"Jabbering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... other "boomers." The scene was the corner of Fifth Avenue and One Hundred and Sixteenth Street, two blocks from Tevkin's residence, a spot that usually swarmed with Yiddish-speaking real-estate speculators in those days. It was a gesticulating, jabbering, whispering, excited throng, resembling the crowd of curb-brokers on Broad Street. Hence the nickname "The Curb" by which that corner was getting ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... Tom," said his companion.—"An ye touch her, I'll give ye a shake by the collar shall make the Leicester beans rattle in thy guts.—Never mind him, girl; I will not allow him to lay a finger on you, if you walk quietly on with us; but if you keep jabbering there, d—n me, but I'll leave him to settle it ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... it was, notwithstanding the hour! What a roaring and racing of engines, cars tearing here and tearing there, gendarmes everywhere, men with silver on their heads and silver on their toes; jabbering officials telling you to do twenty things at once, and quarrelling because you did them. The enclosure itself was like the meat-market at Smithfield on a busy morning. I never heard so much noise in any ...
— The Man Who Drove the Car • Max Pemberton
... day before, measuring a load of coal from the schooner Thomas Lowder, of St. John, N. B. A little, black, dirty vessel. The coal stowed in the hold, so as to fill the schooner full, and make her a solid mass of black mineral. The master, Best, a likely young man; his mate a fellow jabbering in some strange gibberish, English I believe—or nearer that than anything else—but gushing out all together—whole sentences confounded into one long, unintelligible word. Irishmen shoveling the coal into the two Custom House tubs, to be craned out of the hold, and others wheeling ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... moment at a popular corner, it seemed as if the whole town and bazaar flowed past in a wave of colour and movement. Burmans' and Shans, male and female, clothed in coloured silk and satin, the women decked with flowers and jewellery, all smoking and jabbering in their strange monosyllabic tongue; solid, well-set-up Germans parading in couples; rollicking sailors; Chinamen; Malays in great numbers; stately Sikhs and the inevitable ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... asked.... The Nautilus made a good run; then, about a day from land, Mr. Broadrick told me that there wouldn't be a seaman on the ship an hour after we anchored. They were all crazy with gold fever, he said. I could see, too, that they were excited; the watch hung under the weather rail jabbering like parrots; an uglier crew of ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Matty Desley was very well satisfied with her companion, and she turned over the wares with delight, as Miss Folly went jabbering on,— ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... another Indian religious service—this time of Christians—and compared it with what I had seen in the morning? Instead of a money-hunting priest sitting beside a butcher's block and exacting a prescribed fee from each pushing, jabbering, suppliant of a bloodthirsty goddess, herself only one of the many jealous gods and goddesses to be favored and propitiated—instead of this there was a converted Indian minister who told his fellows of one God whose characteristic is love, and whose worship is of ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... And thus jabbering, fixing and pushing about the revolving shelf, over his hall door, Mr. Mansfield worked away at his trap. Like that of most dwellings in Boston, Uncle Henry's front door was sunk some six or eight feet into the face of the house, reached by a flight of six granite steps—side ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... spear—saw it plunge—saw the buffalo stumble in its stride—and saw his companion pass on, whooping in exultation at Weucha, who came up an instant later, defeated, but grinning and offering his hand. Now came Dorion also, out of ammunition, yet not out of speech, excited, jabbering as usual. ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... heartily,—who could have helped it?—and lifting the little fellow in my arms kissed him affectionately, as one does a pretty stranger child. This seemed to gratify him rather than to satisfy him; he nestled in my neck, but moved restlessly, slipping to the ground, and back again into my arms; jabbering incoherently and pleasantly; seeming to be diverted rather than comforted; ready to stay, but alert to go; in short, behaving like a baby on a visit. After awhile the child adjusted himself to the situation; grew quiet, and clung to me; and at last, putting both his arms about my ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... That set them all jabbering together, and they finally agreed to report to the king that the time had arrived when the princess should marry, so that she should be able to go away to a new land, amid other people and ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... and the operation, and how my father had come to find the bullet so unerringly, each theorist tapping his own chest and back, or his interlocutor's, sometimes a couple tapping each other with vigour, neither listening, both jabbering at full pitch of the voice with prodigious elisions of consonants and equally prodigious drawlings of the vowels. For us, the dressing of the wound kept us busy, and we paid little attention even when a fresh jabbering announced that the ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... resting-place for man or box, fell off. The driver alighted to fish it out of the mud. As there was some delay, a gentleman seated opposite to me put his head out of window to inquire the cause; to whom the driver's voice replied, in an angry tone, 'I say, you mister, don't you sit jabbering there; but lend a hand to heave these things aboard!' To my surprise, the gentleman did not appear struck by the insolence of this summons, but immediately jumped out and rendered his assistance. This is merely ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... tall Royal ahead, whose heels scraped against his breast buttons, and once or twice bruised him in the face; followed up, wondering what face of death would meet him at the top, where men were yelling and jabbering in three languages—French, English, and that tongue which belongs equally to men and brutes at ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... see the donas of the groom, which had arrived that day from Mexico. Chonita tarried long enough to see that her father had forgotten the family grievance in his revived susceptibility to Estenega, then went to Prudencia's room. There women, young and old, crowded each other, jabbering like monkeys. The little iron bed, the chairs and tables, every article of furniture, in fact, but the altar in the corner, displayed to advantage exquisite materials for gowns, a mass of elaborate underclothing, a white lace mantilla to be worn at the bridal, lace flounces ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... something. But Pat could not or would not talk, either to him or me. She had a headache, and sat with her eyes shut, looking pitifully pale. Larry, on the contrary, was all excitement, and never stopped jabbering with one person or another till the end of the journey. I ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... slipped out an hour ago? eh, lass?" queried the old man, grasping her hand. "But 'tis all one, Thankful: 'twas not for him I stopped you. There is a young spark with him,—ay, came even as you left, lass,—a likely young gallant; and he and the count are jabbering away in their own lingo, a kind of Italian, belike; ...
— Thankful Blossom • Bret Harte
... others, and stood with them upon the deck of the Salvador. The sailors that steadied El Nacional shoved her off. The jabbering Caribs hauled away at the rigging; the sloop headed for ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... until we reach Lahore, we are accompanied by an incessant shuffle shuffle of naked feet through the dusty road; jabbering and shouting of blacks, flickering of torches, bumping of patched and straining doolies against mounds of earth, glimpses of shining naked bodies, streaming with perspiration, as they flit about, and the whole enveloped in dense and suffocating clouds of dust, which penetrate everything ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... did some! But Mrs. Crump was jabbering to him most of the time. Haven't you ever been out here before? Why, I thought you had!—How d' ...
— Polly and the Princess • Emma C. Dowd
... return to the ship early next morning, we soon took leave, and returned to the inn. As I was turning into the public room, the door was open, and I could see it full of blowsy-faced monsters, glimmering and jabbering, through the midst of hot brandy grog and gin twist; with poodle Benjamins, and greatcoats, and cloaks of all sorts and sizes, steaming on their pegs, with Barcelonas and comforters, and damp travelling caps of seal-skin, and blue cloth, and tartan, arranged ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... heard the boom of the steamboat's whistle, and soon the Columbia, thrust forward by her powerful engines, could be seen bucking the flood of the Columbia and slowly churning her way up-stream. She landed opposite the wood-chute of the wood-yard, where a crowd of jabbering Chinamen gathered. Soon our party walked in that direction also, and so became acquainted with Carlson, the skipper of the boat, who agreed to take them down to Revelstoke ...
— The Young Alaskans in the Rockies • Emerson Hough
... the seats of the members was strewn with corks, broken glass, stale crusts, greasy pieces of paper, and picked bones. The hall was packed with negroes, smoking, chewing, jabbering, pushing, perspiring. ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... for purposes of illustration, I wish to state that I believe in miracles: the miracle being that I did not knock the spit-covered mouthful of teeth and jabbering brutish outthrust jowl (which certainly were not farther than eighteen inches from me) through the bullneck bulging in its spotless collar. For there are times when one almost decides not to merely observe ... besides which, never in my life before ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... who translated the orders shouted at them by a brigandish- looking soldier, and they had to pull off in the direction of a smaller pier where Mrs. Haxton and Captain Stump had already disembarked in the midst of a crowd of jabbering natives. ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... too. Some twenty-four years before I had been born, but those years were simply existence. Now I was living. I had a secret. I had hinted at it to young Colonel. Had he stayed, I would have told him more, but like a fool he had gone jabbering off through the bushes, cutting a ludicrous figure, too, I thought, for his body had not yet grown up to his feet and ears, and he carried them off a bit clumsily. Had he stayed I might have told him all, and there never was a bit of news quite so important as that the foolish puppy ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... market-place now is the Plaza of San Francisco. It is crowded with booths of every description. Nearly all of the food-stuffs and utensils used by the Indians may be bought here. Frequently thronged with Indians, buying and selling, arguing and jabbering, it affords, particularly in the early morning, a never-ending source of entertainment to one who is fond of the picturesque and interested in strange manners ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... to hear him, Corporal M'Bean, jabbering away in that foreign talk, with that little black monkey moonshine. The little cratur a-twisting his shrivelled fingers about, that looks as if the bones were coming through the skin. I wonder what the good father at Blarney, where I come from, you know, Corporal, would say to ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... squirrel nods to me. I nod back; and why shouldn't I? Nature has familiarly introduced us. Squirrel munches under his tail canopy till I am out of sight, jabbering all the while. What sage little fellows go on four feet! I believe an animal has all the instincts of Adam. He should never be tamed, however, lest he lose his identity. Civilization rubs down the points in our character. ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... had occasion to remark on the curious manner in which two or three species of Alacacus and the Cynopithecus niger draw back their ears and utter a slight jabbering noise, when they are pleased by being caressed. With the Cynopithecus (fig. 17), the corners of the mouth are at the same time drawn backwards and upwards, so that the teeth are exposed. Hence this expression would never be recognized by a stranger as one of pleasure. The crest ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... tongues are heard in one loud din: The monkey-mimics rush discordant in; 'Twas chattering, grinning, mouthing, jabbering all, And noise and Norton, brangling and Breval,[322] Dennis and dissonance, and captious art, And snip-snap short, and interruption smart, 240 And demonstration thin, and theses thick, And major, minor, and conclusion quick. 'Hold' (cried the queen) 'a cat-call ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... face of great alarm, looked over their heads and asked for Heaven's sake what was wrong,—had not the opportune Strong made his appearance from the refreshment-room, and found Alcides grinding his teeth and jabbering oaths in his Galleon French, and Pen looking uncommonly wicked, although trying to appear as calm as possible, when the ladies and the ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was at present. But that was before we had compulsory education. The working classes were driving trade out of the country, and the consequence was, we couldn't build a boat which didn't reek like an oil-shop. Even the sailors on board were French—jabbering idiots; not an honest British Jack-tar among the lot of them; though the stewards were English, and very inferior Cockney English at that, with their off-hand ways, and their School Board airs and graces. She'd School ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... Although we would have committed any crime in order to possess these treasures, having got thoroughly into the spirit of the thing, we turned these rugs on their backs and pretended to find flaws in them, jeered at their colouring, and went on our way, followed by a jabbering, excited, perplexed, and nettled horde, who recklessly slaughtered their prices and almost tore up their mud floors in their wild anxiety to prove that they had something—anything—which we would buy. They called upon Allah to witness that they never had been ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... some such name, as is written as large as life on her boxes. As to the old lady, she has a good right to come here, but she did very wrong to bring that woman with her, to disturb an orderly family. Why, Master Henry, she makes ten times the jabbering Mag does." ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... foot here dies!" came from a third voice. "This is the burial place of the great Hupa-hupa! Back, if you value your life!" And then followed a jabbering nobody could understand, and white arms were waved wildly ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)
... frightened. At the foot of the steps were grouped three rough looking men, foreigners and sailors without doubt, and partially intoxicated. The three men were an ugly lot, and they were all yelling and jabbering together in a foreign lingo. As the captain emerged from the passage to the open deck, he heard Pearson reply ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... ladies roamed languidly about with much incoherent jabbering of parts, and frequent explosions of laughter. Princes, with varnished boots and suppressed cigars, fought, bled, and died, without a change of countenance. Damsels of unparalleled beauty, according to the text, gaped in the faces ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... put up their fiddles and the children went home; fairies and shepherdesses and pages and princesses all jabbering gleefully about the ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... shot, behold, they arose and scampered away as blithely as if naught had happened to them. One of the trio was cornered and shot anew, but when they would pick him up he melted into air. There was fierce jabbering in an unknown tongue, through all the swamp, and by the time the garrison had returned the fellows were skulking in the shrubbery again. Richard Dolliver afterward came on eleven of them engaged in incantations ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... burst out, 'I should like to write a book of Fables, showing how donkeys get into grinding harness, and dogs lose their bones, and fools have their sconces cracked, and all run jabbering of the irony of Fate, to escape the annoyance of tracing the causes. And what are they? nine times out of ten, plain want of patience, or some debt for indulgence. There's a subject:—let some one write, Fables in illustration of the irony of Fate: and I'll undertake to tack-on my grandmother's ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the direction from which the sounds had come, he was just able to distinguish the dark outline of the lugger, as she bore up and pursued her way once more to the eastward. After this a considerable amount of excited jabbering took place on deck, the word "Cherbourg" being so often repeated that George had no doubt it was to that port that the barque was to be taken; but in about half an hour all this died away, and perfect silence ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... enough to explain yourself. Above all, tell me what Len Shi has been jabbering about. He ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... twenty-one or two who talked of Harvard and asked Florian what his university had been; an old girl whose name Florian never did learn; and two others of Jessie Heath's age and general style. Florian found himself as bewildered by their talk and views as though they had been jabbering a foreign language. Every now and then, though, one of them would turn to him for a bit of technical advice. If it happened to concern equipment Florian could answer it readily enough. Ten years on the fifth floor had taught him many things. But if the knowledge sought ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... then, as Woodburn mounted and rode slowly on behind, commenced the enactment of his assumed part, always keeping within hearing, but never within distinct view, of the prisoners; now jabbering in as many voices as the most expert ventriloquist, and now sternly commanding, "Silence in the ranks!"—now getting up a seeming scuffle among his men, and now driving them, with thwacks and curses, to their places; and now again softening his tones ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... he was carrying to the table and ran to the door. Before he could open it, the door was broken in by the Indians, who came pouring in, loudly jabbering in ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... your goose with old Hagar, Grant! She's right on the warpath, and then some. She'd like to burn yuh alive—she said so. She's headed for camp, and all the rest of the bunch at her heels. She won't come here any more till you're kicked off the ranch, as near as I could make out her jabbering. And she won't do your washing any more, mum—she said so. You're kay bueno yourself, because you take Good Indian's part. We're all kay bueno—all but me. She wanted me to quit the bunch and go live in her wikiup. I'm the only decent one in ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... the count's footman were jabbering French like two intriguing ducks in a mill-pond; and I believe they talked of me, for they laughed consumedly."—Farquhar, The Beaux' Stratagem, act ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... him to take the possessed from church to church, from relic to relic. At every halting-place there was an exorcism, followed by furious cries, contortions, jabbering in every language, and gambols without number: all this before the people, who followed the pair with shuddering admiration. The devils, so abundant in Germany, were scarcer among the Italians. For some days Rome talked of nothing else. The noise made by this affair doubtless ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... waggon, and accidents of the journey, various more exclamations and movements of the passengers showed what a motley company we were. Every now and then a countryman would burst into tears; a French voice would be heard to say, 'O mon Dieu!—mon Dieu!' a couple more of the same nation were jabbering oaths and chattering incessantly; and a certain allusion to his own and everybody else's eyes, which came from a stalwart figure at the far corner, told me that there was certainly an ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... two of them, lads of seven and eight, practically naked, but tough as little bears, feeding upon wild berries. Their bodies were tanned brown by sun and wind, and streaked and splotched with the blue and red stain of berry juice. They were jabbering contentedly and both were as plump and happy in their foraging as a ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... "ready," and started by gunfire accordingly. A rare start they made of it. The great ambition of every man among them seemed to be to prevent the boats next in the line from starting at all. It was a general fouling match, and the jabbering was terrific. At last, the two outside boats, having the advantage of a clear berth on one side, got away, and made a pretty race of it, followed by such of the rest as could by degrees extricate ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... at least, are necessarily wet all day long. In many cases their bodies are thinly clad, and they must inevitably suffer in frosty mornings and evenings and on the raw, cold, rainy days that are frequent in the autumn months in this latitude; yet they go about their work singing, shouting, and jabbering as merrily as a party of comfortably clad school children at play. How any of them avoid colds, rheumatism, and a dozen other diseases is a mystery; and yet it is rarely that one of them is ill from the effects of this exposure. As ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887 • Various
... crowded just then. Groups of excited women stood jabbering before every doorway. It was the home-coming hour after the usual spectacle on the Place de la Rvolution. The men had paused at the various drinking booths, crowding the women out. It would be the turn of these Amazons next, at the brandy bars; for the moment they were left to gossip, ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... on to the front, and signalling to the flankers to continue the move. Ten seconds' study of the position in the long, wide, shallow depression before him had fathomed the scheme of the savage. The little knot of Indians, jabbering, yelping, prodding and circling about some unseen object on the turf, feigning ignorance of the soldiers' coming, was at the old-time trick to get the foremost troopers to charge and chase, to draw them on in all the dash and excitement of the moment, far ahead—three ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... discovered the menacing figure of the great cat. Immediately he ceased his belligerent activities against Tarzan and, jabbering and chattering to the ape-man, he tried to disengage himself from Tarzan's hold but in such a way that indicated that as far as he was concerned their battle was over. Appreciating the danger to his unconscious companion and being anxious to protect ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... his companion; "the insolence of these gypsies is no longer to be borne. When I am at Merida or Badajoz I go to the mercado, and there in a corner stand the accursed gypsies jabbering to each other in a speech which I understand not. 'Gypsy gentleman,' say I to one of them, 'what will you have for that donkey?' 'I will have ten dollars for it, Caballero nacional,' says the gypsy; 'it is the best donkey in ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... enough from these others, all right. Even from Mrs. Dwight, who is different herself....I'd rather you'd stayed discontented. The whole scheme's all wrong and you know it. You've suffered from it. You should be the last to tolerate it. When they're jabbering away about their ninny affairs they pay as little attention to you as they do to me. They forget our existence. We don't belong, as they say. There isn't, one of them except Mrs. Dwight that I wouldn't ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... you know anything, my dear. He will fly from you as a hare to cover. I want you to be a belle, and you must help me.' I naturally asked her what I was to talk about, and she promptly replied 'Nothing. Study the American girl, they have the most brilliant way of jabbering meaningless recitativos of any tribe on the face of the earth. Every sentence is an epigram with the point left out. They are like the effervescent part of a bottle of soda-water.' This was while we were still in Wales, and she sent for six books by two of those American novelists who are supposed ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... heads of the retreating Myalls (wild blacks), which completed their panic, and one of them, rushing recklessly forward, was captured by the troopers, and brought by them in triumph to the camp, amidst the yells and jabbering of the gins ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... astonished to see at intervals around the sky-line little groups of men busily at work. They appeared to be digging; he could not be sure. One does not readily associate Indians with spades. His guards pointed out the workers to one another, jabbering excitedly in the ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... three years before. Those are the Cimaroons, gentles, negro slaves who have fled from those devils incarnate, their Spanish masters, and live wild, like the beasts that perish; men of great stature, sirs, and fierce as wolves in the onslaught, but poor jabbering mazed fellows if they be but a bit dismayed: and have many Indian women with them, who take to these negroes a deal better than to their own kin, which breeds war enough, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... And, jabbering excitedly now, both at once, the two old people began pouring their tale into his ears; told their boy's name,—"He was a gorboral alretty,"—and they were justly proud, and Davies made them happy by noting the name and company in his ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... among them a Dutchman, who seemed to be of some authority, though he was not commander of either ship. He knew us by our countenances to be Englishmen, and jabbering to us in his own language, swore we should be tied back to back and thrown into the sea. I spoken Dutch tolerably well; I told him who we were, and begged him, in consideration of our being Christians and Protestants, of neighbouring countries in strict alliance, ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... priest jabbering about?" asked Captain Booden, impatiently; for he was in haste to "get his bearings" and be off. When Lanky replied, he burst out: "Tell him that Santa Ana is not President of Mexico any more than I am, and that he hasn't ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... legs—well, his legs in stockings. And here is the little picture of a raw mutton-chop, in which Such-a-one knocked a hole last summer with no worse a missile than a plum from the dessert. And under all these works of art so much eating goes forward, so much drinking, so much jabbering in French and English, that it would do your heart good merely to peep and listen at the door. One man is telling how they all went last year to the fete at Fleury, and another how well so-and-so would sing of an evening: and here are a ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Excitedly jabbering in his intense emotion the lookout frantically pointed in the direction of the sinking ship. Without waiting for orders he came sliding down the halliards. As he landed on deck he turned an ashen face toward the captain. ...
— Boy Scouts in the North Sea - The Mystery of a Sub • G. Harvey Ralphson
... soldiers leaning on their muskets. These were the most important personages, but they were backed by the whole population of the town, amounting to about three hundred men, women, and children, all talking, jabbering, and screaming. Add to them the captain of the privateer, so important that he could not attend to even the mayor or the sergeant; and the privateer's men, dressed in every fashion, armed to the teeth, all explaining, or pushing away, or running here and there obeying orders; then the wounded ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... wait uncomplainingly for their pay until the middle of next year. About five o'clock I arrive at Hadji Agha, a large village forty miles from Tabreez; here, as soon as it is ascertained that I intend remaining over night, I am actually beset by rival khan-jees, who commence jabbering and gesticulating about the merits of their respective establishments, like hotel-runners in the United States; of course they are several degrees less rude and boisterous, and more considerate of one's personal inclinations than their prototypes in America, but they ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... skin showing through the clotted tufts of coarse, clay-colored hair which unevenly clothed their bodies, came plunging irregularly through the brook and gathered in confused masses along the foot of the slope, jabbering shrilly to each other and making insolent gestures toward the silent company at the top. The hair of their heads was stringy, coarse and scant, and of an inky blackness, in contrast to the abundant ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... men were ironing, ironing away on boards covered with sheets, and jabbering in a strange language. And they wore clothes that were as strange as the words they spoke—clothes that looked like pajamas with dark blue tops and light blue trousers. And each of the little men had a yellow face, slant ...
— Half-Past Seven Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... jabbering by the French interpreters we finally got started, and we soon left L——h far behind. I got out my poisoned (?) wine, and not wanting to take any risks myself I politely let Baldy have the first drink. I waited a few minutes and he still looked well, so we finished ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien
... Manila. Far over near the Escolta somebody shot at a vagrant dog lapping water from a little pool under one of the many hydrants. The soldier police essayed an arrest; the culprit broke and ran; the guard fired; a lot of coolies, taking alarm, fled jabbering to the river side. The natives, looking for trouble any moment, rushed to their homes. Some soldiers on pass and unarmed tumbled over the tables and chairs in the Alhambra in their dash for the open street. A stampeded sergeant told a bugler to sound to ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... Vanity Fair. There are the jugglers and the apes, the shops and the puppet-shows. There are Italian Row, and French Row, and Spanish Row, and British Row, with their crowds of buyers, sellers, and loungers, jabbering all ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... That missionary! It was in the afternoon, and I was sitting in state in my outer temple place, sitting on that old black stone of theirs when he came. I heard a row outside and jabbering, and then his voice speaking to an interpreter. 'They worship stocks and stones,' he said, and I knew what was up, in a flash. I had one of my windows out for comfort, and I sang out straight away on the spur of the moment. 'Stocks and stones!' I says. 'You come inside,' ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... hold, the hatches of which were open, and in which lanterns in every direction partially dispelled the gloom, and offered to his view a confused outline of bales and packages. Carpenters sawing deals, sailmakers roping the foot of an old mainsail, servants passing to and fro with dishes, Lascars jabbering in their own language, British seamen d——-g their eyes, as usual, in plain English, gave an idea of confusion and want of method to Newton Forster, which, in a short time, he acknowledged himself to have been premature in having conceived. Where you have to provide for such a number, to ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... but my legs seemed to be weighted, while around me floated thousands of hideous jabbering things which I thought tried to lure me on to ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... going on on board one of the transport boats called the Goodwill, which was almost in the van of the fleet, I suppose because the old sailing master, Killick, was so good a seaman; and so they had sent a pilot out to her, and he was jabbering ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... sake," growled Edgarton from his table, "how do you people think I'm going to do any work with all this jabbering going on!" ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... upon his head. He began to talk to the physician in German. I didn't understand him until he began to swear,—then it was wonderful! In the end he brushed them all away and, taking me by the arm, led me right into the inner room. For a long time he went on jabbering away half to himself, and I was wondering how on earth to bring the conversation round to the things I wanted to know about. Then, all of a sudden, he turned to me and seemed to remember who I was and what I wanted. 'Ah!' he said, 'you are Dorward, the American journalist. I remember ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... at him in amazement, others passed on without taking any notice of him, thinking that he was drunk; one even said when he got home that he had met a Frenchman on the way who was jabbering away at something he did not understand. Nejdanov had common sense enough to know that what he was doing was unutterably stupid and absurd had he not got himself up to such a pitch of excitement that he was no longer able to discriminate between sense and nonsense. ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... could hear the flocks of birds flying in the air and feel the stamping feet below as herds of animals ran in every direction. We heard the vibrant jabber of monkeys from tree-tops, and each time a new tree fell there was more jabbering and more leaping away from tree ...
— Kari the Elephant • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... and picked 'em up, letting their boat tow behind the schooner. There was five of 'em, a ragged and dirty lot of Malays and half-breeds. When they first climbed aboard, I see 'em looking the schooner over mighty sharp, and in a minute they was all jabbering ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Quod faustum sit:—or indeed I do not much care whether it be faustum or not; I grow to care about an astonishingly small number of things as times turn with me! Man, all men seem radically dumb; jabbering mere jargons and noises from the teeth outwards; the inner meaning of them,— of them and of me, poor devils,—remaining shut, buried forever. If almost all Books were burnt (my own laid next the coal), I sometimes in my spleen feel as if it really would be better with us! Certainly ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... They ceased jabbering and straightened to attention, awaiting my reply. But I forgot them all, and thought only of the captain, and of the trouble I had brought him. He began to show some consternation as I went up ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... seemed to have arrived at some determination, for their consultation was at an end—an old Indian who, from his dignified bearing and authoritative manner appeared to be their chief, made a sign with his hand, and spoke a few words in a loud tone. The incessant jabbering which they had kept up from the moment they halted instantly ceased, and one after another a number of young warriors, perhaps twenty, rode out in single file upon the prairie. After gaining a distance ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... which it certainly did. Yan practised hard at it and within a few weeks was an adept. He could handle the uncouth sentences better than his teacher, and he was singularly successful in throwing in accents and guttural tones that imparted a delightfully savage flavour, and he rejoiced in jabbering away to the new boy in the presence of others so that he might bask in the mystified look on the faces of those who were not skilled in the tongue ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... a comforting state of affairs, and Guy's spirits were at their lowest ebb as the steamer finally faded into the horizon. He put up the glasses and strode forward. From the lower deck came a confused babel of sounds, a harsh jabbering of foreign languages that ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon
... me your tongue, Colonel L'Isle," said Mrs. Shortridge. "Here Dona Carlotta Sequiera has been jabbering at me in what I now find out to be French, but I am ashamed to say, I do not know thirty ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... flaunted the dreadful emblems of idolatry, so far as their bearers were able still to raise them. Drunken women, ragged boys mounted on men's shoulders, ruffians and bullies, savage-looking Getulians, half-human monsters from the Atlas, monkeys and curs jabbering and howling, mummers, bacchanals, satyrs, and gesticulators, formed the staple of the procession. Midway between the hill which he was descending and the city lay the ravine, of which we have several times spoken, widening out into the plain ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... collected round their captives, regarding them with savage looks, the chief and some of his principal men assembled to hold a consultation as to what was to be done with them. An immense amount of jabbering took place, and Desmond, who was closest to the circle of councillors, looked anxiously at their countenances to ascertain, if possible, what decision was likely to be arrived at. He gazed in vain—nothing could he learn from the ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... you jabbering apes!" he exclaimed, in great wrath. "Give me a lantern, or a candle, and let me begone. The boys are all waiting for me ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty
... from Pamela's grimy street in the November fog, felt that London was terrible. An ugly clamour of strident noises and hard, shrill voices, jabbering of vulgar, trivial things. A wry, desperate, cursed world, as she had called it, a pot seething with bitterness and all dreadfulness, with its Rosalinds floating on the ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... think, but if you ask me how I dare say so, or why it is so, I am the most helpless of men,' The year before, his oration on the American Scholar had filled Carlyle with delight. It was the first clear utterance, after long decades of years, in which he had 'heard nothing but infinite jangling and jabbering, and inarticulate twittering and screeching.' Then Carlyle enjoined on his American friend for rule of life, 'Give no ear to any man's praise or censure; know that that is not it; on the one side is as Heaven, if you have strength ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... I had to. Except for the excuse that she needed Vahna's help around the house (which she didn't at all), old Paloma never said why she stuck up for the girl. Anyway, Vahna was a quiet thing, never in the way. And she never gadded. Just sat in- doors jabbering with Paloma and helping with the chores. But I wasn't long in getting on to that she was afraid of something. She would look up, that anxious it hurt, whenever anybody called, like some of the boys to have a gas or a game of pedro. I tried to worm it out of Paloma what was worrying ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... and then go to the window; she listened to the station bells, and to the jabbering of a few Jews who were boarding the train; she saw the red cap of her father, and the yellow striped cap of the telegrapher conversing through his window with some lady; she saw and heard all, but understood nothing, so ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... head to this warning, but rushed on, jabbering in Welsh to himself, and groaning, ay, and even sobbing now and then in ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... maliciously; "he's got something a whole lot better to attend to than just jabbering with his two chums over the lines ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... toward the village, where a jabbering mob of half-caste Japanese had suddenly appeared in the streets, hurrying toward the hut ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... mysterious, because it was so in a sense though it contained a naked fact, about as naked and ugly as a fact can well be. The whole waterside talked of nothing else. First thing in the morning as I was dressing in my state-room, I would hear through the bulkhead my Parsee Dubash jabbering about the Patna with the steward, while he drank a cup of tea, by favour, in the pantry. No sooner on shore I would meet some acquaintance, and the first remark would be, "Did you ever hear of anything to beat this?" and according ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... her after all! There lay a heavy, clumsy, rusty, ugly flatboat with a great square box in the centre, while great cannon put their noses out at the sides, and in front. The decks were crowded with men, rough and dirty, jabbering and hastily eating their breakfast. That was the great Arkansas! God bless and protect her, and ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... strings of blue, red, and green glass beads. They had two rough pots, made of bark, in the boat, which they also sold, after which they reluctantly departed, quite naked but very happy, shouting and jabbering away in the most inarticulate language imaginable. It was with great difficulty we could make them let go the rope, when we went ahead, and I was quite afraid they would be upset. They were all fat and healthy-looking, and, though ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... "Hold your jabbering tongue," said the miller, turning round upon her fiercely. "Who asked you? I will see to it myself, ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... Dalziels, but waited for them outside the door of their suite, almost dazedly watching people—men and women, half clothed—dashing out of their rooms toward the stairs and elevators. Some of these were jabbering to each other, but nobody seemed to know what had happened. They were merely wondering, as we were; and in the big hall, where some of the lights had been switched on, we could glean no further details. Several of the hotel employes had arrived on the scene, more or less dressed, and they did ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... to get a wink of sleep. You know I can't sleep o' nights. And you come jabbering near the door here like a blooming lot of old women.... You think yourselves good shipmates. Do you?... Much you ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... the dark cave cautiously at first. But as soon as they saw Long Arrow and the other Indians with us, they came rushing in, laughing, clapping their hands with joy and jabbering away ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... crossing that thousand yards of open ground would have meant a terrible loss, and the General did not attempt it. As it was, there was a great deal of banging and blazing, almost like the old Modder days, for a time; guns hard at it, and Mausers and Lee-Metfords jabbering away at a great rate, though, as both sides were under cover, the loss was not heavy. The firing went on till pitch dark, and we camped close under the ridge we had won. Next morning we found the ridge vacant, ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... gun and shot. There was an awful scolding, jabbering, and flapping of wings, but no deaths—fortunately for Ham. The dog came to life in less than a second, and expressed himself freely on the imprudence of such an interruption to his mid-day nap. Likewise, the spring-house door suddenly opened and out popped a funny, ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley
... following the example of the first, several other tourists set up a clamour for the same picture, and the scene became one of great excitement. The post-card venders put their heads together, and still jabbering rapidly, produced all sorts of portraits which they endeavoured to foist upon the buyers as portraits of the Grand Prince. But the tourists were shrewd, and they knew what they wanted, though they had no idea why they ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... my rifle-shot had been a signal, the oarsmen of all three of the boats instantly ceased rowing, and a tremendous jabbering arose among them, which the leader silenced by raising his hand, at the same time shouting what I took to be a sharp command. The oarsmen dipped their starboard oars, sweeping the three boats broadside-on to the beach, and the next moment I was saluted ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... went to a place where we heard a terrible noise, a medley of striking, jabbering, crying and laughing, shouting and singing. "Here's Bedlam, doubtless," said I. By the time we entered the den the brawling had ceased. Of the company, one was on the ground insensible; another was in a yet more deplorable ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... Pedolsky opened the pouch on his belt and took out the false palate and tongue-clicker without which no Terran could do more than mouth a crude and barely comprehensible pidgin-Ullran. Stuffing the gadget into his mouth, he turned and began jabbering orders. ...
— Ullr Uprising • Henry Beam Piper
... aye victorious ower the French in battle?"—"Not a bit," said the other old lady, "dinna ye ken the Breetish aye say their prayers before ga'in into battle?" The other replied, "But canna the French say their prayers as weel?" The reply was most characteristic, "Hoot! jabbering ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... her. The Italian ship had a crew of thirty men, nearly three times as many as the Alert, which was afterwards on the coast, and was of the same size; yet the Alert would get under way and come-to in half the time, and get two anchors, while they were all talking at once,— jabbering like a parcel of "Yahoos,'' and running about decks to ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... an accomplishment which seems hastening to join the lost arts. The parties which modern fashion gathers, are not so much groups of friends, drawn together for rational and affectionate communion, as they are jabbering herds, among whom all individuality and docile earnestness are lost in the general buzz and ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... which his discovery had evoked, faded, giving way to one of half-interested curiosity, as he saw that the potential enemies—more or less redoubtable assailants—were merely a few small boys, wandering along the reed-fringed bank, jabbering light-heartedly as they strolled. ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... time that this was taking place we were jabbering, each in his own tongue, neither we nor they understanding much that the other said. I did make out from them that we were the first white men that had ever visited them in their hunting grounds and that they ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... anybody's friend you like," he said, brutally, "so long as you don't come jabbering nonsense here. I don't know you, and I ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... with lights. Cafes, saloons, music halls, catch-penny places—in fact, every device known to separate sailors from their wages was in operation. The sidewalks were crowded with men, jabbering madly in the different dialects of their home provinces (for many come here from ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... he contemplated building several more rooms, a number of their grotesque little friends came shrieking and scolding through the trees from the direction of the ridge. Ever as they fled they cast fearful glances back of them, and finally they stopped near Clayton jabbering excitedly to him as though to warn him ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... no sooner would he appear than all work would be instantly suspended; down would go their baskets and loads of wood, their hammers and implements of all kinds, and they would stare and point at him, all jabbering together, so that the noise was as if a thousand cockatoos and parrots and paroquets were all screaming at once. What it was all about he could not tell, as he could not make out what they said; he could only see, and plainly ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.
... the girls, beckoning and gesticulating, laid hold of my arm, my coat, my hand, some pulling, some pushing me along, all jabbering and crying together, and repeating more and more urgently the only words that I could make ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... confab; dialogue, interlocution; soliloquy, monologue; palaver, buncombe, blarney, blandishment, flattery, flummery; chaff, banter, raillery, persiflage, badinage, asteistn; chatter, babble, chit chat, gibberish, jargon, twaddle, fustian, moonshine, hanky-panky, jabbering, rhapsody, rant, grandiloquence; ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... the new-comers, who drew near the counter, after depositing their long basket close to the door. There was a sarcastic and malicious mocking way about them that struck him from the first. But while they kept up their jabbering with Pere Alexis he filled his pipe and proceeded to light it. Just then the door was pushed open again and three men entered, simply dressed, like respectable small merchants. They also acted curiously and looked all around the ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... the receiver to his chum, and the latter listened intently. For some moments he heard nothing save the jabbering jargon of German troopers apparently interested in a card game. He was about to take the receiver from his ear, however, when ...
— The Boy Allies with Haig in Flanders • Clair W. Hayes
... lessons also to be gathered from nicknames, from provincialisms, from the slang of great cities, from the argot of Paris (that language of suffering and crime, so pathetically described by Victor Hugo), from the imperfect articulation of the deaf and dumb, from the jabbering of animals, from the analysis of sounds in relation to the organs of speech. The phonograph affords a visible evidence of the nature and divisions of sound; we may be truly said to know what we can manufacture. Artificial languages, such as that ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... mercilessly lifted us and flung us down like a monkey seeking to crack a cocoanut shell. Williams joined us now, and Willie and John, pale as Jean Lafitte, came up from the forecastle, all shouting and jabbering. I ran aft as soon as might be, and only pulled up at the cabin door to summon such air of calm as I might. I rapped, but followed in, not waiting. Helena met me, pale, her eyes wide, her hair disheveled, but none the less mistress ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... back into the cabin, to hold a council, apparently, from the way the jabbering broke forth. The Reindeer was very deep in the water, and her movements had grown quite loggy. In a rough sea she would have inevitably swamped; but the wind, when it did blow, was off the land, and scarcely a ripple disturbed the surface ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London
... abandoned argument, realising that further resistance were futile. And in a twinkling his dignity, his Urdu and his cloak of mystery, were discarded, and he was merely an over-educated and over-fed Bengali, jabbering babu-English. ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... the same time I vigorously swung my hips and freed myself from the man below. The detective struck the opposite wall of the compartment and bounced off toward the doorway, where he and the conductors stood jabbering and waving their arms and ever getting more and more ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... about noon, and this important station, where they had to change trains, had been the first dreaded anticipation of the journey. It certainly was a busy place—full of jabbering Mexicans, stalking, red-faced, wicked-looking cowboys, lolling Indians. In the confusion Helen would have been hard put to it to preserve calmness, with Bo to watch, and all that baggage to carry, and the other ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... was ever stolen, though some of our supplies must have been attractive to many of the poverty stricken men who crowded about us. On one occasion, an inn-employee, who was sent to exchange a bank-note for cash, did not return. There was much excited jabbering, but Mr. Laughlin firmly though kindly held the innkeeper responsible and that worthy admitted that he knew who had taken the money and refunded it. So all was peace. The innkeeper was probably in collusion with the thief. This was our only trouble ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... showing that the rebels were camped by a little brook which ran through the valley. As he slowly advanced, the light became brighter, until presently a blazing camp-fire burst upon his eyes. Around this the slashers were ringed, jabbering and quarrelling in an excited manner. What they were saying Dane could not tell, but as he crept nearer, moving from tree to tree, he saw a human body lying in the snow a short distance from the fire. That it was one of the ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody |
