the bright green slime, where thousands of frogs were croaking. ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... thronged for many a night With startled faces. Voices rose and fell, As I recall them, in a great vague dream, Curious, pitiful, angry, thrashing out The tragic truth. Then, all along the Cheape, The ballad-mongers waved their sheets of rhyme, Croaking: Come buy! Come buy! The bloody death Of Wormall, writ by Master Richard Bame! Come buy! Come buy! The Atheist's Tragedy. And, even in Bread Street, at our very door, The crowder to ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... prophet was absorbed in these reflections a pair of ravens fluttered around his head and, croaking loudly, alighted on the dusty ruins of one of the shattered houses. He involuntarily glanced around him and noted that they had perched on the corpse of a murdered Hebrew, lying half concealed amid the rubbish. A smile which the priests of lower rank who surrounded his litter knew not how to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... since she left the paternal roof had been a prey to that fixed sorrow which the intoxicating transports of love had not been able to subdue, now contemplated, in the gloomy croaking of the ravens, the sad presage of some dire misfortune. She reclined silently with downcast eyes, while Roque was ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... of Hillsboro rang out across the ripening fields with a grave and holy sound, and again at evening knocked faintly, with quiet sorrow, at doors where children watched for the first star, to make their wishes. Night came, and to the croaking of frogs, the moon rose over Barly Hill. In the early morning the grass, still wet with dew, chilled the bare toes of urchins on their way to school where, until four o'clock, the tranquil voice of Mr. Jeminy disputed with the ...
— Autumn • Robert Nathan
... inhabitants. We find no traces in the clay-beds of the coal to lead us to suppose that men lived in those days, nor lions, nor tigers, nor even birds to fly among the trees; but these grand forests were almost silent, except when a huge animal something like a gigantic newt or frog went croaking through the marsh, or a kind of grasshopper chirruped on the land. But these forms of life were few and far between, compared to the huge trees and tangled masses of ferns and reeds which covered the whole ground, or were reflected in the bosom of the large pools and ...
— The Fairy-Land of Science • Arabella B. Buckley
... around to the side of the building and looked in a window. He stood for a moment, watching with bulging eyes, half drew a pistol, thought better of the notion and replaced it, and then darted back to the saloon from which he had emerged, croaking hoarsely: "Fight! fight!" ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... the massacre," says a contemporary, "a number of crows flew croaking round and settled on the Louvre. The noise they made drew everybody out to see them, and the superstitious women infected the King with their own timidity. That very night Charles had not been in bed two hours when he jumped up and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... and gone. Sophocles has died: and Aristophanes has attained his final triumph in the "Frogs"—a play flashing with every variety of his genius—as softly musical in the mystics' chorus as croaking in that of the frogs—in which Bacchus himself is ridiculed, and Euripides is more coarsely handled than ever. And once more the voice of Euripides has interposed between the Athenians and their doom.[51] When AEgos Potamos had been fought, and Athens was in Spartan hands, ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... the body tenderly to the seashore and laid it upon the deck of the majestic ship, Ringhorn, which had been his. Then they stood waiting to see who would come to the funeral. Odin came, and on his shoulders sat his two ravens, whose croaking drew clouds down over the Asa's face, for Thought and Memory sang the same sad song that day. Frigga came,—Frey, Gerda, Freyja, Thor, Hoenir, Bragi, and Idun. Heimdall came sweeping over the tops of the mountains on Golden Mane, his swift, bright steed. AEgir the Old groaned from under the ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... now, and no one heard. All alone, mamma's baby, who had never been alone before in all her short cherished life. All alone with the croaking frogs and lonesome crickets. Hark! what was that? A roll of wheels and the clatter of a ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.
... his raven-like croaking and criticising; but the good fellow writes me this morning that he is written down an ass, and that the approbation is unanimous. It is but Edinburgh, to be sure; but Edinburgh has always been a harder critic ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... mixture, and Genesmere made his coffee strong. He had had no shade at the first camp, and here it was good under the tangle of the mesquite, and he slept sound. He was early awakened by the ravens, whose loose, dislocated croaking came from where they sat at breakfast on the other side of the wallow. They had not suspected his presence among the mesquite, and when he stepped to the mud-hole and dipped its gummy fluid in his coffee-pot they rose hoarse and hovering, ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... to judge, for sometimes she would agree with the gloomiest thing that was said, at other times she refused to listen, and rammed Helen's theories down her throat with laughter, chatter, ridicule of the wildest, and fierce bursts of anger even at what she called the "croaking of a raven ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... its trees were fruitful, and its gardens bore ripe produce. It was a city with impenetrable gates, empty, still, without a voice or a cheering inhabitant, but the owl hooting in its quarters, and birds skimming in circles in its areas, and the raven croaking in its districts and its great thoroughfare-streets, and bewailing those who had been in it. The Emeer Moosa paused, sorrowing for its being devoid of inhabitants, and its being despoiled of people and dwellers; and he said, Extolled be the perfection of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the river they had reached was so perfectly still that every cloud in the sky, every mangrove, root and spray, and every bending bulrush, was perfectly reproduced in the reflected world below. Plaintive cries of wild-fowl formed appropriate melody, to which chattering groups of monkeys and croaking bull-frogs contributed a fine ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... nothing that the raven was just now croaking on my left hand.—PLAUTUS: Aulularia, act ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... you'll hear to-morrow," said practical Bert Wilson, "will be a crow. Poe's raven won't have a thing on Hendricks when he starts croaking." ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... Sophia of Susan's piped up. She was sitting there, knitting and croaking like an old 'raven of bode and woe' as ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... waters the second time. If you had not done so the first night the otter brought me to you I should have been changed into a hooting owl; if you had not done so the second night, I should have been changed into a croaking raven. But, thanks to you, Enda, I am now a snow-white swan, and for one hour on the first night of every full moon the power of speech is and will be given to me as long as I remain a swan. And a swan I must always ...
— The Golden Spears - And Other Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... continued the titillation he began to give forth broken, subdued croaks, and I wondered if he were going to break out in song. He did not, but he seemed loath to go his way. How different he looked from the dark-colored frogs which in large numbers make a multitudinous croaking and clucking in the little wild pools in spring! He wakes up from his winter nap very early and is in the pools celebrating his nuptials as soon as the ice is off them, and then in two or three days he takes to the open woods and assumes the assimilative coloring ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... his love song to his mate and the moon, and the dull, far-off roar of the rushing tide sounded a low accompaniment to the song. Gone were the white, warm, mud-laden waters, the floating trunks, the screaming parrots, the croaking frogs, the howling beasts; the glare of the sun no longer hurt his eyes, and its fierce heat no longer sent his brain throbbing and burning. The air was cool, the bracken sweet, and the bird trilled out its passionate music. Why should he sit uncomfortably ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... sweat from their bloodshot eyes. A pitcher of wine of Anjou was carried round by a page, and each in turn drained a cup, save only Beaumanoir who kept his Lent with such strictness that neither food nor drink might pass his lips before sunset. He paced slowly amongst his men, croaking forth encouragement from his parched lips and pointing out to them that among the English there was scarce a man who was not wounded, and some so sorely that they could hardly stand. If the fight so far had gone against them, ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... public roads on them, from which horses may look down upon wayside cottages. Often the keels of floating ships are higher than the roofs of the dwellings. The stork clattering to her young on the house peak may feel that her nest is lifted far out of danger, but the croaking frog in neighboring bulrushes is nearer the stars than she. Water bugs dart backward and forward above the heads of the chimney swallows, and willow trees seem drooping with shame, because they cannot reach as high ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... of the rocks. They found a jellyfish—a pulpy translucent mass; and once even caught a sight of a seal in the hollow of a breaker, with sleek and shining head, his barbels bristling, and heard his hoarse croaking bark as he ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... the very thing I have been grieving at; but it will signify nothing for us to stand here sighing and croaking; so pray go and order a muster of the men, that I may say a few words to them before they all run off ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... walnut-tree, at a village about six kos off, and reached Islamabad about one P.M., after a very hot tramp of ten kos, through groves of sycamore and walnuts, and hundreds and hundreds of acres of rice-fields, immersed in water, and tenanted by whole armies of croaking frogs. The people were principally employed in weeding their rice-crops, standing up to their knees in mud and water, and grubbing about, with their heads in a position admirably adapted to give anybody but a native, apoplexy ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... have had a great horror of braying orators, and relates a number of anecdotes about them, such as this: A preacher who had a detestable voice, but thought he had a very sweet one, bawled out to no purpose. You would say the croaking of the crow in the desert was the burden of his song, and that this verse of the Kuran was intended for him, "Verily the most detestable of sounds is the braying of an ass." When this ass of a preacher brayed, it made Persepolis tremble. The people of the town, on ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... said another man, who was leaning against the slab wall, and intently watching the girl in the doorway. "Come, Gran, don't be croaking; if the cards ain't lucky, put ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... fowl sent him, and says that although he is half blind, his eyes are sharp enough to see that it is a very fat one. The touch of human nature makes the whole picture live. Horace, journeying to Brindisi, and trying to sleep a little on a canal boat, is kept awake by mosquitoes and croaking frogs, and by the long-drawn-out, tipsy singing of a drunken sailor, who at last turns off the towing mule to graze, and goes to sleep till daylight. It is easier to see all this than to call up one instant of a chariot race in the great circus, or ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... river, therefore, they encamped on its northwest bank, where they found good pasturage and buffalo in abundance. The weather was overcast and rainy, and a general gloom pervaded the camp; the voyageurs sat smoking in groups, with their shoulders as high as their heads, croaking their foreboding, when suddenly towards evening a shout of joy gave notice that the lost men were found. They came slowly lagging into camp, with weary looks, and horses jaded and wayworn. They had, in fact, been for several ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... mouth of his kennel, and sends forth a thundering bark, which is answered by two fox-hounds shut up in the opposite cow-house; the old top-knotted hens, scratching with their chicks among the straw, set up a sympathetic croaking as the discomfited cock joins them; a sow with her brood, all very muddy as to the legs, and curled as to the tail, throws in some deep staccato notes; our friends the calves are bleating from the home croft; and, under all, a fine ear discerns the ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... bird-clouds is the one which now appears. This has been formed of birds who have travelled from every direction to join it. It is dark bluish-gray, and no sun-ray can penetrate it. It is full of the ghastliest noises, the most frightful shrieks, the grimmest laughter, and most ill-luck-boding croaking! All on the playground are glad when it finally resolves itself into a storm of fluttering and croaking: of crows and ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... we find in these young men," said one, whose voice was hoarse and croaking and guttural and who was ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... you mistake Husbands.[7] [Sidenote: mistake your] Begin Murderer. Pox, leaue thy damnable Faces, [Sidenote: murtherer, leave] and begin. Come, the croaking Rauen doth bellow ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... was that gaunt, wasted face staring at me from the bed which sent a chill to my heart. His eyes had the brightness of fever, there was a hectic flush upon either cheek, and dark crusts clung to his lips; the thin hands upon the coverlet twitched incessantly, his voice was croaking and spasmodic. He lay listlessly as I entered the room, but the sight of me brought a gleam of recognition to ...
— The Adventure of the Dying Detective • Arthur Conan Doyle
... dumb, mute; deafmute, deaf and dumb; mum; tongue-tied; breathless, tongueless, voiceless, speechless, wordless; mute as a fish, mute as a stockfish^, mute as a mackerel; silent &c (taciturn) 585; muzzled; inarticulate, inaudible. croaking, raucous, hoarse, husky, dry, hollow, sepulchral, hoarse as a raven; rough. Adv. with bated breath, with the finger on the lips; sotto voce [Lat.]; in a low tone, in a cracked voice, in a broken voice. Phr. vox faucibus ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... breed bull that way, sister, he probably has a harem of six-foot heifers. I had my head thrown back and my hands stretched out supplicatingly. Meanwhile the both of us were babbling a blue streak. I was rapidly croaking something like, "Mister for God's sake save my pal he's hurt a lot worse'n I am not a hundred yards away he's dyin' mister he's dyin' o' thirst his tongue's black'n all swole up oh save him mister save my pal he's not a hundred ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... old bird, at last?" my enemy cried in triumph; "'tis the third time I have shot at thee, and thou wast beginning to mock me. No more of thy cursed croaking now, to wake me in the morning. Ha, ha! there are not many who get three chances from Carver Doone; and none ever go ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... croaking! 'Sfoot, sir, either grant I sing and play to a miracle, or I'll justify my music, though I am caught, and ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... Grenville's character was stern, melancholy, and pertinacious. Nothing was more remarkable in him than his inclination always to look on the dark side of things. He was the raven of the House of Commons, always croaking defeat in the midst of triumphs, and bankruptcy with an overflowing exchequer. Burke, with general applause, compared him, in a time of quiet and plenty, to the evil spirit whom Ovid described looking down on the stately temples and wealthy haven of Athens, and scarce able to refrain ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... place, and to declaim in the same strain, refusing for many years to buy a house there, because all was going to destruction; and at last I had the pleasure of seeing him give five times as much for one as he might have bought it for when he first began his croaking. ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... Rooney—for it's in terror of his life he lives, continually draming day and night, and croaking of carders and thrashers, and oak boys, and white boys, and peep-o'-day boys, and united boys, and riband-men, and men and boys of all sorts that have, and that have not, been up and down the country since ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... alight upon, came back. I took out a swallow and let it go: the swallow went, turned about, and as there was no place to alight upon, came back. I took out a raven and let it go: the raven went, and saw that the water had abated, and came near the ship flapping its wings, croaking, and returned no more." Shamashnapishtim escaped from the deluge, but he did not know whether the divine wrath was appeased, or what would be done with him when it became known that he still lived.** He resolved to conciliate the gods by expiatory ceremonies. "I sent forth the inhabitants of the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... ditch near by set up a low, meditative croaking. Uncle Bill raised his head abruptly. Their straining ears caught the sound of someone running, stumbling along the uneven track that wound in from the shore. A whistle cut ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... sign, and noisome flies Thro' the whole country spread; And frogs, in croaking armies, ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts
... young days we little thought to see Such legs stretched under such mahogany; That British Royalty would ever share At a French Palace, French Imperial fare: Nor eat—as we should have believed at school— The croaking tenant of the marshy pool. At the Trois Freres we had not feasted then, As we have since, and hope to ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... their hideous jaws, and lit upon their slimy tongues. Some were fishing in the stream, and at intervals the stroke of their tails upon the water could be heard at the distance of half a mile or more. Their croaking resounded through the woods somewhat like the noise made by bull-frogs, but loud and terrible as the bellowing of bulls. A horrid appearance they presented; but our hunters were accustomed to the sight, and had no fear ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... we have a rather more fantastic picture. "A pretty place Cesena must be if Ravenna is better, for there your ears are pierced by the mosquito of the Po and a talkative mob of frogs is always croaking round you. Ravenna is a mere marsh where all the conditions of life are reversed, where walls fall and waters stand, towers flow down and ships squat, invalids walk about and their doctors take to bed, baths freeze and houses burn, the living perish with thirst and the dead swim about on the surface ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... fishing ground at this season was about two miles from the ledges; and with the wind free, Leopold calculated that he had made this distance in half an hour. He had cleared away his cable, and had his anchor ready to throw overboard, when the hoarse croaking of a fog-horn attracted his attention. The sound came from the seaward side of him, and from a point ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... canoe-full of shivering Indians were stemming the icy flood in search of some chosen fishery,—all of them blanketed, and all—squaw as well as papooses—taking a turn at the paddle. These were the children of Nature, whose song-birds are the screaming eagle, the croaking raven, and the crying sea-doves blown inland by the ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... men walked through the open port, out across the gleaming, golden sand, to the water's edge. A number of great scarlet birds, with long, fiercely taloned legs, swooped about them curiously, croaking hoarsely and snapping their hawkish beaks, but ...
— The Death-Traps of FX-31 • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... another castle in which the lord's daughter was lying sick unto death; and a great reward had been offered to him that should cure her. Now Jack had been listening to the frogs as they were croaking in the moat which surrounded the castle. So Jack went to the lord of the castle and said, "I know what ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs
... you towards them. You never saw any place more desolate from a distance, nor one that less belied its promise near at hand. Some crows and gulls flew away croaking as I scrambled in. The snow had drifted into the vaults. The clachan dabbled with snow, the white hills, the black sky, the sea marked in the coves with faint circular wrinkles, the whole world, as it looked from a loop-hole ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ripples on the surface of the water as if a swift boat had just passed down, but there was no sign of any craft whatever to be seen. It was intensely still, and no sound broke the silence save the intermittent croaking of some bull-frogs in the dark shadows of the pollards on the further bank. Behind me could also be heard the gurgling twinkle of the overflow through the chinks of the ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... were all standing in ghastly nakedness, and so thick in many places that it must have been difficult to plow through them, while flocks of crows and buzzards were sailing around them or perched in their tops, cawing and croaking, and thereby augmenting the woe-begone looks of things. The planter himself was of a type then common in the South. He was a large, coarse looking man, with an immense paunch, wore a broad-brimmed, home-made straw hat and butter nut ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... of a hen looking about for a place to deposit her egg; her self-important gait; the sideway turn of her head and cock of her eye, as she pries into one and another nook, croaking all the while,—evidently with the idea that the egg in question is the most important thing that has been brought to pass since the world began. A speckled black and white and tufted hen of ours does it to most ludicrous perfection; and there is something laughably womanish ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... keep good guard that her crazy hag of a grandam come not hither to disturb or fright thee with her croaking,—for thou hast not even ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... solicitude—the clear, thin, plaintive, or wailing note, and the low, jarring sound—an alternate lamenting and girding. One day when I approached the nest, they displayed more anxiety than usual, fluttering close to me, wailing and croaking more vehemently than ever, when all at once the male, at the height of his excitement, burst into singing. Half a dozen notes were uttered rapidly, with great strength, then a small complaining cry ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... objection to part with, not only flying at the head of the man who removed them, but some little time after they had been removed similarly attacking the man who ascended the tree to look at the nest. After the eggs were gone, they sat themselves on a small branch above the nest side by side, croaking most ominously, and shaking their heads at each other in the most amusing manner, every now and then alternately descending to the nest and scrutinizing every portion of the cavity with their heads on one side as if to make sure that ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... of all was the flood of applications for cabin accommodations at Temple Camp; that was just as sure and reliable as the first croaking of the frogs or the softening of the rich, thick mud in Barrel Alley, where Tom had ...
— Tom Slade at Black Lake • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... only poverty and ruin can correct or cure. The clergy must, however, be greatly delighted at the following picture of the cloth, drawn by one of their holy brotherhood. "The Bath church," says the satirist, "is filled with croaking ravens, chattering jays, and devouring cormorants; black-headed fanatics and white-headed 'dreamers of dreams;' the aqua-fortis of mob politics, and the mawkish slip-slop of modern divinity; rank cayenne pepper, and genuine powder of post!" Really a very flattering description ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... croaking the most grim and dismal notes in all the wide, wild range of ballad poetry, as they ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... and uncanny signs had accompanied Luther's death. Weird shrieks and noises were heard, devils were flying about in the air; the heavens were shrouded in a pall of gloom. When the funeral cortege started from Eisleben, a vast flock of ravens had gathered and accompanied the corpse croaking incessantly and uttering dismal cries all the ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... a second ravine. He was going downward, walking on silvery sand amidst great boulders, and now there was a new sound in the air—. It was the croaking of frogs. Ahead was a solitary gleam. He was approaching a ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... fast With silken flags at the mast, And the home-wind blows soft; But a Raven sits aloft, Chuckling and choking, Croaking, croaking, croaking:— 30 Let the beacon-fire blaze higher; Bridegroom, ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... the whitewashed houses, and village church with its sentinel cypress-trees. A frog was croaking in a runlet; there was a faint spicy scent ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... themselves through space, like an immense mourning veil floating in the wind, uttering violent and sinister screams. Sometimes, they rested, dotting with black spots the tangled branches against the red sky, the sky crimsoned with autumn twilights. Then, all of a sudden, they set again, croaking frightfully and trailing once more above the wood the long dark ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... the croaking of the frog, By the howling of the dog, By the crying of the hog Against the storm arising; By the evening curfew bell, By the doleful dying knell, O let this my direful spell, ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... still oozed from the splintered wood; and there was neither trace of knife nor hatchet on the bark. I looked up among the boughs to mark the spot from whence it had been torn by the hand of Fate—for no human hand had done it—and saw the pair of ancestral ravens perched amid the foliage, and croaking as those carrion fowl are wont to do when they scent a carcass afar off. Just then a livelier sound saluted my ears. The cheering cry of a pack of hounds resounded from the courts, and the great gates ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... and, croaking his satisfaction, hopped to the feet of his master, and there held his bill open, ready for snapping up such lumps of meat as he should throw him. Of these he received about a score in rapid ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... $35,000 yearly interest on a debt for which she had practically received not a single advantage. And this accumulating at compound interest has reached a magnitude absolutely crushing. So desperate is her financial condition that many believe inevitable the fate which croaking prophets have long foretold, and against which she has struggled bravely—absorption ...
— History of Liberia - Johns Hopkins University Studies In Historical And Political Science • J.H.T. McPherson
... sorry a condition as the coach. The driver's clothes, which were very old fashioned, hung about him in loose folds, and he gazed upon me with a strange, stony stare that was absolutely appalling; yet his lips unclosed as I worked past him, and he exclaimed in a harsh, croaking voice, 'One eye!' Thereupon two or three queer people poked their heads out of the coach window. There was one old woman with false teeth, in an unpleasant state of decay, and a voice like a parrot. 'One eye!' she shrieked, as she gazed on me with an ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... at Cassel and will get him to execute a deed of conveyance assigning to me, with no restrictive covenants, the freehold of one of those mills, for I have coveted a mill ever since I succumbed to the enchantments of Lettres de mon moulin. True, Flanders is not Provence, and the croaking of the frogs, croak they never so amorously, among the willows in the plains below is a poor exchange for the chant of the cigale. But these mills look out over a landscape that is now dearer to me than ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... said Tomassov, looking even more troubled than before. 'He came along holding to my stirrup leather. That's what made me so late. He told me he was a staff officer; and then talking in a voice such, I suppose, as the damned alone use, a croaking of rage and pain, he said he had a favour to beg of me. A supreme favour. Did I understand him, he asked in a sort ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad
... a deep, narrow stream, scarcely a stone's throw wide, with the thick foliage of many and various trees overhanging its banks. The only sounds which broke the stillness were the notes of birds and the croaking of the bull-frog, mingled with the measured splash of the oars. At length, after about two hours' pull, we reached a little creek, and the Indian boys told us that their encampment was a short distance up it. It seemed scarcely possible to take the boat in, for the stream was very narrow, ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... getting ready for trade; but scarcely a sound was heard, only a dull, muffled stir gradually deepening. There were only two white babies in the town, so far as I saw, and as for Indian babies, they woke and ate and made no crying sound. Later you might hear the croaking of ravens, and the strokes of an axe on firewood. About eight or nine o'clock the town was awake. Indians, mostly women and children, began to gather on the front platforms of the half-dozen stores, sitting carelessly on ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... the forest with his dogs in quest of game. Fortune granted him a fine big boar, but he broke his spear in dealing the mortal blow. Upon arriving at a stream he sat down upon a stone and set himself to repairing his spear. The croaking of the near-by frogs attracted his attention and, imitating their shrill notes, he boldly told them that it would be better to cease their cries and help him mend his spear. He continued his course up the rocky torrent, but noticed that a multitude of little stones began ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... listed. It would come by-and-by to be a hard task for the stone and lime victim to hold its place, with its sinews of run mortar, against these tyrants of the wood. And then they were as full of noises as Babel itself—noises a thousand times more heterogeneous—croaking, chirping, screeching, cawing, whistling, billing, cooing, cuckooing. "What a place to live in!" I thought, fresh as I was from town, "where, if there are noises, one knows something of their meaning—maledictory, yea, devilish as it often is, expressive of the passions of men which will ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... the kitchen, in which Caroline and Tempie hung anxiously over a simmering pan of lemon juice, sugar, rye whisky and peppermint which, when it arrived at the proper sirupy condition, was to be administered as a soothing potion to the hoarse throat of Peyton Kendrick, who perched croaking on a chair close by, drove him to seeking comfort from Phoebe much to her apparent amusement but secret perturbation, for Phoebe both ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... nothing to see save the blazing fire, whose snapping and crackling mingled with the croaking, hissing, and strange cries from the forest. Fire-flies glided here and there, and scintillated about the bushes; Brazier and Shaddy both slept hard; and the peculiar cry of a jaguar or other cat-like animal came softly from somewhere at ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... seized hold of the creeping-plants, and the roots of trees—climbed up the moist stones where the water-snakes were writhing and the toads were croaking—and he gained the summit before the sun had quite gone down. How magnificent was the sight from this height! The sea—the great, the glorious sea, that dashed its long waves against the coast—was stretched out before ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... Annie's croaking cry, her thin arms, her quick straining of him, he all unprepared even for the mere physical yielding that alone saves such an embrace from awkwardness, found him lost. Annie felt it and stiffened, and the moment ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... movements of the crow the basis of their auguries; and there is no end to the vicissitudes of good and evil fortune which may not be predicted from the direction of their flight, the hoarse or mellow notes of their croaking, the variety of trees on which they rest, and the numbers in which they are seen to assemble. All day long they are engaged in watching either the offal of the offices, or the preparation for meals in the dining-room; and as doors and windows are necessarily opened ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... and croaking gut, See how the half-star'd Frenchmen strut, And call us English dogs: But soon we'll teach these bragging foes That beef and beer give heavier blows Than ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... melting into little rills which trickled through the fresh-springing flower-strewn grass; the extraordinary blue of the hillsides overlooking the Lolab Valley seen through the sloping boughs of the pines; the crows hopping audaciously around or croaking on a dried branch just above our heads; and above all, the glorious sense of freedom, of aloofness from all disturbing elements, of utter and irresponsible independence in a lovely land ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... final skirmishes and yelpings, subside among the warm ashes of the fireplaces; the pigs emit a final squeal and grunt; and within the house quietness reigns. Now the rushing of the river makes itself heard in the house, mingled with the chirping of innumerable insects and the croaking of a myriad frogs borne in from the surrounding forest. The villagers sleep soundly till cock-crow; but the European guest, lying in the place of honour almost beneath the row of human heads which adorns the gallery, is, if unused to sleeping in a Bornean long house, apt to be wakened from time to ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... What "croaking" meant Jamie did not in the least know, but he suspected that it referred to something not in the least pleasant for himself. He was too tired, however, to think or care a great deal as he was dragged on, stumbling in ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... food-basket in her hand! Oh what a croaking, what a squeaking! Alive all the trees and the bushes appear, While to her feet whole troops draw near; The very fish within, the water clear Splash with impatience and their heads protrude; And then she throws around the food With such ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... little friend. The burdens of childhood are as hard to bear as the crosses that weigh us down later in life, while the happinesses of childhood are tame compared with those of our maturer years. And even if this were not so, it is rank cruelty to throw shadows over the young heart by croaking, "Be ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... journey was perfectly unavailing. I could not find my debtor at home, and if I had I was told it would take three weeks before the Russian law would assist me to recover my claim. Determined, however, to have some compensation, I carried off a raven, who had been croaking angrily at my intrusion. Before we had been long on our homeward journey, however, Lieut. C—— sat upon it, of course accidentally, and we threw ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... remark. Again the horses rose up out of the slough across which they had been wading and enjoyed for a short time some hard ground; but they soon had to leave it, to wade on as before. On every side was heard the loud croaking of frogs; their heads poked up in all the shallower marshes, with the object, it seemed, of observing the travellers, and then their croaking became louder than ever, as if they were amusing themselves by talking ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston |
