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More "Patter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... allies, would be surer and less expensive than an open assault. From their distant hilltops they continued to plague the town, while garrison and citizens sat grimly patient, and learned to endure if not to enjoy the crash of the 96-pound shells, and the patter of shrapnel upon their corrugated-iron roofs. The supplies were adequate, and the besieged were fortunate in the presence of a first-class organiser, Colonel Ward of Islington fame, who with the assistance of Colonel Stoneman systematised the collection and issue of all the food, ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... music written by others, and he would still be an object of delight and amazement on account of his matchless power in improvisation. Listen to his own "Rain Storm," and you shall hear, first, the thunder's reverberating peal, and anon the gentle patter of the rain-drops on the roof: soon they fall thick and fast, coming with a rushing sound. Again is heard the thunder's awful roar, while the angry winds mingle in the tempestuous fray,—all causing you to feel that a veritable ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... and kissed Christine's hand, very solemnly and tenderly, as some battered, comical Don Quixote might have done before setting out on a last fantastic quest. And presently Robert heard him patter down the narrow stairs and over the cobbles to the ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... mixture of gin and fog in his throat rendered him more hideously hoarse than usual. "Not make up a prayer! And you a regular dab at all that game! Why, I've seen the women snivellin' like babies when you've been ladlin' it out. Heavens, what a chap you would be on the patter! How you ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... the outer room of the dwelling heard the voice—and more than the child voice, for on the breath of the wind across the desert the good rain came walking in beauty to the fields, and the glad laughter of the people went up from the mesa, and there was much patter of bare feet on the wet stone floor of the heights—and glad calls of joy that the desert ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... and so on—quick-poured showman's patter, sauced in the Bhil hunting-proverbs and tales of their own brand of coarse humour till the lancets were blunted and ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... Patter, patter, patter, something was coming. Jack awoke with a start of expectation. There was no moon tonight, but he had left a candle burning in a distant corner. It was all he could do to keep back a chuckle when he saw a big gray rat dart across the floor with a good sized ...
— Little Tales of The Desert • Ethel Twycross Foster
... was another wail; for next to ducks Dotty loved chickens. But lo! before her tears had rolled down to meet her dimples, the patter of hail was over. ...
— Dotty Dimple at Her Grandmother's • Sophie May
... the gate after him and ascended the steps. It was not until he had crossed the wide hall and opened the door of his study that he heard the patter of bare feet, and turned to find that the ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... patter of feet, and Bock, growling, ran down the aisle. In the same instant, Aubrey, obeying some unexplained impulse, gave Roger a violent push back into the Fiction alcove, seized Titania roughly in his arms, and ran with her toward ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... the movement,) did indeed permeate, in a manner, all classes. But it was to the haut monde that its primary appeal was made. The sacred emblems of Chelsea were sold in the fashionable toy-shops, its reverently chanted creeds became the patter of the boudoirs. The old Grosvenor Gallery, that stronghold of the few, was verily invaded. Never was such a fusion of delightful folk as at its Private Views. There was Robert Browning, the philosopher, ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... new responsibilities, and my new clothes I felt as if I had somehow been "done over" too. Yet it was surprising how quickly I became used to the patter of my long petticoats around my feet as I walked, the weight of all my hair upon my head, and my stately pouring of the tea at the foot of the dinner-table. Father's friends were always coming in and out, and staying to luncheon or dinner, and with their high silk hats, their elegant ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... know How the bitter wind doth blow And the winter's snow and rain Patter on the window pane; But they cannot come in here To ...
— Aunt Kitty's Stories • Various
... if I patter platitudes it is to conceal a sense of gratification." Eve arched her eyebrows. "I mean, you have shown me that I share at least one quality with you: instinctive resentment of the voice ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... sunshade—or umbrella—the very next time it rained. But when he agreed to that, Grandfather hadn't the slightest idea there was a shower coming. Mr. Meadow Mouse, however, had watched the dark clouds gathering in the sky. But he had said nothing of what he saw. And when the rain-drops began to patter on top of Grandfather Mole's sunshade Mr. Meadow Mouse cried in a brisk voice: "I'll thank you, sir, for the ...
— The Tale of Grandfather Mole • Arthur Scott Bailey
... of Deerslayer was thrown around her waist, and she was dragged swiftly within the protection of the cabin. This retreat was not effected too soon. Scarcely were the two in safety, when the forest was filled with yells, and bullets began to patter ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... mouth, while the dank earth, with its graveyard smell, seemed to draw me down into itself, as it drags a rotting leaf. I was buried before death, as it were, even if the wolves found me not and gave me other sepulture; and now and again I heard their long hunting cry, and at every patter of a beast's foot, or shivering of the branches, I thought my hour was come—and I unconfessed! The road was still as death, no man passing by it. This night to me was like the night of a man laid living in the tomb. By no twisting and turning could ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... the mountain side hid in a grassy nook Where door and windows open wide that friendly stars may look. The rabbit shy can patter in, the winds may enter free, Who throng around the mountain throne ...
— The Nuts of Knowledge - Lyrical Poems New and Old • George William Russell
... spell. They trembled. Christophe leaped to his feet and crossed the fence again. Sabine picked up the shells in her lap and went in. In the yard he turned. She was at her door. They looked at each other. Drops of rain were beginning to patter on the leaves of the trees.... She closed her door. Frau Vogel and Rosa came in.... He ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... mass, followed quickly by another and another, till many hundreds of torches were aflame, sputtering, smoking and sending up tongues of flame into the black air. Again a word of command, and the even tramp of footsteps began to be heard, a mere patter as of big raindrops upon stones at first, but swelling gradually, and increasing, till the sound roused great echoes from the glowing buildings, while the blazing pitch flared up, brighter and brighter, into a broad sea of flame that ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... save for the patter of the drops from the paddles as the light cedar canoe shot around ...
— The Girls of Central High on Lake Luna - or, The Crew That Won • Gertrude W. Morrison
... despondency he committed suicide. The sons and daughters who died, with the exception of two or three, were taken away in childhood. So the large mansion, with its richly-furnished rooms, is shut up from the sunlight and rarely echoes to the patter of childish feet. The mistress lives in the back part, but exercises a care over the whole house, which is kept in a state of perfect order and neatness. Not a speck of dirt is to be seen on the painted wood-work or ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... vote, she should have that opportunity just as if one woman desires a college education, she should not be held back because of the indifferent careless ones who do not desire it. Why should the mentally inert, careless, uninterested woman, who cares nothing for humanity but is contented to patter along her own little narrow way, set the pace for the others of us? Voting will not be compulsory; the shrinking violets will not be torn from their shady fence-corner; the "home bodies" will be able to still sit in rapt contemplation of their ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... of us went to see "Patter versus Clatter," after all, having all some previous engagement, so that, though it was literally given for our special amusement, we were ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... denomination; I don't know whether the omission was purposed. The man's face grew convulsed with agony, his eyeballs stared out very white and vivid, as he struggled with the two men. He began to curse us epileptically for compassing his damnation. A hoarse patter of Spanish imprecations came from the crowd immediately round me. The man with the voice like Ramon's groaned in a lamentable way; someone else said, "What infamy ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... lute that we call a bluebird, You blend in a silver strain The sound of the laughing waters, The patter of spring's sweet rain, The voice of the wind, the sunshine, And fragrance of blossoming things. Ah! you are a poem of April, ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... flock of sheep going past. I suppose they were going by forced marches to the fair over at Hylesbury: It was in the small hours: and a few of them lifted up their voices and complained of this robbery of night and sleep in the night. They were so tired, so tired, they said: and so did the muffawully patter of their poor feet. The lambs said most; and the sheep agreed ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... while all went well with me, and having a good start I began to hope that I should outrun these beasts, as I had the shepherd's dog and the retriever. But I did not know Jack and Jill. Just as I reached the borders of the moor I heard the patter of their feet behind me, and looking back saw them coming up, about as far away as I was from Tom when he ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... to lessen, its downfall thinning into a soft patter among the leaves. The young man took off his hat and let the damp air play over his hair. It was thick hair, black and straight, already longer than city fashions dictated, and a first stubble of black beard was hiding the ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... blue jays. Soon they too discovered me. The male birds were superb, dignified, beautiful. The color was light blue all over with dark blue head and tufted crest. By and bye they ceased to scold me, and I was left to listen to the wind, and to the tiny patter of dropping seeds and needles from the spruces. What cool, sweet, fresh smell this woody, leafy, earthy, dry, grassy, odorous fragrance, dominated by scent of pine! How lonesome and restful! I felt a sense of deep peace and rest. This golden-green forest, ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... front of the Nordenfeldt when a sentry's keener ears caught a peculiar whispering rustle. As Schultz turned his head to listen, the whisper grew in volume to the sound of a hail-storm—the patter of bare feet on sand. Faint light on spears rippled round the base of the hills. Schultz sprang inside the barrier barking at his men to open fire. He deflected the muzzle of his gun and began pumping nickel into the advancing ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... about Patter Rollers, but I don't know nothing about them. But they are dead and gone. I have heard of the Ku Klux but I don't know nothing about it. I don't know what I used to know. No sir, I am out ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... driven or falling through the smoke. Some of these last came quite clear of the ruins, ay, into the French and Prussian lines, that even the veterans put their hands to their eyes. Raynal felt something patter on him from the ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... audible but the gasping breath of all four, the patter of the rain; the old woman emitted frequent rattles from her throat, and her eyes ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... at the patter of feet, but his paws went to the muzzle, and as he lay with his head against the man's feet, the pitifully pleading eyes and tugging paws of the dog spoke as plainly ...
— Prince Jan, St. Bernard • Forrestine C. Hooker
... rap! Rap, rap, rap! Rap, rap, rap! Lov'd ones are rapping to-night; Heaven seems not far away; Death's sweeping river is bright, Soft is the sheen of its spray. Magical changes those rappings have wrought, Sweet hope to the hopeless their patter has brought, And death is bridg'd over with amaranth flow'rs: Blest Spirits come back from their bright homes ...
— Hydesville - The Story of the Rochester Knockings, Which Proclaimed the Advent of Modern Spiritualism • Thomas Olman Todd
... that kook antique patter backstage, until I sometimes wonder whether I'm in Central Park, New York City, nineteen hundred and three quarters, or somewhere in Southwark, Merry England, fifteen hundred and same. The truth is that although he loves every last fat part in Shakespeare and will play ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... The gulls wheel round still, but in more rapid and uncertain flight, accompanying their motions with shrill and mournful cries, like the dismal wailings of the spirit of the storm. A few drops of rain patter on the boats, or plump like stones into the water, and the distant melancholy growl of thunder swells upon the coming gale. Uneasy glances are cast, ever and anon, towards clouds and shore, and grumbling sentences are uttered by the men. Suddenly a hissing sound ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... carom, clip y; fan, fan out; jab, plug [Slang]. strike, knock, hit, tap, rap, slap, flap, dab, pat, thump, beat, blow, bang, slam, dash; punch, thwack, whack; hit hard, strike hard; swap, batter, dowse^, baste; pelt, patter, buffet, belabor; fetch one a blow; poke at, pink, lunge, yerk^; kick, calcitrate^; butt, strike at &c (attack) 716; whip &c (punish) 972. come into a collision, enter into collision; collide; sideswipe; foul; fall foul of, run foul of; telescope. throw &c (propel) 284. Adj. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... us something about the individual mind. They have their own patter, of complexes and primal instincts, of the unconscious, which is a sort of bonded warehouse from which we clandestinely withdraw our stored thoughts and impressions. They lay to this unconscious mind of ours all phenomena that cannot otherwise be labeled, and ascribe such ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... free from provincialisms and bad grammar. He informs us that we must have been set to the northward in the night by a current, and goes on to acquaint us with so many other things, with such a fidgety sparkling of the eyes and such a ceaseless patter of the tongue, that he fairly drives me to the fore part of the vessel out of his way. Smoothly we glide along, parallel with the jagged rocks and the swirling eddies, till we come to a channel between two islands; ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... sun rose, the shipwrecked party left the shore, and entered the forest. A purple light filled its vast aisles. Far overhead bits of azure gleamed through the rifts in the foliage, but around them was the constant patter and splash of rain drops, falling slow and heavy from every leaf and twig. There was a dank, rich smell of wet mould and rotting leaves, and rain-bruised fern. The denizens of the woodland were all astir. Birds sang, ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... to the young prowlers a few minutes later. They walked around the building two or three times to make sure that there was no one near it, and then Bob cautiously mounted the steps and tried the door. The patter of little feet and the shrill notes of alarm that sounded from the inside told him that he had aroused ...
— The Boy Trapper • Harry Castlemon
... from the time of their sanctification, they were nameless, and no more to be named but by hallowed names; so then he appealed to me.' 'Dinias?' I put in; 'Who is Dinias?' 'Oh, he's a dance-for-your-supper carry-your-luggage rattle- your-patter gaming-house sort of man; eschews the barber, and takes care of his poor chest and toes.' 'Well,' said I, 'paid he the penalty in some wise, or showed a clean pair of heels?' 'Our delicate goer is now fast bound. The governor, regardless of his retiring disposition, slipped ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... through the open windows, and there was in it the scent of change, that wet scent which visits even the hearts of towns and inspires the watcher of their myriad activities with thought of the restless Force that forever cries: "On, on!" But gradually the steady patter of the horse's hoofs, the rattling of the windows, the slow thudding of the wheels, pressed on us so drowsily that when, at last, we reached home we were more than half asleep. The fare was two shillings, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... with a gasp. There was a quick patter of light feet down the stairs, the last two cleared with a jump, a swish of silken skirts, a little gush of perfume, and then, bright as a flash of light, blue-eyed Mollie stood before him. She held his card in her fingers, and all the yellow hair fell over her ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... sheds reeking of sweat and excrement under the tall black-smoking chimneys,—chasing them in very truth, because when we came prying into the mills after the hour when child-labor should cease, there would be a shrill whistle, a patter of feet and a cuffing and hiding of the naked little creatures we were trying to rescue. They would be hidden under rugs, in boxes, in the most impossible places, and we dragged them out scared and lying. Many of them were perhaps seven years old at most; and the adults—men and women of fourteen ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... turned up my face towards it. At that instant I heard a short warning cry from somewhere by the helm; not a call of alarm, but just such a gasp as a man will utter when slapped on the shoulder at unawares from behind; then a patter of naked feet rushing aft; then a score of outcries blending into one wild yell as the whole boatload of Moors leapt and swarmed over ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... still did not believe that either of the boys had been up at that unearthly hour using the grindstone, but she wished to prove to Elsie that it was all imagination. As she passed the head of the stairs she suddenly stopped. Somewhere, down below, she distinctly heard a soft noise like the patter of slippered feet. Ida leant over ...
— Under Padlock and Seal • Charles Harold Avery
... fair, CHARLIE, not by a jugful, but anger's all fiddle-de-dee; They may copy my style till all's blue, but they won't discombobulate me. Names and metres is anyone's props; but of one thing they don't get the 'ang; They ain't fly to good patter, old pal, they ain't copped the straight ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... the shingle and hold the boat; I have just got the antigrav turned off, otherwise I think it would have been carried away. There are two or three more big waves and a patter of spray; then it ...
— The Lost Kafoozalum • Pauline Ashwell
... was the brown fort. Its big gates swung together as we dashed through the narrowed opening. Then, as he lifted us off, I knew that the man who had saved us was Tom himself. The gates closed with a bang, and a patter of bullets ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... garden, How I rake it over, Then I sow the little brown seeds, And with soft earth cover. Now the raindrops patter On the earth so gayly; See the big round sun smile On my garden daily. The little plant is waking; Down the roots grow creeping; Up now come the leaflets Through the brown earth peeping. Soon the buds will laugh up Toward the springtime showers; Soon my buds ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... impossible to connect death-dealing bombs with those floating silver shapes. Shrapnel burst all round them, and then the Zepps. seemed suddenly to become alive, and they answered with machine guns, and the patter of bullets and shrapnel could be heard all around. The Commander of one of the Zepps. apparently fearing his airship might be hit, must have given the order for all the bombs to be heaved overboard at once, for suddenly ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... patrioto. Patriotism patriotismo. Patrol patrolo. Patrol (night) nokta patrolo. Patron proktektanto, patrono. Patronage protekto. Patronize favori, protekti. Patron saint patrona sanktulo. Patrons (clients) klientaro. Patter guteti. Pattern patrono, modelo. Paunch ventro. Pauper malricxulo, almozulo. Pause pauxzo. Pave pavimi. Pavement pavimo. Paving-stone pavimero. Pavilion tendo, paviliono. Paw piedego. Pawn (chess) soldato. Pawn ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... a mild snoring from Dinshaw's room and despite the chafing of the schooner's gear and the patter of the water under her counter, she seemed deathly quiet after the interminable groaning of her timbers during the ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... each other behind their respective rulers like Bismarck and Gortschakoff did. Yen-tsz's interview with Shuh Hiang, when the pair discussed the vices of their respective dukes, is almost as amusing as a "patter" scene in the pantomime, a sort of by-play which takes place whilst the curtain is down in preparation for the next formal act (see ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... was in danger of being sued for scandal. What more could we do? To dispel the drowsiness that was stealing over me, I got up, walked up and down the floor, and then drew up the blind, and gazed out into the deserted street. Not a footfall to be heard, neither man's nor beast's; nothing but patter, patter, patter. At length, after standing fully fifteen minutes—oh, joyful sound!—a coming footstep, firm and quick. My first thought was that those steps would stop at our door. But, directly after, I felt that very improbable, for who was there that would come such a night? Papa was ...
— Edna's Sacrifice and Other Stories - Edna's Sacrifice; Who Was the Thief?; The Ghost; The Two Brothers; and What He Left • Frances Henshaw Baden
... day a widening murmur grew out of the invisible, a swelling monotone through which, incessantly, near and distant, broken, cheery little flurries of bugle music, and far and farther still, where mists hung over a vast hollow in the hills, the dropping shots of the outposts thickened to a steady patter, running backward and forward, from east to west, as far as the ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... account to be disturbed that evening, . . no matter what visitors called for him, none were to be admitted. He had made up his mind to have a long and energetic practice, and he felt a secret satisfaction as he heard the steady patter of the rain outside, . . the very weather favored his desire for solitude,—no one was likely to venture forth on such ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... small night sounds for which long intimacy with Nature teaches a man to listen; the distant voice of running water; the teasing note of the breeze; the complaint of a balsam-laden bough; the restless stir of unseen wings; the patter of diminutive feet. A wooded point that formed the horn of a bay was etched in black on the silver lake; then suddenly the moon illumined the horizon and, rising over a stencilled crest of the Cascades, stretched her golden path to the shore below them. ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... man's utter weakness and helplessness. The foamy expanse gleamed whitely through the night,—awful with the terror of death,—and its deafening roar smote upon his ears, and in the slightest lull, the rain-drops fell with a soft, dull patter. Noll in it all?—in this fearful, yawning sea,—in this wild tumult of wind and rain,—in the vast waste of waves which the thick darkness shrouded, and where death was riding? "God help me!" he cried in sudden frenzy,—"God help me!" He looked up at the thick, black depths of sky ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... memory and hope and desire Till, rousing, I looked afresh on your face as you gazed— Behind you an old gnarled fruit-tree in one still fire Of innumerable flame in the sun of October blazed, Scarlet and gold that the first white frost would spill With eddying flicker and patter of dead leaves falling— looked on your face, as an outcast from Eden recalling A vision of Eve as she dallied bewildered ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... it rains; and we can't go fairy-hunting at all," said Daisy next morning, as the patter on the window-pane woke her up, and Aunt Wee came in to ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... life are blotted out by the lowering clouds, washed away by the falling water. And how the houseboat shrinks when it gets so wet! With decks unavailable, what a little thing the floating home suddenly becomes! Then there is the ceaseless patter overhead, and so close overhead that one almost feels ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... sound on the stairs behind him, and supposed some one was rushing to his assistance. There was a patter of feet, and then the smothering folds of a blanket were flung over his head, and he was dragged backward to the floor, his hold on Felipe ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... think o' that?" said he in English. "Carnehan can't talk their patter, so I've made him my servant. He makes a handsome servant. 'T isn't for nothing that I've been knocking about the country for fourteen years. Didn't I do that talk neat? We'll hitch on to a caravan at Peshawar till we ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... could happen. But the clouds which made the night so dark were giving forth low rumbling growls. At intervals a threatening gleam of light shot across them and a sudden swish of wind rushed through the trees in the garden. This happened several times, and then Marco began to hear the patter of raindrops. They were heavy and big drops, but few at first, and then there was a new and more powerful rush of wind, a jagged dart of light in the sky, and a tremendous crash. After that the clouds tore themselves ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the streets near the Swift house and shops could be heard the rattle of fire apparatus, the patter of running feet, and many shouts from ...
— Tom Swift among the Fire Fighters - or, Battling with Flames from the Air • Victor Appleton
... to pass. The outline of the window-frame became visible against a faint grey glimmer. The window was open, and a breath of the coming dawn wandered in with the fragrance of drenched roses. A soft rain was falling. The patter of it could ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... geese in his hand!" Or stately Ogier the Dane, recalled from Faery, asking his way to the land that once had need of him! Or even, on some white night, the Snow-Queen herself, with a chime of sleigh-bells and the patter of reindeers' feet, with sudden halt at the door flung wide, while aloft the Northern Lights went shaking attendant ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... Negro psychology, for his fear of the spirits of night was well known. Citizens of that time have told us many tales of the dread which the slave had of meeting these night raiders whom they termed "patter-rollers" and how they came to sing of them ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... they were ready to start the door bell rang. There was a sound of laughing voices and the patter of slippered feet on the stairs, and Mabel Ashe, accompanied by Frances Marlton, Constance Fuller, and two other juniors, appeared ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... felt inclined for sleep. Oh dear no! I just dragged the big easy-chair to the window, and sat there listening to the patter of summer ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... humid showers gather over all the starry spheres, And the melancholy darkness gently weeps in rainy tears, 'Tis a joy to press the pillow of a cottage chamber bed, And listen to the patter of ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... write with the ravenous little pens on the tissue-paper are seen prowling in the neighbourhood—shy of each other, their late partnership being dissolved. The Sol skilfully carries a vein of the prevailing interest through the Harmonic nights. Little Swills, in what are professionally known as "patter" allusions to the subject, is received with loud applause; and the same vocalist "gags" in the regular business like a man inspired. Even Miss M. Melvilleson, in the revived Caledonian melody of "We're a-Nodding," points the sentiment that "the ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... bitterness in their cup is the absence of children. No little feet have come to patter up and down the wide staircase of that roomy house in Russell-square, no little voices re-echo along the passages and in the lofty rooms. But Angela's heart is perhaps only the more ready to bestow its tenderness upon the many who come ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... I could answer, before I could think the thing out indeed, for all this breath from savage and mystical Africa blowing on me suddenly here in an Essex drawing-room, seemed to overwhelm me, the ineffable Harut proceeded in his English conjurer's patter: ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... hoarse roar Of the monster guns; And the sharp bark Of the lesser guns; The whine of the shells, The rifles' clatter Where the bullets patter, The rattle, rattle, rattle Of the mitrailleuse in battle, And the yells Of the men who charge through hells Where the poison gas descends, And the bursting shrapnel rends Limb from limb In the dim Chaos and clamor of the strife Where no man thinks of his life ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... flying, The change to the minor comes in like a groan. Without a cessation A chaste modulation Hastens adown to subdominant key, Where melody mellow-like Singing so 'cello-like Rises and falls in a wild ecstasy. Scarce is this finished When chords all diminished Break loose in a patter that comes down like rain, A pedal-point wonder Rivaling thunder. Now all is mad agitation again. Like laughter jolly Begins the finale; Again does the 'cello its tones seem to lend Diminuendo ad molto crescendo. Ah! Rubinstein only could make such ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... clubs when Tarzan's attention was directed elsewhere. He himself retrieved several of them which he hurled with such deadly effect as to dispose of two of his antagonists, but now he heard the approach of hurrying warriors, the patter of their bare feet upon the stone pavement and then the savage cries which were to bolster the courage of their fellows and fill ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... pondering and thinking,—for I didn't wait for the tea and cake that are supposed to be essential to all these gatherings,—I heard the patter of a light foot behind me, and in a minute Bittra was by ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... a skirt, I arsk, if I'm to do the patter?" He addressed himself in an audible aside to Mrs. Keyse. "You might as well 'ave stopped at 'ome with the nipper," he added, complainingly, "if I ain't to 'ave no better 'elp ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... nothing else to do, Raggedy Ann waited for Marcella to return. And as she watched the little ants eating cookie crumbs Marcella had thrown to them, she heard all of a sudden the patter of puppy feet behind her. It ...
— Raggedy Ann Stories • Johnny Gruelle
... glare of light, the baggy scarlet breeches and gray shirt making a flaring mark that no eye, called suddenly to see, could miss, that no rifle brought sliding through the loophole and searching for a target could fail to mark. The bullets began to patter about 'Enery Irving's feet, to whine and whimper and buzz about his ears. And 'Enery—this was where the trench, despite themselves, laughed—'Enery placed his hand on his heart, swept off his cap in a magnificent arm's ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... gone," I whispered. In the failing light a door creaked cautiously. I heard the rustle of a frock and the patter of feet— quick feet through ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... could hear grunting noises and the snapping of twigs. It was a drove of lean grisly wild swine. She turned about her, for a boar is an ill fellow to pass too closely, on account of the sideway slash of his tusks, and she made off slantingly through the trees. But the patter came nearer, they were not feeding as they wandered, but going fast—or else they would not overtake her—and she caught the limb of a tree, swung on to it, and ran up the stem with something of ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... chamber but one, dearie. And a feather bed!" All this as she bustled to and fro, and very quietly despite her size, while I sat gazing into the fire and hearkening to the patter of rain on the windows and the wind that howled dismally without and rumbled in the wide chimney so that I must needs wonder how it fared with the travellers and if I should ever see either ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... gushed out of the quaint dragons' mouths, ranged along the parapet of the Abbey roof; it dripped from every stone coping and abutment; from window-ledge and porch, from gable-end and sheltering ivy. The rain was everywhere, and the incessant pitter-patter of the drops beating against the windows of the Abbey made a dismal sound, scarcely less unpleasant to hear than the perpetual lamentation of the winds, which to-day had the sound of human voices; now moaning drearily, with ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... the voice of love. Men drawing near to an end of life's adventurous journey—maids thrilling with fear and curiosity on the threshold of entrance—women who had borne and perhaps buried children, who could remember the clinging of the small dead hands and the patter of the little feet now silent—he marvelled that among all those faces there should be no face of expectation, none that was mobile, none into which the rhythm and poetry of life had entered. "O for ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sharp hoofbeats of a pony on the wooden floor, a crash of glass, and the swift patter on the earth outside, ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... alone in her chamber, listening to the sound of merry voices in the hall without, or the patter of feet, as the fast arriving guests tripped up and down the stairs. She had heard the voice of J.C. De Vere as he passed her door, but it awoke within her bosom no lingering regret, and when an hour later ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... In one of his writings he says: "If you will not let the layman have the word of God in his mother tongue, yet let the priests have it, which for the great part of them do understand no Latin at all, but sing and patter all day with the lips only that which the heart understandeth not."[1] So bad was the case that it was not corrected within a whole generation. Forty years after Tindale's version was published, the Bishop of Gloucester, Hooper by name, made an examination of the clergy of his ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... any European under ordinary circumstances would tackle under the glaring heat of the afternoon's sun. Mosquitoes—harbingers of malaria—and fire-flies buzzed in swarms, snakes and lizards, their hitherto undisturbed solitude rudely shaken by the stealthy patter of three score pairs of bare feet, wriggled across the swampy ground, while overhead thousands of frightened birds flew in large circles, chattering the while in a way that would alarm every Boche within a radius of ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... Sometime in the night will come the jingle of silver bells, and the patter of tiny hoofs. Old Santa will halloo: "Whoa!" and come sliding down the chimney. The drowsing heads, fuddled with weariness, wrestle clumsily with the problem, "How is he to get through the stove without burning himself?" Reason falters and Faith triumphs. It would ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... she heard the patter of little feet among the fallen leaves, and looking up, there was the child, sure enough, right by her side, and there was something bright and shining all around its head. How it found its way ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... heard a strange rustling of the leaves in the near thicket. It was an odd, continuous sound, and though it went this way and that way and came ever nearer, there was no patter of feet with it. Rag had lived his whole life in the swamp (he was three weeks old) and yet had never heard anything like this. Of course his curiosity was greatly aroused. His mother had cautioned ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... swiftly.... But light footsteps as before patter behind me, close, close.... And before me again ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... to which, probably, I owe my life; for, during it, I heard a quick patter of many feet, and, turning sharply, saw a troop of the creatures coming toward me, at a run. Instantly, I raised my gun and fired at the foremost, who plunged head-long, with a hideous howling. ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... had slept out many a night before—yes, and in many a storm; but Charley was fond of his quarters in his own private nest. He liked to cuddle there and hear the rain patter on the canvas close above him, while the waves talked beneath him, and the great paddles whirred and thumped. Under the canvas covering he gladly slipped, and got in an ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... Dr. Horace Wilkinson could see the never-ending double current of people which ebbed and flowed in front of his window. It was a busy street, and the air was forever filled with the dull roar of life, the grinding of the wheels, and the patter of countless feet. Men, women, and children, thousands and thousands of them passed in the day, and yet each was hurrying on upon his own business, scarce glancing at the small brass plate, or wasting ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... wind began to whistle shrilly through the air, and the sky became so black they could scarcely see a hundred yards in any direction, Then came some distant flashes of lightning and rolling thunder, and soon the patter ...
— The Rover Boys on Land and Sea - The Crusoes of Seven Islands • Arthur M. Winfield
... chamber. His left hand was bandaged and a wet cloth lay across his closed eyes. A window was open and the lowered shade billowed softly up and down, letting into the darkened room quick splashes of sunlight. From without came the cheerful patter of ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... back to the patter. "Who puts his trust in God alone!" he shouted in a voice that drowned the clamor; but they did not take it up—the little devils! Then he hit indiscriminately. He knew quite well that one was just as good as another, ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... her, who would have been the first to disclaim such power. Among the velvet cushions of the east one may criticise the lapse of white man to barbarity; but in the wilderness human voice is as grateful to the ear as rain patter in a drouth. There, men deal with facts, not arguments. Natives break the loneliness of an isolated life by not unwelcomed visits. Comes a time when they tarry over long in the white man's lodge. Other men, who have scouted the possibility of sinking to savagery, have forsaken ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... to notice outdoor sounds—the songs of the birds, the noises that the animals make, the wind in the trees, and the patter of the rain. The old Norsemen have a story that their god Heimdall had such keen ears that he could hear the grass growing in the meadow and the wool growing on the backs of the sheep! Your ears can never be so ...
— The Child's Day • Woods Hutchinson
... great glory of clearness after rain, boy and girl moved along together under the trees. The fisherman's path which they followed wound where wet granite shone and ivy glimmered beneath the forest; and the leaves still dripped briskly, making a patter of sound through the underwood, and marking a thousand circles and splashes in the smooth water beneath the banks of the stream. Against a purple-grey background of past rain the green of high summer shone bright and fresh, and each moss-clad ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... the rain softened to a leafy patter, the patter to a drip, and a watery moon came glimmering through the clouds. With my enemy's rapier in hand I began cutting a course through the thicket. Radisson's fire no longer shone. Indeed, I became ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... when the air is buoyant in its tingling sharpness, when the dappled white clouds are reflected in water—blue, not leaden, and there is enough sunshine to cast intermittent shadows on the hillsides and the loch, though a transient darkness and a patter of raindrops vary the scene, it has its ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... of Corinthian Tom and Jerry—Somebody—and Bob Logic, Esquire, written by Pierce Egan, once a notorious chronicler of the prize-ring, the compiler of a Slang Dictionary, and whose proficiency in argot and flash-patter was honored by poetic celebration from Byron, Moore, and Christopher North, but whom I remember, when I was first climbing into public life, a decrepit, broken-down old man,—Mr. John Cumberland, of Ludgate Hill, (the publisher, by the way, of that series ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... was no more patter of little feet; no children's merry voices shouted about the house. The three little graves in the churchyard bore the names Griselda, Irene and Launcelot; and on each we put the text, spelt out by the initials of our darlings' names: GOD IS LOVE. And in our own heart-life we experienced the great ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... distant corner, four other men were playing bridge, speechless and almost motionless, the white faces of two of them like cameos under the electric light and against the dark walls. There was no sound except the soft patter of the cards and the subdued movements of a servant preparing another bridge table by the side of the three men. Then the door of the room was quietly opened and closed. A man of youthful middle-age, carefully dressed, with a large, clean-shaven face, blue ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... gestured to the door back of the bar—the doorway to The Spider's private room. The Mexican entered the room and closed the door softly, drew up a chair, and sat close to the door in the attitude of one who listens. Presently he heard the patter of hoofs, the grunt of horses pulled up sharply, and the tread of men entering the saloon. The Mexican drew his gun and rested his forearm across his knees, the gun hanging easily in his half-closed hand. He did not know who the men were nor how The Spider had known that they were coming. But he ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... the basket old By the hearth there's a vacant seat; And I miss the shadows from off the wall, And the patter of many feet; 'Tis for this that a tear gathered over my sight, At the one pair of stockings ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... friars, Tell their beads in drops of rain, And patter their doleful prayers; But their prayers are all ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... horse had taken. The heat of the sun oppressed him. He became faint, and, crawling beneath the shade of a wayside fir, he rested, promising himself that he would, when the afternoon shadows drifted across the road, make his way to the Concho. He had slept little more than an hour when the swift patter of hoofs wakened him. As he got to his feet, a buckboard, drawn by a pair of pinto range-ponies, drew up. Corliss started back. The Mexican driving the ponies turned toward the sweet-faced Spanish woman beside him as though questioning her pleasure. ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... which did not bring her to him. "It is twenty months, just, since Wilford died; and George Washington asked Martha Custis for her hand within less time than that after her husband's death," he said to himself one wet October afternoon, when he sat listening dreamily to the patter of the rain falling upon the windows, and looking occasionally across the fields to the farmhouse, in the vain hope of spying in the distance the little airy form, which, in its waterproof and cloud, had braved worse storms than this at the ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... horses stood motionless, letting fall their dejected heads with apathetic droop. The rain was dripping from their glistening coats, and making a great patter as it fell upon the tarpaulins covering the ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... body that breathes in the darkness there. Under the darkness I feel you stirring. . . . Is this you? Is this you? Bats in this air go whirring. . . . And this soft mouth that darkly meets my mouth, Is this the soft mouth I knew? Darkness, and wind in the tortured trees; And the patter ...
— The House of Dust - A Symphony • Conrad Aiken
... were it possible, all remembrance of the music written by others, and he would still be an object of delight and amazement on account of his matchless power in improvisation. Listen to his own "Rain Storm," and you shall hear, first, the thunder's reverberating peal, and anon the gentle patter of the rain-drops on the roof: soon they fall thick and fast, coming with a rushing sound. Again is heard the thunder's awful roar, while the angry winds mingle in the tempestuous fray,—all causing you to feel that a veritable storm rages without. After a while, the tempest ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... rapture in a woman's kiss. It meant the giving up of every joy in seeing her pass before him, of hearing the swish of her skirts on the pavement of the city; it meant the giving up of all hope ever to win her, of all thought of a future home, the patter of children's feet, the rocking of a tiny cradle. It meant the sacrifice of every thought of happiness and of every desire ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... two healthy slugs of Pete Jeffers' brandy into a pair of glasses, added ice and water, and handed one to Leda Crannon with a flourish. And all the time, he kept up a steady line of gentle patter. ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... young men's and girls' voices laughing afar in the silence of the night. It is a strange harmony, especially when the night is clear and there is a bright moon, and the heavy dew falling makes a pitter-patter on the leaves ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... letter. Crystal was a long time before she made up her mind to open it: the paper—damp with the rain—seemed to hold a certain fatefulness within its folds. At last she read the letter, and long after she had read it she sat at the open window, listening to the dreary, monotonous patter of the rain, and to the distant sounds of moving horses and men, the rattle of wheels, the bugle calls, the departure of the allied troops to meet the armies of the great adventurer on the billowing ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... in the open, their bed-tarps folded to shed as much moisture as possible. The soggy patter of the rain on her teepee lulled the girl to sleep but she was frequently roused. A dull muttering materialized suddenly into a sharp thunderstorm and the canvas walls of her teepee were almost continuously illuminated ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... Markheim's ears, it began to be distinguished into many different sounds. Footsteps and sighs, the tread of regiments marching in the distance, the chink of money in the counting, and the creaking of doors held stealthily ajar, appeared to mingle with the patter of the drops upon the cupola and the gushing of the water in the pipes. The sense that he was not alone grew upon him to the verge of madness. On every side he was haunted and begirt by presences. He heard them moving in the ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... around the camp-fire at bed-time, when I heard a distinct patter on the leaves. "Something coming," I whispered. All held still, then out of the gloom came bounding a snow-white Weasel. Preble was lying on his back with his hands clasped behind his head and the Weasel fearlessly jumped on my colleague's ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... sister gazed with dark, sad eyes into the fire, now burned down to a glowing bed of coals. The silence remained unbroken save for the moan of the rising wind outside, the rattle of hail, and the patter of rain drops ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... here beside me, with a quick patter—the twigs crackle—it is he! Move not! not for your life, Peacock! There! he has broken cover fairly! Now he is half across the field! he stops to listen! Ah! he will head again. No! no! that crash, when they came upon the warm blood, has ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... He did not dare to raise his eyes, but his ears were strained to catch the swift patter of the approaching bare feet. If Sally should recognise him—if, of course she must—if she should speak, what irreparable mischief might not be made in a ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... ailments which local skill had treated in vain. Already surrounded by a crowd of admirers waiting for the words of wisdom to fall from his lips, he would start on that exordium which bore no little resemblance to the patter of the modern quack, albeit interlarded with many a Latin quotation and great display of mediaeval learning. "Good people and worthy citizens of this town," he might say, "behold in me the great master ... prince of necromancers, astrologer, second mage, chiromancer, agromancer, pyromancer, hydromancer. ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... few minutes before eight o'clock, Air Mail Pilot Steve Chapman was enjoying a quiet cigarette while waiting for the mechanics to warm up the five hundred horses of his mail plane satisfactorily. Halfway through, he heard, from behind, a quick patter of feet, and, turning, he observed a figure clad in flannel trousers and sweater. The cigarette dropped right out of his mouth as ...
— Under Arctic Ice • H.G. Winter
... most Don Juanish rake Would surely object to undertake At the same high pitch as an altercation. It's not for me, of course, to judge How much a deaf lady ought to begrudge; But half-a-guinea seems no great matter - Letting alone more rational patter - Only to hear a parrot chatter: Not to mention that feathered wit, The starling, who speaks when his tongue is slit; The pies and jays that utter words, And other Dicky Gossips of birds, That talk with as much good sense and decorum As many Beaks ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... finished, and what they have had to-day was only what they would not eat out of their last feed yesterday. It is a terrible end—driven to death on no more food, to be then cut up, poor devils. I have swopped the Little Minister with Silas Wright for Dante's Inferno!"[219] The steady patter of the falling snow upon the tents was depressing as we turned in, but ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... scratching, done at the house of old Uncle Buckley, came out into the dazzling light. A story written by him appeared in one of the leading magazines of the East. It was a simple recital, a picture of the country and its people, and so close down upon the earth did it lie that a patter of rain that fell somewhere among the words brought a sweet scent from the blackberry briars, and a smell of dust from the rain. There were intelligent reading persons, in Old Ebenezer, and with the big eye of astonishment they ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... which she was hemming. The bird was hopping about, pecking at a banana which they had thrown to him; a light breeze made the shadow of the artu leaves dance upon the grass, and the serrated leaves of the breadfruit to patter one on the other with the sound of rain-drops ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... minute there was no sound in the kitchen but the little daughter's sobbing and the sympathetic patter of the rain. Phebe stopped rattling her beans from one pan to another, and her eyes were full of pity as they rested on the curly head bent down on Rose's knee, for she saw that the heart under the pretty locket ached with its loss, and the dainty apron was used to dry sadder tears than ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... then of North Country burr, his English was pure and refined. In ordinary life, too, he spoke excellent French, although in the ring he had to follow the classical tradition of the English clown, and pronounce his patter with a nerve-rasping Britannic accent. He never told me his history. But there he was, the principal clown, and as perfect a clown as clown could be, with every bit of his business at his fingers' ends, in ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... humid showers hover Over all the starry spheres And the melancholy darkness Gently weeps in rainy tears, What a bliss to press the pillow Of a cottage-chamber bed, And to listen to the patter Of the soft ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... sweep changed to a rattle and a crackle. The rain had turned to hail, and it was like the patter of rifle fire on the ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... hat and walked away. He had only gone a few steps, when there was a patter of feet ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... a gasp. There was a quick patter of light feet down the stairs, the last two cleared with a jump, a swish of silken skirts, a little gush of perfume, and then, bright as a flash of light, blue-eyed Mollie stood before him. She held his card in her fingers, and all the yellow ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... and addressed it with a rapid flow of words, each phrase beginning "O Bali Bouin." The pig's throat was then cut by an attendant, and Tama Bulan, standing up, diluted its blood with water and scattered it abroad over all of us as we stood round about him, while he still kept up the rapid patter of words. Then he pulled off the head of a fowl and concluded the rites by once more sprinkling us all with blood and water. Everyone seemed relieved and well satisfied to have got through this important business, and to have secured protectors for all the party ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... went well with me, and having a good start I began to hope that I should outrun these beasts, as I had the shepherd's dog and the retriever. But I did not know Jack and Jill. Just as I reached the borders of the moor I heard the patter of their feet behind me, and looking back saw them coming up, about as far away as I was from Tom when he ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... of fun for the darkies in the Gresham and Booker community. They had dances, cornshuckings, picnics and all kinds of old time affairs. These were attended by slaves for some distance around, but they had to have passes or "de patter rollers would sho' git 'em. Us little niggers wuz feared to go 'bout much 'kase we heered so much erbout de patter rollers." Wheeler enjoyed the cornshuckings more than anything else, or rather he talked more freely about them. He said that ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... ringing like steel on steel, sharp and clear, its startling detonation breaking into a spray of echoes against the cliffs and canon walls. Then down comes a cataract of rain. The big drops sift through the pine-needles, plash and patter on the granite pavements, and pour down the sides of ridges and domes in a network of gray, bubbling rills. In a few minutes the cloud withers to a mesh of dim filaments and disappears, leaving the sky perfectly clear and bright, every dust-particle wiped and washed out of it. Everything ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... didn't see any good reason for going away, in spite of Milly's pretty speeches, and next morning there was the same patter on the window, the same gray sky and dripping garden. After breakfast there was just a hope of its clearing up. For about an hour the rain seemed to get less and the clouds a little brighter. But it soon came on again as fast as ever, and the poor ...
— Milly and Olly • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sustained. Almost strident is the ruthless merriment; we are inclined to fear that the literal coherence of theme is greater than the inner connection of mood. At last the romp hushes to a whisper of drum, with strange patter of former dance. And following and accompanying it is a new hymnal (or is it martial) line, as it were the reverse of ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... named the movement,) did indeed permeate, in a manner, all classes. But it was to the haut monde that its primary appeal was made. The sacred emblems of Chelsea were sold in the fashionable toy-shops, its reverently chanted creeds became the patter of the boudoirs. The old Grosvenor Gallery, that stronghold of the few, was verily invaded. Never was such a fusion of delightful folk as at its Private Views. There was Robert Browning, the philosopher, doffing his hat with a courtly sweep to more than one Duchess. There, ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... in the gray dawn and looked out from her sandwich bed. The lake was completely hidden by a thick mist. Drops were coming down, patter, patter, on her poncho. "Chapa," she whispered excitedly to ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... next morning, a pleased glow of anticipation warming his heart, and almost before his eyes were opened he had raised himself to leap out of the bunk. Then with a disappointed sigh he sank back. On the roof fell the heavy patter ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... but it's bloomin' difficult to 'ear to-night—the rain makes such a patter on the chalk, and it's fillin' up the shell 'oles ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... regular, thudding noise, which she presently discovered, with something of a shock, to be the beating of her own heart. The sound of her progress was almost inaudible. As the day was damp, she was wearing goloshes, and her small, rubber-shod feet fell upon the stone floor with a gentle patter ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... she could interpret much that she saw in this new world. Cant phrases, bits of studio lore, artists' patter, their ways of looking at things, their manners of expression, their mannerisms, their little vanities, their ideas, ideals, aspirations, were fast becoming familiar to her. Also she was beginning to notice and secretly to reflect on their generic characteristics—their ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... little drama. It was based on the story of the ten virgins, and contained much by-play and shrewd comment on the follies and fashions of the day. Besides the written text Giovanni was wont to add some patter of his own, improvised according to the mood of his audience and the scene of the performance, but he ventured on very little of this impromptu comedy on such an occasion as this. Too much ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... tackle under the glaring heat of the afternoon's sun. Mosquitoes—harbingers of malaria—and fire-flies buzzed in swarms, snakes and lizards, their hitherto undisturbed solitude rudely shaken by the stealthy patter of three score pairs of bare feet, wriggled across the swampy ground, while overhead thousands of frightened birds flew in large circles, chattering the while in a way that would alarm every Boche within a ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... chamber above me The patter of little feet, The sound of a door that is opened, And voices soft ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... swift wings of excitement, flew upstairs. There was the quick patter of eager little feet, and in a very few moments the door was pushed open and a boy and girl entered. Charlotte recognized them at a glance. They were the very handsome little pair whose acquaintance she had made yesterday in Regent's Park. The girl hung back a trifle ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... the beating itself that frightened him most, but rather all the circumstances that attended it—it was even the dark house, the band of trees about it, that first dreadful moment when he would hear his knock echo through the passages, and then the patter of Mrs. Trussit's slippers as she came to open the door for him—then Mrs. Trussit's fat arm and the candle raised above her head, and "Oh, it's you, Mr. Peter," and then the opening of the dining-room door and "It's Master Peter, sir," and then that vision of the ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... been long in his office before he heard a quick patter of feet outside, the peculiar clapping sound of swift toes, which none but a child's feet can produce, and Eddy Carroll entered. The door was ajar, and he pushed it open and ran in with no ceremony. He was well in the room before he ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... heard, she did not reply, and Jerry followed on after Charles through the hall and up the broad staircase to the darkened room where Arthur lay, suffering intense pain in the head, and moaning occasionally. But he heard the patter of the little feet, for he was listening for it, and when Jerry entered his room he raised himself upon his elbow, and reaching the other hand ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... Fifth Avenue, and had reached Twelfth or Thirteenth Street when I thought I heard the patter of the Eskimo dog's feet behind me. I spun, around, startled, but there was only the long stretch of pavement, wet from a slight recent shower, and the reflection of the white arc-lights ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... glow-worm glimmer. One could see the lianas and the trees, the broad leaves shining with dew, some bright, some sketched in dimly, and all bathed in gauze green light; and they could hear the drip and patter of dew ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... our heads in such numbers that even their war song made one shiver and creep. They were larger by far than any Jersey mosquitoes ever dreamed of being, and their bite was like the touch of a live coal. Sometimes in the tent a continual patter on the roof as they flew against it sounded like ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... spellbound as if in a place haunted. The figure had disappeared but they could hear the patter of its running, and once or twice a fleeting dark shadow. The breeze was freshening and conjuring every sound about the ramshackle buildings into spectral wailings. A fragment of glass falling from a window ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... is disagreeable. It is disagreeable in the same way as discovering a three-card-trick man among a decent lot of folk in a third-class compartment. The open impudence of the whole transaction, appealing insidiously to the folly and credulity of man kind, the brazen, shameless patter, proclaiming the fraud openly while insisting on the fairness of the game, give one a feeling of sickening disgust. The honest violence of a plain man playing a fair game fairly—even if he means to knock you over—may appear shocking, but it remains within the ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... too unsophisticated to understand why Mrs. Rangely's talk struck him as not entirely genuine, but he was to some extent enlightened when his cousin said to him afterward: "Frances Rangely has the imitation Boston patter at her tongue's end now, but she is too thoroughly a New Yorker ever to get the spirit of it. She rattles off the words in a ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... to dress. It was remarkable that the answering noise on board my ship together with the patter of feet above my head ceased suddenly. But I heard more remote guttural cries which seemed to express surprise and annoyance. Then the voice of my mate reached me howling expostulations to somebody at a distance. Other voices joined, apparently indignant; a chorus of something ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... enough wine with Sir George, my thoughts had wandered upstairs into the sanctuary of female excellence, where your Ladyship nightly reposes. You do not sleep so well now as in old days, though there is no patter of little ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... washed fairly over them both. With the wave went a broken rail and part of the splintered house. Following the crashing of the wood and glass came the frightened questions and the patter of excited people running out of their rooms. The story-telling group from the barroom came as one man. The glass of the window over their heads had been showered on to their table. The bartender stopped only to empty his cash register, stuff the money in his pocket, and get into a great coat; then ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly
... back against the thorny trunk of the cembra pine, and sniffed the odors of drenched earth, listened to the drip and patter of the cold, gray rain, and gazed pessimistically at the blue crest of rock which lifted its granite shoulders high ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... he was struck violently. By nothing! A vast weight, it seemed, leapt upon him, and he was hurled headlong down the staircase, with a grip on his throat and a knee in his groin. An invisible foot trod on his back, a ghostly patter passed downstairs, he heard the two police officers in the hall shout and run, and the front door of the ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... Gunki. And at that the whole Garden went wild over her just as the butterflies had done. The Gunki carried her around on their shoulders; the Snimmy and his wife pelted her with moon-flowers; the Plynck and the Teacup kept up an agitated patter of feminine hand-clapping; and Schlorge came running down the path from the Dimplesmithy, ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... Market Cart, and Bard of the Barrow, "Knocks 'em in the Old Kent Road,"—and elsewhere—with well-deserved success. As is ever the case with the works of genuine genius, "liberal applications lie" in his "patter" songs, the enjoyment of which need by no means be confined to the Coster and his chums. For example, at Caucus-Conferences and places where they sing—and shout—the following might be rendered ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 19, 1892 • Various
... of two or three minutes the silence remained as profound as that of the tomb, and then there came a rush and patter, made by the wolves as they ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... appearing vaguely, high, motionless and patient; with a rustling plaint of its innumerable leaves through which every drop of water tore its separate way with cruel haste. And then, to the right, the house surged up in the mist, very black, and clamorous with the quick patter of rain on its high-pitched roof above the steady splash of the water running off the eaves. Down the plankway leading to the door flowed a thin and pellucid stream, and when Willems began his ascent it broke over his ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... and listened, but it seemed as if utter silence as well as utter darkness had descended upon the great city. But few people were about, and where a vehicle passed along a neighbouring street the patter of hoofs and roll of wheels was ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... sit in the carriage by your side, and enter the houses of those friends who happen to be at home, and I'll smile and look agreeable, and people will say, 'What an amiable woman Miss Anstruther is!' I'll do the correct thing of course, only I suppose it is not necessary for my heart to go pitter-patter over it. By the way, have you made out a list of the unfortunates who are to be victimized by our presence ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... disproportionate indeed—for what can one heart know of the sickness of another's, of its hurried beating when hope beckons, of its numb slackening when hope fails? How swift to Loveday seemed the relentless patter of the days past her questing feet, that, run hither and thither as she would, yet could not keep pace with Time's urgency! How slow to Loveday seemed the ticking of each moment, since each held hope and fear full-globed, as in bubbles that rise and rise only to burst into ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
... dry and hot for the last few days; at noon the thermometer rose to 100 deg. under the tent. Suddenly it became cloudy, and a few drops of rain began to patter down. There was every appearance of a storm, and our people began to collect towards the tents. At this time another courier arrived from the new Sultan, Abd-el-Kader, of Aghadez, respecting us. His highness says:—"No one shall hurt the Christians: no one shall ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... rain begins, the wind drops. The only sound is the patter of rain dropping like fine shot on the young rye ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... British poets have lived and revelled with her—they have wooed her in her most secret haunts—they have watched her minutest caprices. A spray could not tremble in the breeze—a leaf could not rustle to the ground—a diamond drop could not patter in the stream—a fragrance could not exhale from the humble violet, nor a daisy unfold its crimson tints to the morning, but it has been noticed by these impassioned and delicate observers, and wrought up into some ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... slight patter of rain on the bay-window near his head. He began to wonder how he was ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... housewifely approval that it had recently been polished. I have seldom passed a more uncomfortable time of waiting, than that between the resounding clatter of grandmother's knocking reverberating through the empty house, and the patter of feet, the whispering, and at last the opening of ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... those little Arabs from the by-streets and slums of Leeds. They were running about in tatters, shouting themselves hoarse with delight, and turning unlimited catharine-wheels in their happy delirium. I could hear them distinctly clapping their hands; I could not hear the patter of their feet, though—the poor little fellows were bootless. Then they ceased their play for a moment. Somebody was beckoning to them to follow him. He quietly led them beneath the branches of the very biggest ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... in the courtyard, followed by the patter of feet. Desmond heard Strangwise speak to the dog and reenter the house. Then silence fell again. With a tremendous effort Desmond swung his legs athwart the pipe, gripped it with his right hand, then his left, and very gently commenced to let himself down. The pipe quivered ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... student at the university whose name was Gebhart, who was so well acquainted with algebra and geometry that he could tell at a single glance how many drops of water there were in a bottle of wine. As for Latin and Greek—he could patter them off like his A B C's. Nevertheless, he was not satisfied with the things he knew, but was for learning the things that no schools could teach him. So one day he came knocking at ...
— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle
... we do? To dispel the drowsiness that was stealing over me, I got up, walked up and down the floor, and then drew up the blind, and gazed out into the deserted street. Not a footfall to be heard, neither man's nor beast's; nothing but patter, patter, patter. At length, after standing fully fifteen minutes—oh, joyful sound!—a coming footstep, firm and quick. My first thought was that those steps would stop at our door. But, directly after, I felt that very improbable, for who was there that would come ...
— Edna's Sacrifice and Other Stories - Edna's Sacrifice; Who Was the Thief?; The Ghost; The Two Brothers; and What He Left • Frances Henshaw Baden
... we sit looking expectantly at the curtain, we hear, not the deep booming of the Rhine, but the patter of a forest downpour, accompanied by the mutter of a storm which soon gathers into a roar and culminates in crashing thunderbolts. As it passes off, the curtain rises; and there is no mistaking whose forest habitation we are in; for the central ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... during her brief sojourn, no longer smiled upon her, but was obscured in storm and gloom. The thunder which had only muttered at a distance, now roared among the cloud-capped hills, and heavy drops of rain began to patter slowly upon the earth and sea. These bright globules in advance of the heavy shower whose approach they announced, made small dimples in the waters, spreading anon into large circles, until the surface of the salt brine seemed ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... Her appearance was altered. She was thinner, much thinner and very white and listless. The old air of gayety and bubbling spirits was gone. Her step seemed to drag, instead of the bright patter her feet used to make; and his anxiety increased and finally he decided that ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... on the mountain side hid in a grassy nook, With door and windows open wide, where friendly stars may look; The rabbit shy can patter in; the winds may enter free Who throng around the mountain throne in living ecstasy. And when the sun sets dimmed in eve and purple fills the air, I think the sacred Hazel Tree is dropping berries there From ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... men in the government. And thus the vicissitude of your senators is not perceivable in the steadiness and perpetuity of your Senate; which, like that of Venice, being always changing, is forever the same. And though other politicians have not so well imitated their patter, there is nothing more obvious in nature, seeing a man who wears the same flesh but a short time, is nevertheless the same man, and of the same genius; and whence is this but from the constancy of nature, ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... brought its rain, and before they rose from table the sunshine withdrew and large drops began to patter in good earnest. Mr. Raleigh, who had generally suffered others to entertain him, now, as Mrs. McLean ushered the whole company into the sewing-room, seemed spurred by gayety and brilliance, and to bring into employ all those secrets through which he had ever annihilated time. For a while devoting ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... must be the little party of his friends who had gone off. Then crack, crack, the reply began, and plainly mingled with the reports came the strange whistling whirr of bullets about their ears, in company with the crackling of cut-down leaves and twigs which now began to patter upon the earth. ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... Like the patter of rain in a damp heavy day, Or the voice of a brook when its waters are low, That murmurs and murmurs and murmurs away— Was the sound of her words ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... cried As the folk came flocking from every side; For they knew their Gipsy Joe of old, His free wild words and his laughter bold: So high and low all gathered together By the village well in the autumn weather, Lured by the gipsy's bargain-chatter And the reckless lilt of his hare-brained patter. And there the Revd. Salvyn Bent, The parish church's ornament, Stood, as it chanced, in discontent, And eyed with a look that was almost sinister The Revd. Joshua Fall, the minister. And the Squire, it happened, ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann
... no moisture came to her burning eyes; and there these two, soon to separate, passed the remaining hours of that long wretched night of watching. The stormy day lifted her pale, mournful face at last, and with it came the dreary patter and sobbing of autumn rain, making it doubly harrowing to commit the precious form to its long, last resting-place. Electra stood up beside her cousin and folded her ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... its secret, but something always happened to interrupt. Once it was certainly Azariah's fault, for just as the trees were about to speak he picked up a leaf and began to explain how the shape of an oak leaf differed from that of the leaf of the chestnut and the ash. A patter was heard among the leaves. There she goes—a hare! Joseph said, and a moment afterwards a white thing appeared. A white weasel, Azariah said. Shall we follow him? Joseph asked, and Azariah answered that it would be useless to follow. We should ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... to be discerned in this water; but invariably towards the end of July, or the beginning of August, swarms of tailed organisms are seen enjoying the sun's warmth along the shallow margins of the lake, and rushing with audible patter into deeper water at the approach of danger. The origin of this periodic crowd of living things is by no means obvious. For years I had never noticed in the lake either an adult frog, or the smallest fragment of frog spawn; so that were ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... brown, and red, And nuts come pitter, patter down; When days are short and swiftly sped, And Autumn wears her colored gown, I'm up before old Mr. Sun His nightcap has a chance to doff, And have my day's work well begun When ...
— Happy Jack • Thornton Burgess
... kook antique patter backstage, until I sometimes wonder whether I'm in Central Park, New York City, nineteen hundred and three quarters, or somewhere in Southwark, Merry England, fifteen hundred and same. The truth is that although he loves every last fat part in Shakespeare and will play the skinniest ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... would for an instant accuse portly old Imam Din of wanting to play with polo-balls. He carried out the battered thing into the verandah; and there followed a hurricane of joyful squeaks, a patter of small feet, and the thud-thud-thud of the ball rolling along the ground. Evidently the little son had been waiting outside the door to secure his treasure. But how had he managed ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... light wind swept on its way out to sea. Huge gulls rose slowly, fluttering their wings in the light breeze and striking their webbed feet on the surface of the water for over half a mile before they could leave it. Hardly had the patter, patter died away when a flock of sea quail rose, and with whistling wings flew away to windward, where members of a large band of whales were disporting themselves, their blowings sounding like the exhaust of steam engines. The harsh, discordant cries of a sea-parrot grated ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... however, it was a world of gloom. Upstairs Huldah was singing— singing!—and it was Thanksgiving. He could hear her feet patter, patter on the floor above, and the sound had a cheery self-reliance that was maddening. Huldah was happy, evidently—and it was Thanksgiving! Twice he had walked resolutely to the back stairs with a brown-paper parcel in his arms; and twice a quavering ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... whole thing from bottom to top. Through it all, he kept up the glib patter of a showman; the ironic intent of it becoming more and more marked all ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... reflectively. "But then, there's the ball to-morrow night. I will be up late, so I suppose it would be just as well for me to rest to-night, for I want to look my best, Katy. I would give the world to look bright and gay as any girl there. I could hear the music, the patter of dancing feet, and the sound of merry laughter. And, oh, Katy! perhaps I might forget for a few brief moments my terrible affliction. I know Harry will be happy amid the brilliant throng, and that thought alone will ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... The patter of your busy feet Still rings upon the floor, And song, and jest, and laughter sweet Float round me as of yore;— Yet when I open eager eyes, To watch your pastimes gay, Your children's faces round me rise— Yourselves have ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)
... up from the south, and twenty hands pointed to them. At "one bell in the first dog" the clouds were thick, and the sun was hidden. Half-an-hour later there was a shrill whistling in the shrouds, and the rain began to patter on the deck, while the booms fretted, and we relieved her in part of her press of sail. When the squall struck us at last, the Channel was foaming with long lines of choppy seas; and the sky southward was dark as ink. But there was only joy of it aboard; we stood gladly ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... comment thereon. Ordinarily when a man of my type quits drinking the fact is accepted after the probationary period has passed, and no further comment is made on it. Not so with the asinine contingent. They have the same patter to prattle unceasingly about it. They have the same comment, the same bromides to get off, the same sneers to sneer and the same jeers to jeer. If there was no other reason—and there are a hundred—why I shall not do any more drinking, I shall never taste another ...
— The Old Game - A Retrospect after Three and a Half Years on the Water-wagon • Samuel G. Blythe
... earth can they tell you that you have not heard already? A mere grinding-out of commonplaces! How often one has covered the same field! They cannot even put their knowledge, such as it is, into an attractive shape or play variations on the theme; it is patter; they have said the same thing, in the same language, for years and years; you have listened to the same thing from other lips, in the same language, for years and years. How one knows it all beforehand—every note in that barrel-organ of echoes! One leaves them ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... them, 'this excessive and applauded productiveness, both of your juvenile and your senile, in your modern literature, is it ever a crop? Is it even the restorative perishable stuff of the markets? Is it not rather your street-pavement's patter of raindrops, incessantly in motion, and as fruitful?' Mr. Semhians appeals to Delphica. 'Genius you have,' says she, stiffening his neck-band, 'genius in superabundance':—he throttles to the complexion ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... jungle along the river changed imperceptibly, the dhum palms crowding out the other trees; until, at our last camp, were nothing but palms. The wind in them sounded variously like the patter or the gathering onrush of rain. On either side the country remained unchanged, however. The volcanic hills rolled away to the distant ranges. Everywhere grew sparsely the low thornbrush, opening sometimes into clear plains, ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... Flying Cloud all was silent save for the persistent "whistling for a breeze" in which Captain Blyth indulged, mingled with the rustle and flap of the canvas overhead, and the patter of the reef- points occasioned by the pendulum-like roll of the ship. The water was highly phosphorescent; and the two children, carefully looked after by Mr Gaunt, were delightedly watching from the taffrail the streams of brilliant stars and haloes ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... the smile back to your living face. These great rooms will be empty and lonely. I wish to hear the patter of your children's feet in them, and the echo of your soft footsteps behind them. You are just thirty-five, in the full glory of perfect womanhood, far more beautiful than this girl of seventeen. Promise me that at the end of a year you will be mine, and let me make your life as glorious to the ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... I at last seated myself by the fire, and lulled by warmth and the patter of the rain on the window, I fell asleep. I may have dreamt, for during my sleep I had a vague semi-consciousness as of hands being softly pressed on my pockets—no doubt induced by the story of the robbery. When I came fully to my senses, I ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... that chilling body with the warmth of my own, though wild horses rode over me until the end of time. I tried to picture life without Dinkie. I tried to imagine my home without that bright and friendly little face, without the patter of those restless little feet, without the sound of those beleaguering little coos of child-love with which he used to burrow his head into the ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... toward this man-hunting business; he yearned to rescue the innocent and punish the guilty. Whenever a great crime was committed he instantly overflowed with theories as to what the criminal was likely to do afterward. Haggerty enjoyed listening to his patter; and often there were illuminating flashes which obtained results for the detective, who never applied his energies in the direction of logical deduction. Besides, the chairs in the studio were comfortable, the imported beer not too cold, and the ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... fact that imparted a strange, poetic charm to that fantastic ballet, and that was the absence of music, of every other sound than that of the measured footfalls, whose effect was heightened by the semi-darkness, of that quick, light patter no louder than the fall of the petals from a dahlia, one by one. This lasted for some minutes, then they could tell from the quickening of her breath ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... sticky patter of falling drops in the silence. Everything inundated. Faces float off in a red dream. Still the song of the sweet ...
— Precipitations • Evelyn Scott
... simple. She had known "Missy" from a chile! She had just traipsed over to see her that afternoon; they were walking together when the sojers stopped her. She had never been stopped before, even by "the patter rollers."* Her old massa (Manly) had gib leaf to go see Miss Tilly, and hadn't ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... that if we slept there, they would scream and throw stones at us all night, and perhaps steal our horses before morning. Thinking it as well to humor him, we left behind us the haunt of these extraordinary ghosts, and passed on toward Chugwater, riding at full gallop, for the big drops began to patter down. Soon we came in sight of the poplar saplings that grew about the mouth of the little stream. We leaped to the ground, threw off our saddles, turned our horses loose, and drawing our knives, began to slash among the bushes to cut twigs and branches for making a shelter against the rain. Bending ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... with Joyful Star herself. They, too, talked but little, and as we rode on in the deepening gloom amid the solemn silence and the gaunt grandeur of the mountains, their words became fewer and fewer, till at length thought took the place of speech, and the silence was broken by no sound save the patter of the mules' feet and the rattle of stones under their ...
— The Romance of Golden Star ... • George Chetwynd Griffith
... home, pondering and thinking,—for I didn't wait for the tea and cake that are supposed to be essential to all these gatherings,—I heard the patter of a light foot behind me, and in a minute ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... the grass edging the avenue. On the wet turf their feet made no sound. When they came in view of the house, they saw it was in darkness. No light shone in any window, and the only sound to be heard was the melancholy patter of the rain drops on the laurel bushes. When they saw the porch looking black before them, they left the grass and stepped gently across the drive, the gravel crunching softly beneath their feet. Robin led the way boldly under the porch and laid a hand on the doorknob. The door opened easily ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... Daily News (Hull): "The funniest book we have read for some time. You must perforce scream with huge delight at the dry sayings and writings of the funny little man who has actually killed people with his patter and his antics. Page after page of genuine fun is reeled off ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... have to print a triolet When space is clamouring for matter We try to put it off and yet We have to print a triolet It is with infinite regret That we admit the silly patter We have to print a triolet When space ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... door-plates, then a milliner filling the parlor window with new bonnets; here even a publisher had hung his sign beside a door, through which the feet of young ladies used to trip, and the feet of little children to patter. Here and there stood groups of dwellings unmolested as yet outwardly; but even these had a certain careworn and guilty air, as if they knew themselves to be cheapish boarding-houses or furnished lodgings for gentlemen, and were trying to hide it. To ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... answer; but Victoria thought she heard the patter of falling sand. At least, the ruin stood firm so far. By this time Stephen might have nearly reached the top. He had told her not to leave the dining-room, and she had not meant to disobey; but she had made no promise, and she could bear her suspense no longer. Where ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... but I don't mind whippings if I can read books in school and you make mother not cry," and before I could stop him he ran out of the dim room and I could hear his cautious bare feet patter down the ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Go patter to lubbers and swabs, do you see, 'Bout danger, and fear, and the like; A tight-water boat and good sea-room give me, And it ain't to a little I'll strike. Though the tempest topgallant-mast smack smooth should smite And shiver each splinter of wood, Clear ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... house that, in Markheim's ears, it began to be distinguished into many different sounds. Footsteps and sighs, the tread of regiments marching in the distance, the chink of money in the counting, and the creaking of doors held stealthily ajar, appeared to mingle with the patter of the drops upon the cupola and the gushing of the water in the pipes. The sense that he was not alone grew upon him to the verge of madness. On every side he was haunted and begirt by presences. He heard them ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... no answer. He did not dare to raise his eyes, but his ears were strained to catch the swift patter of the approaching bare feet. If Sally should recognise him—if, of course she must—if she should speak, what irreparable mischief might not be made in ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... crying at the same time. The mother spoke to it soothingly and then rose to change its clothes. Meanwhile another child had wakened and was beginning to make a noise. The father scolded it, while the baby continued crying. By-and-by the whole family went back to bed and fell asleep. The patter of a mouse was heard. It climbed up some vase and upset it. We heard the clatter of the vase as it fell. The woman coughed in her sleep. Then cries of "Fire! fire!" were heard. The mouse had upset the lamp; ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... on the stairs behind him, and supposed some one was rushing to his assistance. There was a patter of feet, and then the smothering folds of a blanket were flung over his head, and he was dragged backward to the floor, his hold ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... rows of tents there were, and there were twenty-two of us; so we told off men to each row, and then made for them at a moment when no man was about—hacking at the ropes, and laughing to see the tents fall. It was strange to watch the shadows start up and stand motionless, as the first patter of feet came and the first blows fell, and then bustle, helpless and confused, with savage shouts and curses, as the heavy canvas and ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... things— The gold and the gray of the summer day, The winter with fleecy-wings; Promising swift birds glancing, And the patter of raindrops dancing, And the sunbeam's arrowy lancing, Dear gifts ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... look after the work." Arrie was never punished, (not any more than having her head cracked by her Master when she nodded while fanning him.) "No mam, not none of our niggers wuz whipped. Why I recollect once, my brother wuz out without a pass an' de patter rollers kotch him and brung him to old Miss and said he'd have ter be whipped, old Miss got so mad she didn't know what ter do, she said nobody wuz a goin' ter whip her niggers, but the patter roller men 'sisted so she said after er while, 'Well, but I'm goin' ter ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... place in Florence? One of the commentators, with characteristic carelessness, states that the places mentioned in the preachment of Fra Cipolla (an amusing specimen of the patter-sermon of the mendicant friar of the middle ages, that ecclesiastical Cheap Jack of his day) are all names of streets or places of Florence, a statement which, it is evident to the most cursory reader, is ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... crawling beneath the shade of a wayside fir, he rested, promising himself that he would, when the afternoon shadows drifted across the road, make his way to the Concho. He had slept little more than an hour when the swift patter of hoofs wakened him. As he got to his feet, a buckboard, drawn by a pair of pinto range-ponies, drew up. Corliss started back. The Mexican driving the ponies turned toward the sweet-faced Spanish woman ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... hemming. The bird was hopping about, pecking at a banana which they had thrown to him; a light breeze made the shadow of the artu leaves dance upon the grass, and the serrated leaves of the breadfruit to patter one on the other with the sound of rain-drops ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... therefore, broke up, and the younger ladies retired to their cells in good order. But the Raven, excited by the jocund hour, continued to rustle and patter about the warm room in a state of inexpressible hilarity, most exasperating to the others, who desired to sleep. Not content with upsetting the fire-irons occasionally, singing to the cat, and slamming the furniture about, this restless bird kept appearing first at one cell door ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... when the house lay silent in the heat My thoughts would be so full of you, my sweet, That dreaming half—I seemed to hear once more Your little fingers fluttering at the door, The pitter patter of your childish feet In joyous rhythm cross the ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... judge. It is nave honestly to accept the most obvious denials of defendant and witness; it is nave not to know how the examinees correspond with each other; it is nave to permit a criminal to talk thieves' patter with another in your own hearing; it is still more nave to speak cordially with a criminal in this patter; it is nave not to know the simplest expressions of this patter; and it is most nave to believe that the criminal can discover his duty by means ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... in silence. They reached the pile of stones below her father's place, and Elizabeth released her aching arm. In silence they watched the strangely mottled effect where the moonlight fell in patches across the water as the clouds flitted past. A patter of rain, accompanied by a sharp whistle of wind, warned them ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... that it was not the beating itself that frightened him most, but rather all the circumstances that attended it—it was even the dark house, the band of trees about it, that first dreadful moment when he would hear his knock echo through the passages, and then the patter of Mrs. Trussit's slippers as she came to open the door for him—then Mrs. Trussit's fat arm and the candle raised above her head, and "Oh, it's you, Mr. Peter," and then the opening of the dining-room door and "It's Master Peter, ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... two of the male correspondents of the London Press. Conversation, in the sense of a mere flow of talk, is never difficult with newspaper men. They are among the most articulate of the British, although much that they articulate is only patter. These two had plenty of miscellaneous information, much of which I received in a sceptical spirit, but I learned some interesting facts, which I verified from other sources later on. Chief of these was the effect produced upon Young Italy by the personal gallantry of the poet D'Annunzio, ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... word in his patter advertised to his confederates exactly whereabouts upon your person the treasure was carried. Really the business gave splendid returns. It was Marr, though, who had seized upon it when it merely was a catchpenny carnival device and made of it a real money earner. Moreover, the pickpockets ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... difference in our speed, our abnormally long, keen, wedge-like bow seemed to cleave the seas without effort or resistance as they came at us, while the flaring overhang lifted the little craft buoyantly over them, with nothing worse than a small playful flash and patter of spray in over the weather cathead to tell of the encounter. It would be difficult to say whether astonishment or delight was the feeling that predominated in the breasts of all hands of us, fore and aft, as we stood watching the really marvellous ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... a patter of soft feet, the converts, the doubtful, and the open scoffers, troop up to the veranda. You must be infinitely kind and patient, and, above all, clear-sighted, for you deal with the simplicity of childhood, ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... steady patter began to sound the savage voice of torrents falling over cliffs, rapids rising and surging in deep gorges. The wetness and the cold sapped Molly's vitality. She shivered, her flesh seemed sodden, her ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... Jim's patter had come from Paul's stories of the old Romans, and now he was applying it with gusto to the wild scene lost in the vast green wilderness. But he was sure that the Indians would not return to a headlong charge. The ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... from doorways, smile and nod and forget awhile their weariness in the children's delight, as Ravenslee, the battered hat cocked at knowing angle, proceeds to "business." Shrill voices supplicate him, little feet patter close around him, small hands, eagerly outstretched, appeal to him. Anon rise shrieks and infantile crowings of delight as each small hand is drawn back grasping a plump paper bag—shrieks and crowings that ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... acrid odor which lingers about the places of nesting birds. As her eyes became accustomed to the dimness, she ventured a remark which died abruptly as she caught her breath. Beneath the low canopy of branches the ground was bare of vegetation, and on the cool brown earth, packed hard by the patter of webbed feet, a dozen or more sea-parrots were sitting not ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... is not perceivable in the steadiness and perpetuity of your Senate; which, like that of Venice, being always changing, is forever the same. And though other politicians have not so well imitated their patter, there is nothing more obvious in nature, seeing a man who wears the same flesh but a short time, is nevertheless the same man, and of the same genius; and whence is this but from the constancy of nature, in holding a man to her orders? Wherefore keep also to your orders. ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... at last, a yellow eye peering at him through a slit in an inky wall. A moment later the darker shadow of the cabin rose up in his face, and a flash of lightning showed him the door. In a moment of silence he could hear the patter of huge raindrops on the roof as he dropped his bags and began hammering with his fist to arouse the Swede. Then he flung open the unlocked door and entered, tossing his dunnage to the floor, and shouted the old ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... many similar experiences—in mind, I wish distinctly to state that "John Ingerfield," "The Woman of the Saeter," and "Silhouettes," are not intended to be amusing. The two other items—"Variety Patter," and "The Lease of the Cross Keys"—I give over to the critics of the new humour to rend as they will; but "John Ingerfield," "The Woman of the Saeter," and "Silhouettes," I repeat, I should be glad if they would ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... them comes out and announces that it is impossible to work the ferry as a storm has come up. The river, they said, was wide, and the wind was strong. And so I had to stay the night at the hut.... I remember the night. The snoring of the ferry-men and my driver, the roar of the wind, the patter of the rain, the mutterings of the Irtysh.... Before going to sleep I wrote a letter to Marya Vladimirovna; I was reminded ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... hooded clouds, like friars, Tell their beads in drops of rain, And patter their doleful prayers;— But their prayers are all in vain, All ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... preparations were soberly fulfilling, the agitation of the hundred-and-three was desperate indeed. The air grew thick, it quivered with the lashing of tails; hoarse mews echoed along the stone walls, paws were raised and let fall with the rhythmical patter of raindrops. A furtive beast played the thief: he was one of the one-eyed fraternity, red with mange. Somehow he slipped in between us; we discovered him crouched by the newspaper raking over the contents. This was no time for ceremony; he got a prompt cuff over the head and slunk away shivering ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... in a few moments he heard the soft patter of a man running barefoot along the dusty road. He stopped his horse and the patter of feet ceased, but a moment after, silent as a shadow, the man ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... walls, instead of prolonging the vibrations, seems to deaden them; and besides, who could hear us, in the depths where we now are? Then, groping in the absolute darkness, he makes his way up the sloping passage. The hurried patter of his sandals and the flapping of his burnous grow faint in the distance, and the cries that he continues to utter sound so smothered to us soon that we might ourselves be buried. And meanwhile we do not ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... streets near the Swift house and shops could be heard the rattle of fire apparatus, the patter of running feet, and many shouts from ...
— Tom Swift among the Fire Fighters - or, Battling with Flames from the Air • Victor Appleton
... ahead of me. I got behind it. And marched there. Slow! God, how slow! Anyhow, it kept off the machine-gun bullets, but not, the shrapnel. It was breaking over us in clouds. I felt the stunning patter of the fragments on my tin hat, cringed under it, and wondered vaguely why it didn't do ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... I heard a patter of bare feet on the deck, and a dozen soldiers ran past me, and surrounded us. I noticed that they and their officers belonged to the Eleventh Infantry. It was the regiment I had driven out of the ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... about four, and sprang to the window. The moon was sinking low in the western sky, but its light still flooded the deserted courtyard beneath. He heard the patter of a horse's hoofs on the road beyond and the crunching of the snow beneath the runners of a sleigh. Well, he thought, as he rubbed his eyes, it was too near morning for anything to happen, so he turned in and was soon asleep, as though no difficult problems were puzzling his mind and heart and ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... I want to tell you something." Marjorie stood outside the boy's bedroom door, and called in as loud a whisper as she dared, fearing lest she should awaken the rest of the household. There was a scuffle and a patter of bare feet inside, and Dick appeared at the door rubbing his eyes, evidently only ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow
... twentieth year since he vanished, Wakefield is taking his customary walk toward the dwelling which he still calls his own. It is a gusty night of autumn, with frequent showers that patter down upon the pavement and are gone before a man can put up his umbrella. Pausing near the house, Wakefield discerns through the parlor-windows of the second floor the red glow and the glimmer and fitful ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... eyes were old and wise, and he had evidently seen life. He was dark-haired and a little below medium height. The red scar of a wound appeared just below his left ear. After marking time with his feet, he began a kind of patter song about having a telephone, every verse of which ended, "Oh, la la, j'ai le telephone chez moi" (I've a telephone in my house). "I know who is unfaithful now—who have horns upon their brow," the singer ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... you all en tellin' a tale, I aint 'nyin' but w'at I got one dat you all aint never year tell un, 'kaze dat ar Slim Jim w'at Mars Ellick Akin got out'n de speckerlater waggin,[77] he up'n tell it dar at Riah's des 'fo' de patter-rollers tuck'n slipt up ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... night, came the patter of little feet on the roof and passed—came again and paused; and then there was a rush and a steady roar that wakened Chad and thrilled him as he lay listening. It did not last long, but the river was muddy enough and ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... my life long have I been pining to meet with a patter-cove from Seven Dials! Embrace me, at a distance. (A patter-cove from Seven Dials!) Go, fill yourself as drunk as you dare, at my expense. Anything he likes, Mrs. Clarke. He's a patter-cove from Seven Dials. Hillo! ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... again in a little while, whitening the water; the depth of it blackened to the cloud but the surface frothed like quicksilver under the steady patter. The awning was up and they were safe against a wetting, but Peter saw the girl shiver in the slight chill, and looking at her more attentively he perceived that she might recently have been ill. The likeness to her mother came out then in spite of her plainness, the ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... impartial judge, seated there above them all; the cold, calculated rhapsodies about the heinousness of arson; the cold and calculated attack on the characters of the stone-breaker witness and the tramp witness; the cold and calculated patter of the appeal not to condemn a father on the evidence of his little child; the cold and calculated outburst on the right of every man to be assumed innocent except on overwhelming evidence such as did not here exist. The cold and calculated balancing of pro and con; and those minutes ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... on the bay charger's neck. The captain's figure seemed limp. With an expression of profound dejection and gloom he stared off at where the leaden sky met the dark green line of the woods. The long-impending rain began to fall with a mournful patter, drop and drop. There ...
— The Little Regiment - And Other Episodes of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... the rain was streaming down, and all the time their clothes grew wetter and wetter. Just before dusk a halt was made by the roadside, and at last the booming of the guns died down to a silence that was only broken by the incessant patter of the rain ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... these birds lack the brilliance of the speculums of puddle ducks. Since many of them have short tails, their huge, paddle feet may be used as rudders in flight, and are often visible on flying birds. When launching into flight, most of this group patter along the water ...
— Ducks at a Distance - A Waterfowl Identification Guide • Robert W. Hines
... back. The mother ran a few steps towards the door and waited. There was a rush and a patter of feet, the door burst open. William was there. He dropped his Gladstone bag and took ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... far, sir, but it's bloomin' difficult to 'ear to-night—the rain makes such a patter on the chalk, and it's fillin' up the shell 'oles a ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... driving sweep changed to a rattle and a crackle. The rain had turned to hail, and it was like the patter of rifle fire on ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... rapidly replied the second voice in the other corner. And then, as if by a concerted movement, a series of bibular invitations and acceptances were rolled backwards and forwards with a volubility of utterance that threw Patter versus Clatter ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... made for the position assigned to him. The gun was in readiness. Outside, the Mausers rattled, bullets coming from all quarters and thumping sharply against the opposite walls with a patter that warned the Americans ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... smoke. Buregarde leaped into the cloud and disappeared. There was a hoarse shriek and the mad scrabble of dog-claws on the hard floor, the sound of a heavy thud, and the angry snarl of a dog with its teeth fastened into something soft. Then there was the fast patter of dog-feet and Buregarde came around the door on a dead run, sliding side-wise to carom off the opened door into safety just as a ...
— History Repeats • George Oliver Smith
... unable to sleep in my own apartment, and so I had stolen into the great hall through the heavily curtained entrance at the end farthest from the balcony. As I entered I heard a peculiar, soft sound above the patter of the fountain. Neranya's cage was partly concealed from my view by the spraying water, but I suspected that the unusual sound came from him. Stealing a little to one side, and crouching against the dark hangings of the wall, I could ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... the front of his hat and missing his head by the width of an eyelash. As he sprang back the door slammed in his face and he heard the bolts shot home, followed by the sound of a weapon clattering on the floor and the patter of naked feet. Realizing that the men he was after were making their escape by another exit, Jennings hurled himself against the door, an automatic in either hand. It gave way before his assault ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... not eaten. The best he could do was to gulp down some coffee, for he was in a nervous chill of apprehension. Every gust of wind seemed to carry to him the patter of pursuit. The hooting of an owl sent a ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... hope and desire Till, rousing, I looked afresh on your face as you gazed— Behind you an old gnarled fruit-tree in one still fire Of innumerable flame in the sun of October blazed, Scarlet and gold that the first white frost would spill With eddying flicker and patter of dead leaves falling— looked on your face, as an outcast from Eden recalling A vision of Eve as ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... hour past supper-time," said Mrs. Ritson, glancing aside at the old clock that ticked audibly from behind the great arm-chair. "The rain is coming again—listen!" There was a light patter of rain-drops against the window-panes. "If he's on the fells now he'll be wet to ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... I know How the bitter wind doth blow And the winter's snow and rain Patter on the window pane; But they cannot come in here ...
— Aunt Kitty's Stories • Various
... attention. I did not hear the dripping on the roof, nor the patter-patter of the drops from the ceiling, nor the beating of the storm against the glass. My candles blew in the draught, and shadows crossed and recrossed the page. Do you ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... There was a sudden patter of tiny feet, a scamper, a rush, a succession of ecstatic little growls followed by a still more ecstatic yelp of rapture and glee. Melchisedek had emerged from his temporary retirement and come prancing upon the scene. He bore something in his mouth, something long and flexible ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... charge, a weighty responsibility— how could he hesitate? he was pouring out all the consolation and sympathy of his ardent soul to the man he had loved as a boy, and he never felt the chill that was stiffening all his joints, he never heeded the ceaseless patter of the dreary rain. The clock had stopped and the fire had gone out, and still he sat crouched in his chair, with the strange letter lying listlessly between ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... Of the monster guns; And the sharp bark Of the lesser guns; The whine of the shells, The rifles' clatter Where the bullets patter, The rattle, rattle, rattle Of the mitrailleuse in battle, And the yells Of the men who charge through hells Where the poison gas descends, And the bursting shrapnel rends Limb from limb In the dim Chaos and clamor of the strife Where no man thinks ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... freeze-up it was proving to us there was no shortage of water in the clouds which seemed wide open, and it was pouring in torrents. For four hours I had been using the pick and shovel in the frozen gravel under the adjoining cabin, and had finally gone to sleep, lulled by the patter of the regularly ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... bridge-stair, and though the evening was wet and chilly they all embarked. No one spoke. The black waters washed and heaved beneath them, the myriad lights shone vaguely through the clammy mist and steady drizzle, and the roar of the city blended with the stroke of the oars and the patter of the rain. Only when they lay under the hull of a large ship was the silence broken. But it was broken ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... interpret much that she saw in this new world. Cant phrases, bits of studio lore, artists' patter, their ways of looking at things, their manners of expression, their mannerisms, their little vanities, their ideas, ideals, aspirations, were fast becoming familiar to her. Also she was beginning to notice and secretly to reflect on ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... of dishonesty here. Don't pick up any of the patter that the demagogues are babbling—and they don't know just what they mean themselves. He is an honest man. Have I known him all my life without finding that out? But he isn't going to start out and clinch any reputation for honesty by turning his back ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... and entertained. Yet, since that strange blurring of fog still confused his vision and his judgment, vaguely suspicious that he missed the main intent of her speech. Suspicious as one who, listening to the clever patter of a conjurer, detects in it the effort to distract attention from some difficult feat of legerdemain, until that feat has passed from ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... rained. But when he agreed to that, Grandfather hadn't the slightest idea there was a shower coming. Mr. Meadow Mouse, however, had watched the dark clouds gathering in the sky. But he had said nothing of what he saw. And when the rain-drops began to patter on top of Grandfather Mole's sunshade Mr. Meadow Mouse cried in a brisk voice: "I'll thank you, sir, for the ...
— The Tale of Grandfather Mole • Arthur Scott Bailey
... having had quite enough wine with Sir George, my thoughts had wandered upstairs into the sanctuary of female excellence, where your Ladyship nightly reposes. You do not sleep so well now as in old days, though there is no patter of little ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... with its lonely patter and Kenny told him tales of Ireland, delighted at the sympathetic quiet of his mood. Unbrandied, the evenings, after all, ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... went down the sky," the cold wind softened and grew still; the stars swelled out larger; the rats came, and then came puss, and the rats went with a scuffle and patter; the pagan grey came in like a sleep-walker, and made the barn dreary as a dull dream; then the horses began to fidget with their big feet, the cattle to low with their great trombone throats, and the cocks to crow as if to give warning ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... pleasant life. Sometimes the sunbeams would dance through the window-panes and play at hide-and-seek all over me and my little mate; they would kiss and caress us, and we learned to love them very much—they were so warm and gentle and merrisome. Sometimes the raindrops would patter against the window-panes, singing wild songs to us, and clamoring to break through and destroy us with their eagerness. When night came, we could see stars away up in the dark sky winking at us, and very often the old mother moon stole out from behind a cloud to give us a kindly ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... that either of the boys had been up at that unearthly hour using the grindstone, but she wished to prove to Elsie that it was all imagination. As she passed the head of the stairs she suddenly stopped. Somewhere, down below, she distinctly heard a soft noise like the patter of slippered feet. Ida leant over ...
— Under Padlock and Seal • Charles Harold Avery
... He tried not to think of that apropos answer. He heard the beating, steady patter of the rain, and the lowing of the cows, and there was not even a star in heaven to look at him from its accustomed place with a friendly, twinkling promise for the future. There was nothing left. So far as he was concerned, the earth was without form and void. There was nothing to wait or ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... only just gone," I whispered. In the failing light a door creaked cautiously. I heard the rustle of a frock and the patter of feet— quick ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... as much as Kim could remember of his own treatment in a bout of autumn malaria—if you except the patter that he added ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... rein to his fancy and began descanting upon the grandeur of the Republic and the Beautiful Experiment making in "these states," Dan would see a blank puzzled look steal into Thatcher's face. Thatcher adored Allen: he had for him the deep love of a lioness for her cubs; but all this idealistic patter the boy had got hold of—God knew where!—sounded as strange to the rich man ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... omission was purposed. The man's face grew convulsed with agony, his eyeballs stared out very white and vivid, as he struggled with the two men. He began to curse us epileptically for compassing his damnation. A hoarse patter of Spanish imprecations came from the crowd immediately round me. The man with the voice like Ramon's groaned in a lamentable way; someone else said, "What infamy ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... There was the patter of little feet on the polished floor. Margaret-Mary in a diminutive blue dressing gown and infinitesimal slippers, with her curls brushed tidily up from the back of her neck and skewered with a hairpin, came over and laid her hand on his knee. "Dus a 'itte ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... moment," and before Handy could say another word Fogg was half-way down the first flight of stairs. The noise of the opening and closing of the street door was heard, and then succeeded a buzz of female voices accompanied by a patter of feet on the stairs. Before Handy had time to prepare to receive visitors, the door opened and Fogg, his face lighted up with the broadest kind of a smile, made his appearance, and ushered in the committee, which consisted of five blooming matrons who ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... to branch until I was near the top. I had but to climb along a stout limb in order to reach the wall. But suddenly my ears caught the patter of feet, and I cowered against the trunk and tried to blend myself with its shadow. A man was coming toward me on the roof. I saw his dark figure creeping along, his body crouching, his head advanced, ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Prue toss her head; and immediately after the flash came a violent peal of thunder just above their heads, so violent that it seemed as though the heavens themselves were being rent and shaken and the house tumbling about them. Then came a quick patter, patter, patter, swish, swish, and a storm of ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... the carpet the dear little feet Came with a patter to climb on my seat; Two merry eyes, full of frolic and glee, Under their lashes looked up unto me; Two little hands pressing soft on my face, Drew me down close in a loving embrace; Two rosy lips gave the answer so true, "Good to ...
— McGuffey's Second Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... what fin'lly glides out on the stage and bows offhand to the soft patter of kid gloves is only an average looker. She's simple dressed and simple actin'. No frills about Miss Hampton at all. Why, you might easy mistake her for ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... fifteen to twenty in depth; the columns of the pitch stone-bed immediately above it seem perilously hanging in mid air; and along their sides there trickles, in even the driest summer weather,—for the Scuir is a condenser on an immense scale—minute runnels of water, that patter ceaselessly in front of the long deep hollow, like rain from the eaves of a cottage during a thunder shower. Inside, however, all is dry, and the floor is covered to the depth of several inches with the dung of sheep and cattle, that find, in this singular ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... the creator of the delightful Dooley, express themselves in pure and excellent English the moment they drop the mask of their personage. This is very characteristic. Many educated Americans take great delight, and even pride, in keeping abreast of the daily developments of slang and patter; but this study does not in the least impair their sense for, or their command of, good English. The idea that the English language is degenerating in America is an absolutely groundless illusion. Take them all round, the newspapers of the leading American cities, in their editorial ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... of a buzzer and the patter of a maid's feet along the hall, checked Carr's speech. He did not resume. Instead he reached for a box of cigars, and lighted one. By that time Tommy Ashe ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... palm-leaves swayed in through the open lattice; yet they had the same motion and the same air of my favourite tree, and seemed to murmur to me, "Though we seem to be palm-leaves, yet are we acacia-leaves; yea, those very ones on which you used to watch the butterflies alight and the rain patter while you smoked and dreamed!" So in all things; the room was, yet was not, mine; and a sickening consciousness of my utter inability to reconcile its identity with its appearance overwhelmed ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... mean as dirt," the other went on to say. "There's a slick way he's got of rubbing his hands together when he's talking, and looking up from the tail of his eye, to see how you're taking his patter. Now, I'm only a boy, and I don't make out to be able to read character any great shakes, but, Fred, I'd be willing to eat my hat if that Corny isn't ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... for conjecture. A patter of footsteps interrupted me from the next room, and a frightened, feminine voice broke the stillness of the outer study. Even before the owner of that voice stepped in to my ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... frightful scowl and a faint aroma of garlic, "patter your pater-nosters as fast as you conveniently may. You have but ten minutes to exist. Has either of you ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... conscience to make martyrdom of my fair lady's life. But perhaps I doubted the inquisitorial capacity of her conscience. At all events, in the end, I rattled the drawing-room door-handle vigorously, and re-entered with a portentous clearing of the throat. There was a flutter and patter in the conservatory, and then the hitherto adored one came in to me, an open book in her hand, and witchery ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... rap, rap! Rap, rap, rap! Lov'd ones are rapping to-night; Heaven seems not far away; Death's sweeping river is bright, Soft is the sheen of its spray. Magical changes those rappings have wrought, Sweet hope to the hopeless their patter has brought, And death is bridg'd over with amaranth flow'rs: Blest Spirits come back from their ...
— Hydesville - The Story of the Rochester Knockings, Which Proclaimed the Advent of Modern Spiritualism • Thomas Olman Todd
... swaying and snapping in the wind much like the sail of a derelict, could see in fancy that celebrated field whereon this eclipse had been supernally prearranged. He could hear the boom of cannon, the thunder of cavalry, the patter of musketry, now thick, now scattered, and again not unlike the subdued rattle of rain on the bulging silk careening before him. He held the handle of the umbrella under his arm, for the wind had a temper mawling and destructive, ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... affected me too; I looked at his enthusiastic face, listened to his voice which mingled with the patter of the rain, and stood as though ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... by the end of his performance has filled the stage with several large flags, a bouquet of flowers and, may be, a beautiful lady, all, possibly produced from a top hat. His performance is given to the accompaniment of amusing patter and is brightened with the colour of ...
— Indian Conjuring • L. H. Branson
... of expressing relief and delight; but it was Maria who stood longest by the door, hearkening to the sweet patter of the rain, watching the indistinct movement of cloud in the dark sky above the darker mass of the forest, breathing the mild air that came ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... she stood listening, she did not know for what, she suddenly heard a faint patter of paws, and the next moment, with a whining yelp, a dog jumped up to her and careered round her feet. A touch showed her it was Bootles—Bootles, distressed and eager; now whining, now pulling at her dress, ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... his big hand to the hilt of his sword. "Patter an Ave quickly," he growled, "ere I slay you with the sight of a ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... outside the continuous patter of horses running, whereupon about ten eunuchs hurried in gasping and out of breath. They clapped their hands, and the several eunuchs (who had come before), understanding the signal, and knowing that the party had arrived, stood in their ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... the moment, if ever, to make her wish known—to assert her will. With a running patter of slippers, she ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... A swift patter of raindrops struck the group, beating gently on Katherine's white, upturned face. Marjorie had now lifted her head to an ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... here. Bid her come down to the chapel." Roberta spoke quietly, and closed the door on her so that she should not see his face. We heard her patter away across the ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... his beautiful yellow moustache at her and said, "How's business, Mother?" Whereupon she saw that Dave was not a villager to be wheedled by her patter. She recognized him, indeed, as belonging like herself to the freemasonry of them that know men and cities, and she spoke to him as one human ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... He set his feet so firmly and with such precision that not even the rustle of a leaf or the crackling of a twig would have warned the sharpest ear of his approach. The wind was in his favor, too, blowing from the creek toward him. The doe, which he could not yet see but the patter of whose light hoofs he had heard as she trotted with her fawn to the drinking place, could not possibly have discovered his presence; yet she continued to raise her muzzle at intervals and snuff the ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... and Jerry—Somebody—and Bob Logic, Esquire, written by Pierce Egan, once a notorious chronicler of the prize-ring, the compiler of a Slang Dictionary, and whose proficiency in argot and flash-patter was honored by poetic celebration from Byron, Moore, and Christopher North, but whom I remember, when I was first climbing into public life, a decrepit, broken-down old man,—Mr. John Cumberland, of Ludgate Hill, (the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... promotion,—arter waiting a good while— But the tip-top of Tar luck's to be a Warrant Officer; We ain't like to get no further, if we even get as fur. 'Tain't encouraging, my hearty. As for me, I'm old and grey, 'Tis too late now for promotion if it chanced to come my way; And my knowledge, and my patter, and my manners—well I guess They mayn't be percisely fitted for a dandy ward-room mess. But the Navy of the Future, TOMMY ATKINS, is our care, We have gone through many changes, and for others must prepare. It will make ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 31, 1891 • Various
... Pinchas,—all of whom he would shoot presently and had in the meantime enshrined like dead flies in the amber of immortal acrostics. The wind began to shake the shutters as they finished supper and presently the rain began to patter afresh against the panes. Reb Shemuel distributed the pieces of Afikuman with a happy sigh, and, lolling on his pillows and almost forgetting his family troubles in the sense of Israel's blessedness, began to chant the Grace like the saints in the Psalm who sing aloud on ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... in the porch under the tendrils of ivy and knocked at the open door. There was a patter of steps inside and a rather odd little personage presented herself . . . a girl of about fourteen, with a freckled face, a snub nose, a mouth so wide that it did really seem as if it stretched "from ear to ear," and two long braids of fair hair ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... rustles the leafy drapery of the forest. The gulls wheel round still, but in more rapid and uncertain flight, accompanying their motions with shrill and mournful cries, like the dismal wailings of the spirit of the storm. A few drops of rain patter on the boats, or plump like stones into the water, and the distant melancholy growl of thunder swells upon the coming gale. Uneasy glances are cast, ever and anon, towards clouds and shore, and grumbling sentences are uttered by the men. Suddenly a hissing sound is heard, a loud ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... the Pulpit nodded toward a big fern leaf near where he himself was growing, and in an instant the Monkey had crawled under this shelter. Truly enough it kept off the rain, the drops pattering down on the leaf over the Monkey's head as they used to patter on the roof of the toy store. No longer was he out in ...
— The Story of a Monkey on a Stick • Laura Lee Hope
... drawing them in squarely, seizing the more important features, and neglecting all that does not assert itself as too essential to be passed over—hence the slang and cant words of every profession, and indeed all language; for language at best is but a kind of "patter," the only way, it is true, in many cases, of expressing our ideas to one another, but still a very bad way, and not for one moment comparable to the unspoken speech which we may sometimes have recourse to. The metaphors and ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... and we can't go fairy-hunting at all," said Daisy next morning, as the patter on the window-pane woke her up, and Aunt Wee came in to ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... one with which John Allan little concerned himself. A robust son and heir had come in his late middle age to fill all his thoughts with new interest and plans for the present and the future. The patter of little feet of his own child on the stairs and halls of his home, drowned the ghostly memories of other and less welcome footfalls that ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... want to say. Do you really find that very unpardonable? Come, let me put you a case. Never mind about whether it is our case. A man spends his time incessantly in going about in third-class carriages to fifth-rate lodgings. He has to make up new tricks, new patter, new nonsense, sometimes every night of his life. Mostly he has to do it in the beastly black cities of the Midlands and the North, where he can't get out into the country. Now and again he does it at some gentleman's country-house, where he can get ...
— Magic - A Fantastic Comedy • G.K. Chesterton
... our heads, and here was the brown fort. Its big gates swung together as we dashed through the narrowed opening. Then, as he lifted us off, I knew that the man who had saved us was Tom himself. The gates closed with a bang, and a patter of bullets ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... in the name of Allah. The party found itself forced back towards the carriage, and Benton fingered the grip of the revolver in his pocket as the other hand held the girl's arm. At the same moment there was a sudden clamor of shouting and the patter of running feet. Then the throng of beggars dropped back under the pelting blows from heavy naboots ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... they honored each other with a salute of surprise, and went their way. And all about and through, weaving, watching, moving like spirits, were the forest multitudes which the young man never saw, but which he divined, and of whose movements he sometimes caught for a single instant the faintest patter or rustle. It constituted the mystery of the forest, that great fascinating, lovable mystery which, once it steals into the heart of a man, has always a hearing and a longing when it makes ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... broken only by the ripple of water under the bow of the canoe, the persistent patter of the rain all around us, and the SLISH, SLISH of the paddle with which Ferdinand, my Canadian voyageur, was pushing the birch-bark down the lonely length of Lac Moise. I knew that there was one of his stories on the way. But I must keep still to get it. A single ill-advised ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... missionaries of sedition is certain, and their reputed sanctity gives them access to the zenana. In Bengal even small boys of so tender an age as still to have the run of zenanas have, I am told, been taught the whole patter of sedition, and go about from house to house dressed up as little sanyasis in little yellow robes ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... he was losin' ground in spite of his best efforts, and let me have both barrels. I heard the shot patter on the hard road behind me, and hoped he'd quit and go home, but I'm blamed if he didn't chase me five miles further before turnin' back, in hopes I'd cast a shoe or something would ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... itself, as it drags a rotting leaf. I was buried before death, as it were, even if the wolves found me not and gave me other sepulture; and now and again I heard their long hunting cry, and at every patter of a beast's foot, or shivering of the branches, I thought my hour was come—and I unconfessed! The road was still as death, no man passing by it. This night to me was like the night of a man laid living ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... hoy[obs3], cat, buss; sailer, sailing vessel; windjammer; steamer, steamboat, steamship, liner, ocean liner, cruisp, flap, dab, pat, thump, beat, blow, bang, slam, dash; punch, thwack, whack; hit hard, strike hard; swap, batter, dowse|, baste; pelt, patter, buffet, belabor; fetch one a blow; poke at, pip, ship of the line; destroyer, cruiser, frigate; landing ship, LST[abbr]; aircraft carrier, carrier, flattop[coll.], nuclear powered carrier; submarine, submersible, atomic submarine. boat, pinnace, launch; life boat, long boat, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... of the patter and fun of fashion in Lady Morgan's books than in any other chronicles of the ton. Her last work, the Book of the Boudoir, to use an Hibernicism, is not yet published; but from one of its scenes shifted into the Court Journal, we pick the following anecdote of John Kemble and her ladyship, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 384, Saturday, August 8, 1829. • Various
... Americans in the sixties. These young women knew all about operas and theaters. They had heard great musicians play and great singers sing. They had seen all the notable actors. They read the current literature of the time—the lighter part of it at least—and above all, they were mistresses of the "patter," which passes for brilliancy and sometimes even for wit in ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... praying, the unbelievers from the Soudan fell back and stood silent. A cry to God, no matter what god, silences the patter of the market-place. Abdullah prayed as a child ...
— The Turquoise Cup, and, The Desert • Arthur Cosslett Smith
... am, my noble Gorgio! He could patter the calo jib with the best of 'um. He know'd lots wot the Gentiles don' know, an' he had the eagle beak an' the peaked eye. Oh, tiny Jesus was a Romany chal, or ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... behind the calmness of the voice. She could only say to Ruth: "I'll never forget." Then she fled down the hall and through the door, and the two within heard the sharp patter of her heels, as she ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... there was a swift patter of bare feet. Out of the darkness leapt a score of armed warriors. They were all round her. From all parts dark shadows sprang forward till scores of men with their chiefs ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... glory of clearness after rain, boy and girl moved along together under the trees. The fisherman's path which they followed wound where wet granite shone and ivy glimmered beneath the forest; and the leaves still dripped briskly, making a patter of sound through the underwood, and marking a thousand circles and splashes in the smooth water beneath the banks of the stream. Against a purple-grey background of past rain the green of high summer ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... predominant—heard and accounted for. And then, just as he had glanced at his watch and found that it was close upon two o'clock, came the first real intimation that something was likely to happen. Moving across the park towards him he heard the sound of a faint patter, curious and irregular in rhythm, which came from behind a range of low hillocks. He raised himself on his hands and knees to watch. His eyes were fastened upon a certain spot,—a stretch of the open park between himself and the hillocks. The patter ceased and began ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... plantation without a pass from his master.[302] Such an institution was based on good Negro psychology, for his fear of the spirits of night was well known. Citizens of that time have told us many tales of the dread which the slave had of meeting these night raiders whom they termed "patter-rollers" and how they came to sing of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... through which they passed, and throwing strongly marked shadows here and there on the flower-embroidered moss of the old bridge. There was that solemn, plaintive stillness in the air which makes the least sound—the hum of an insect's wing, the cracking of a twig, the patter of falling water—so ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... that, when you come to sum it up, is largely fictitious in value—or comes inevitably to be thought so—I would like to have you step forward and name it. I have been all through that phase of it, and I know; and I also know by heart the patter of the persons who recommend it. Further, I know the person round the forties doesn't live who enjoys this sort of thing—no matter what he says about it; and without enjoyment exercise is of no use or worse than useless. It can be done, of course; and lumps of muscle can be stuck on almost any part ...
— The Fun of Getting Thin • Samuel G. Blythe
... the rock, into which Peabody had dived as into water, hung a curtain of vines. Everett tore it apart. Concealed by the vines was the narrow mouth to a tunnel; and from it they heard, rapidly lessening in the distance, the patter of footsteps. ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... hover Over all the starry spheres And the melancholy darkness Gently weeps in rainy tears, What a bliss to press the pillow Of a cottage-chamber bed, And to listen to the patter Of the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... out by the Senior Matron, and billeted singly. I'm in a nice little house with a garden with an old French lady who hasn't a word of English, and fell on my neck when she found I could understand her, and patter glibly and atrociously back. My little room has a big window over the garden, and will, I suppose, be my headquarters for the present in between train and station duty, which I believe is to be our lot. We go to a rather dim cafe for meals, and shall then learn what the duty is ...
— Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front, 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... and accessories, and Connie proceeds to serve tea, all accompanied by appropriate patter—"Two ...
— Theft - A Play In Four Acts • Jack London
... to all on duty at twelve o'clock, and we're on duty, aren't we? They're about ready to serve now; we eat in the tent," he added, holding out his hand as he heard the patter of raindrops. "Rain again! No matter, we shall be dry ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... change, that wet scent which visits even the hearts of towns and inspires the watcher of their myriad activities with thought of the restless Force that forever cries: "On, on!" But gradually the steady patter of the horse's hoofs, the rattling of the windows, the slow thudding of the wheels, pressed on us so drowsily that when, at last, we reached home we were more than half asleep. The fare was two shillings, and, standing in the lamplight to make sure the coin was a half-crown ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Crow heard the gentle flap of wings, and looking over the edge of the nest, she saw Old Parson Owl in the dim moonlight. The next moment the sight of little Jimmy Crow hopping after him made her heart go pitter-patter. ...
— Little Jack Rabbit's Adventures • David Cory
... walked away. He had only gone a few steps, when there was a patter of feet behind him. ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... whistling, and paused for a moment to take breath. Deering, throwing himself back from the path, grasped a bush. The twigs rattled noisily, and with a frightened "Oh!" the clown darted away, nimbly and fleetly. They followed a white blur in the starlight for an instant and heard the patter of ...
— The Madness of May • Meredith Nicholson
... round the empty hall and at the windows, black against the night. Under the patter of the rain he heard footsteps—distinctly. He went hastily clumping down the hall, and along the passage to ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... rain fell on his hand. A moment later there was a continuous patter, as the storm, which had been gathering all day, broke in earnest. Mike turned up his coat-collar, and ran back to Outwood's. "At this rate," he said to himself, "there won't be a match ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... Tommy were sound asleep on their cots as soon as supper was over, and Will and George were getting ready to retire when the soft patter of a light footstep sounded in the vicinity of ...
— The Call of the Beaver Patrol - or, A Break in the Glacier • V. T. Sherman
... the swift wings of excitement, flew upstairs. There was the quick patter of eager little feet, and in a very few moments the door was pushed open and a boy and girl entered. Charlotte recognized them at a glance. They were the very handsome little pair whose acquaintance she had made yesterday in Regent's Park. The girl hung back a trifle shyly, but the boy, just saying ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... puffing of the slender tin stack, the three gay and joyous little noises, each sounding like a note of discreet laughter interrupted by a cough, became clear and distinct. Inside the room there was no sound except the persistent patter of something four-footed going up and down. At length even this sound ceased abruptly. Worn out, Vandover had just fallen, dropping forward upon his face with a long breath. He lay still, sleeping at last. The remnant of the great band of ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... overboard. The course steered is so suddenly altered, that as she rounds to the effect of the sails is doubled; the creaking of the tiller-ropes and rudder next strike the ear; then follows the pitter-patter of several hundred feet in rapid motion, producing a singular tremor, fore and aft. In the midst of these ominous noises may be heard, over all, the shrill startling voice of the officer of the watch, generally betraying in its tone more ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... from them in horror while her poor, white face turned to me for rescue in desperate pleading—oh! I must find her at all costs; and leaping from bed I snatched up those trousers without which the best of heroes is nothing, and had hardly got into them when there came the patter of light feet without and a Martian, in a hurry for once, with half a dozen others behind him, swept aside the curtains of ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... There was a patter of feet from the sitting-room and Barbara came running, Petunia in her arms. At the sight of their visitor's lanky ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... clouds now rolled in volumes over the mountain tops; their summits still bright and snowy, but the lower parts of an inky blackness. The rain began to patter down in broad and scattered drops; the wind freshened, and curled up the waves; at length, it seemed as if the bellying clouds were torn open by the mountain tops, and complete torrents of rain came rattling down. The lightning leaped from cloud to cloud, and streamed ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... gentlemen," he said to the mockers in a wavering voice, "I will now present to you the concluding item of my entertainment. I will cause this lady to disappear under your very eyes, without the aid of any mechanical contrivance or artificial device." This was the merest showman's patter, for, as a matter of fact, it was not a very wonderful illusion. But as he led his wife forward to present her to the audience the conjurer was wondering whether the mishaps that had ruined his chance would meet him even here. If something should ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... the friend who is now speaking was a boy at his sports—playing around the old Federal Street Theatre, and beneath the walls of the Franklin Street Cathedral, and hearing upon the broad causeways of Pearl Street the rustle and patter of the autumn leaves as they fell from the chestnuts around the Perkins Institution and the elms that darkened the sombre, deserted castle of Harris's Folly. With this sense of strangeness though, comes a sense still more striking and impressive ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... night began to pass. The outline of the window-frame became visible against a faint grey glimmer. The window was open, and a breath of the coming dawn wandered in with the fragrance of drenched roses. A soft rain was falling. The patter of it could ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... Douglas threw himself on his horse and was off after the dim figure that raced down the west trail which led to the Pass. He did not heed Judith's call nor the quick patter of hoofs behind him. On and on through the frosty April night, Prince barking joyfully before, the Moose galloping at top speed, the stars sliding overhead. On past the Browns' noisy corral, past Falkner's ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... and in the silence that followed, only the dull patter of the rain, and the persistent purring of a kitten curled up on the cot were audible. Mrs. Singleton finished the buttonhole in Dick's apron, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... bog-asphodel, sundew, and the like. The tale is a charming combination of humour and pathos, and the last clause, where "the shoes go home," is enough to bring tears to the eyes of every one who loves the patter ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... in a woman's smile, of rapture in a woman's kiss. It meant the giving up of every joy in seeing her pass before him, of hearing the swish of her skirts on the pavement of the city; it meant the giving up of all hope ever to win her, of all thought of a future home, the patter of children's feet, the rocking of a tiny cradle. It meant the sacrifice of every thought of happiness and of every desire of body ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... can't sleep with that fly in my ear! I'll take a walk!" Down the steps he went. Skippety, skippety, skippety, skippety. He reached the sidewalk. On the sidewalk went his feet. You could hear them as they beat. Pitter patter, pitter patter, pitter patter down ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... the rain went patter-patter on the windowpanes, Ezra saw a strange sight in the fireplace—yes, right among the embers and the crackling flames Ezra saw a strange, beautiful picture unfold and spread itself out like ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... Star herself. They, too, talked but little, and as we rode on in the deepening gloom amid the solemn silence and the gaunt grandeur of the mountains, their words became fewer and fewer, till at length thought took the place of speech, and the silence was broken by no sound save the patter of the mules' feet and the rattle of stones under ...
— The Romance of Golden Star ... • George Chetwynd Griffith
... incidents which Joan listened to with a breaking heart. Stella could not sleep at all after her return. She lived in a little house with a big garden on the northern edge of London, and all night she lay awake, listening to the patter of rain on melancholy trees, and thinking and thinking. Harry Luttrell kept her from the drugs in her dressing-case. She had no ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... boomed a voice, as a patter of water descended upon her head; and Dolly stepped out into the vigorous embrace of a turkish towel. It was passing over her body with a firm, rotary motion as of machinery; she swayed within it like a palm in a tempest. It slid ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... when she woke the next morning, Lydia half hoped that the soft patter against her window was of rain drops. But it was the wind-tossed maple leaves, whose scarlet and gold were drifting deep on the lawn and garden. There never was a more brilliant October day than this, and at ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... almost beyond the circle of light, paused while my lips moved in a vague smile of response, then moved on into the shadow. The low, deep quiet of the corridor resumed its hold on me. The patter of reflection in my ...
— A Diary Without Dates • Enid Bagnold
... June felt neither troubled nor afraid. She lay there with her face upturned to the pelting rain, watching it patter from leaf to leaf, listening to the chirp of the birds in the nests, listening to the crying of the wind. She liked the sound. She had a dim notion that it was like an old camp-meeting hymn that she had heard Creline sing sometimes. She never ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... the day-light, When the night is beginning lo lower, Comes a pause in the day's occupation Which is known as the children's hour. 'Tis then appears tiny Irving With the patter of little feet, To tell us that worms become dizzy At a slight application of heat. And Norma, the baby savant, Comes toddling up with the news That a valvular catch in the larynx Is the reason why Kitty mews. "Oh Grandpa," cries lovable Lester, "Jack Frost has surprised us again, By condensing ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... and listened to the patter of her little feet descending the stairs to the street. Then he went back into the studio and drew the curtains. Thank God, her heart ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... fill up far more than an hour in speaking of those voices which come to us as nature is at work. Think of the patter of the rain, how each drop as it hits the pavement sends circles of sound-waves out on all sides; or the loud report which falls on the ear of the Alpine traveller as the glacier cracks on its way down the valley; or the mighty boom of the avalanche as the snow slides in huge masses ...
— The Fairy-Land of Science • Arabella B. Buckley
... The lips of Patter ne'er are dumb, The Futile Mills shall grind their grist Of sand from now till Kingdom Come; The Winds of Bunk are never whist. You scowl and shake an honest fist — You threaten her with Night and Sorrow? Go slay one Pseudo-Scientist, More Little ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis
... came to pass that coffee history repeated itself in England. Many good people became convinced that coffee was a dangerous drink. The tirades against the beverage in that far-off time sound not unlike the advertising patter employed by some of our present-day coffee-substitute manufacturers. It was even ridiculed by being referred to as "ninny broth" ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... the creaking of the blind man's chair and the decreasing patter of the rain. Soon it stopped and Harry Baggs went outside; stars glimmered at the edges of shifting clouds, a sweet odor rose from the earth, a trailing ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... you did!" shouted Mr. Blake. Both he and Mr. Porter had to shout to be heard above the noise of the storm; for the thunder was very loud, and the patter of the rain drops, and the rattle of the hail made a very great ...
— Daddy Takes Us to the Garden - The Daddy Series for Little Folks • Howard R. Garis
... of Memories her fancy sped, as though borne on wings. Childish voices rang through the empty corridors and the fairy patter of tiny feet sounded on the stairs. One by one, out of the shadows, old joys and old loves came toward her; forgotten hopes and lost dreams. Hands long since mingled with the dust clasped hers once more with perfect understanding—warm ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... stood in the glare of light, the baggy scarlet breeches and gray shirt making a flaring mark that no eye, called suddenly to see, could miss, that no rifle brought sliding through the loophole and searching for a target could fail to mark. The bullets began to patter about 'Enery Irving's feet, to whine and whimper and buzz about his ears. And 'Enery—this was where the trench, despite themselves, laughed—'Enery placed his hand on his heart, swept off his cap in a magnificent arm's length gesture, ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... is at night. The custodians know me and let me moon about in the dark. When all that is ignoble and mean has faded away with the daylight, it seems to me the ghosts of the old time come back upon the sands. I can fancy the patter of light hoofs, the glancing of spectral horns. I can imagine the agile tread of Romero, the deadly thrust of Montes, the whisper of long-vanished applause, and the clapping of ghostly hands. I am growing too old for such skylarking, and I sometimes come away with a cold in my head. But ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... labors were over for that night, and soon went to bed, tired with her first attempts. But toward morning she was wakened by the hoarse breathing of the boy, and was forced to patter away to Miss Bat's room, humbly asking for the squills, and confessing that the prophecy had come ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... to his own room. Along this he goes some twenty paces or more, when there comes quickly into view from a side gallery the figure of a tall, slight, and graceful girl. She has descended some little flight of stairs, for he could hear the patter of her slippered feet, and the swish of her skirts before she appeared. Now, with rapid step she is coming straight towards him, carrying some little glass phials in her hand. The glare of the afternoon sun is blazing in the street, and at the window behind ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... noting with housewifely approval that it had recently been polished. I have seldom passed a more uncomfortable time of waiting, than that between the resounding clatter of grandmother's knocking reverberating through the empty house, and the patter of feet, the whispering, and at last the ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... they come!" was the shout passed along from cabin to cabin, announcing the patter of a pack of dogs, howling, ravenous, their bodies covered with mud, running about without finding rest, driven on day and night, with the madness of persecution in their eyes. The huerta seemed to shudder, closing the doors of all the houses and suddenly bristling with guns. Shots rang out ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... life had Dame Desley and her four children led in their rural home. The sound of their cheerful voices, the patter of their little feet, the laugh, the shout, and the song, had been heard from morning till night. I will not stop to tell of all the daisy-chains and cowslip-balls made by the children under the big elm-tree that grew on their mother's lawn; or how they gathered ripe blackberries in autumn; ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... gone but a few paces before the other discovered that I was in flight. I heard the rapid patter of his shoes behind me. In another twenty feet I heard his voice. It was not loud and it was cautious, but it reached my ears with a suggestion of ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... pitch stone-bed immediately above it seem perilously hanging in mid air; and along their sides there trickles, in even the driest summer weather,—for the Scuir is a condenser on an immense scale—minute runnels of water, that patter ceaselessly in front of the long deep hollow, like rain from the eaves of a cottage during a thunder shower. Inside, however, all is dry, and the floor is covered to the depth of several inches with the dung of sheep and cattle, ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... place of shelter for my instruments; and as I was careful always to put this part against the wind, I could lie here with a sensation of satisfied enjoyment, and hear the wind blow, and the rain patter close to my head, and know that I should be at least half dry. Certainly I never slept more soundly. The barometer at sunset was 26.010, thermometer at 81 deg., and cloudy; but a gale from the west sprang up with the setting sun, and in a few minutes swept away every cloud from ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... him; every vein throbbed; every nerve quivered. In a minute he would wipe out, once and for all, the score of years; for the moment, however, there was urgent business on hand. For outside he could hear the quick patter of feet hard-galloping, and the scurry of a huge creature racing madly ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... me patter for that!' Dymes exclaimed, when he saw that she smiled with pleasure. 'You don't know Dicky Wellington? A cousin of Ada's. By-the-bye, her concert will be at the end of May—Prince's Hall, most likely. You ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... hill! Walk along, Lord Carnarvon! you ain't sitting in a cab'net council here, you know. Don't leave Sir Garnet do all the work, you know. Forward, my lucky lads! creep up it!" and by the time he had shrieked out this and a lot more patter, behold! we were at the top of the hill, and a fresh, lovely landscape was lying smiling in the sunshine below us. It was a beautiful country we passed through, but, except for a scattered homestead here and there by the roadside, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... heard the swift patter of feet over the crisp surface, and the grey beast came and halted suddenly not three yards from us, and on his haunches he sat up and howled, and I heard the answering yells in no long space of time coming whence we had come. His eyes glowed green with a strange light of their own as he ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... birds lack the brilliance of the speculums of puddle ducks. Since many of them have short tails, their huge, paddle feet may be used as rudders in flight, and are often visible on flying birds. When launching into flight, most of this group patter along the water ...
— Ducks at a Distance - A Waterfowl Identification Guide • Robert W. Hines
... room. She still did not believe that either of the boys had been up at that unearthly hour using the grindstone, but she wished to prove to Elsie that it was all imagination. As she passed the head of the stairs she suddenly stopped. Somewhere, down below, she distinctly heard a soft noise like the patter of slippered feet. Ida ...
— Under Padlock and Seal • Charles Harold Avery
... hanging there like a gigantic black bat. There was not a soul anywhere near him, but by the occasional flashes of light Thomson could see soldiers and hurrying people in the Admiralty Square, and along the Strand he could hear the patter of footsteps upon the pavement. But he himself remained alone, a silent, spellbound, fascinated witness of this epic of ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... thousand other parts of the earth for all this? For my part, considering the license and impunity that always attend such commotions, I admire they are so moderate, and that there is not more mischief done. To him who feels the hailstones patter about his ears, the whole hemisphere appears to be in storm and tempest." And raising his thoughts higher and higher, reducing his own suffering to what it was in the immensity of nature, seeing there not only himself but whole ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... with his patter. . . Oh, dear Mr. Cloete, you are a calm, reasonable man. Make him behave sensibly. He's a bit obstinate, you know, and he's so fond of the ship, too. Tell him I am here—looking on. . . Trust me, Mrs. Dunbar. Only shut that window, that's a good girl. You will be sure to catch cold if you ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... so silent—though there were more than twenty people in it—that nothing could be heard but the patter of the rain against the window-shutters, accompanied by the occasional hiss of a stray drop that fell down the chimney into the fire, and the steady puffing of the man in the corner, who had now resumed ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... any pigs run as these pigs ran! They raced and squealed and pelted down the long white hill towards the bridge. Little fat Pig- wig's petticoats fluttered, and her feet went pitter, patter, pitter, as ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter
... the quaint dragons' mouths, ranged along the parapet of the Abbey roof; it dripped from every stone coping and abutment; from window-ledge and porch, from gable-end and sheltering ivy. The rain was everywhere, and the incessant pitter-patter of the drops beating against the windows of the Abbey made a dismal sound, scarcely less unpleasant to hear than the perpetual lamentation of the winds, which to-day had the sound of human voices; now moaning drearily, with a long, low, wailing ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... the latter! Probably through a mere fluke, for I hadn't the remotest idea which of the trees offered the best facilities to a poor climber. My mind once made up, there was no time to alter. The wer-tiger was already terribly close behind. I could gauge its distance by the patter of its feet—apparently the metamorphosis had only been in part—and by the steadily intensifying purr, purr; so unmistakably interpretative of the brute's utter satisfaction in its power to overtake me, as well as at the prospect of so good a meal. I was just thirteen ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... open, and refused to be herded into a corner. Sometimes the Master succeeded in rushing him to the side-ropes, but the younger man slipped away, or closed and then disengaged. The monotonous "Break away! Break away!" of the referee broke in upon the quick, low patter of rubber-soled shoes, the dull thud of the blows, and the sharp, hissing breath ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... they no longer made a sound. Scarcely had the caribou disappeared when Philip saw the first of them—gray, swiftly moving shapes, spread out fan-like as they closed in on two sides for attack, so close that he could hear the patter of their feet and the blood-curdling whines that came from between their gaping jaws. There were at least twenty of them, perhaps thirty, and they were gone with the swiftness of shadows driven ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... gasp. There was a quick patter of light feet down the stairs, the last two cleared with a jump, a swish of silken skirts, a little gush of perfume, and then, bright as a flash of light, blue-eyed Mollie stood before him. She held his card in her fingers, ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... straight up the steps. The young men all jumped from their seats and Jeff came forward with outstretched hand, but the girl pretended not to see the gesture. With a businesslike "Good-morning," she proceeded to open up her sample case and begin her salesman's patter: "I have here—" She was determined that the call should be purely a commercial one and that the Bucknors could none of them think for a moment that she sought or even desired any ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... O'Keeffe might not do except pay off his mortgages. "He looked like an elephant when he put his trousers on wrong—you know elephants have their knees the wrong way," Eileen once told the public in a patter-song. She did not tell the public it was her father, but like a true artist she learned in suffering what she taught in song. One of her childish memories was to be stood in a row of brothers and sisters against a background of antlers, fishing-rods, ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... into the magic scene in Der Freischuetz, and who mixes up the moanings of her passion with descriptions of the sights, and sounds she there finds around her. It was of quite another stamp. It dealt with a phraseology of sentiment peculiar to itself—a "patter," as it were, which came to be universally recognized in drawing-rooms. It spoke of maidens plighting their troth, of Phyllis enchanting her lover with her varied moods, of marble halls in which true love still remained the same. It apostrophized the shells of ocean; it tenderly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... with it. It was as if the fearful instability of Mr. Ransome's nervous system communicated itself to everybody around him. At the cry or the sudden patter of Ranny's children overhead, Mr. Ransome would be set quivering and shaking, and this disturbance of his reverberated. Ranny set his teeth and sat tight and "stuck it"; but he felt the shattering effect ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... When measons all were frozzen oot, I went to see a country friend, An hospitable hoor to spend. For gains, I cut across o' t' moor, Whoor t' snaw sea furiously did stoor.(1) The hoose I gain'd an' enter'd in, An' were as welcome as a king. The storm agean t' windey patter'd, An' hail-steans doon t' chimley clatter'd. All hands were in, an' seem'd content, An' nean did frost or snaw lament. T' lasses all were at their sewing, Their cheeks wiv health an' beauty glowing. Aroond the hearth, in cheerful chat, Twea ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... wild strains subsided, as the summer tempest dies away till nothing is heard but the patter of the rain-drops, and, after a few bars from a love-song, a favorite of Kate's, the music glided into the simple strains of "Home, Sweet Home." And as the oppressed and overheated atmosphere is cleared by the brief storm, so the overwrought feelings of those present ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... opened for the auto, amid the crowd. The faker stopped in the midst of the "patter" concerning his wonderful powder, which "would make the teeth like unto the milky pearls ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car - The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley • Laura Lee Hope
... sighed mentally. "Your love would have made me a better man if I had not cast it from me. Dear Lily, the mother of my child," and a tear half trembled in his eyelashes, as he tried to fancy that child; tried to hear the patter of the little feet running to welcome him home, as they might have done had he been true to Lily; tried to hear the baby voice calling him "papa;" to feel the baby hands upon his face—his bearded face where the great tears were standing now. "I did love Lily," he murmured; ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... of inactivity was a real menace to the success of their plans, no one can wonder that they chafed over this most exasperating delay. Under ordinary circumstances it would have been melancholy enough to watch the mottled, wet, green walls of their tents and to hear the everlasting patter of the falling snow and the ceaseless rattle of the fluttering canvas, but when the prospect of failure of their cherished plan was added to the acute discomforts of the situation, it is scarcely possible to imagine how totally miserable they must ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... coming holiday or attracted by the light and bustle. Heavy looking Russians, olive-skinned Italians, placid Germans, wild-eyed and pallid Czechs, lounged along the thoroughfare, chatting with compatriots, or gathering in amused groups to hear the strange patter of some voluble merchant retailing goods from a barrow. From the interiors of tiny shops and cellars came eldritch voices crying the nature and remarkable qualities of the wares within. Every hand-cart carried a flaring naphtha-lamp, and the glare of these ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... the chamber above me The patter of little feet, The sound of a door that is opened, And voices ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... that the sudden quick patter of feet sounded in the hall, and Harriet ran in—danced in—her eyes were shining; she was a picture of youth ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... who stood in the store listening to the eager patter of words that fell from the lips of the traveling man, was tall and lean and looked unwashed. On his scrawny neck was a large wen partially covered by a grey beard. He wore a long Prince Albert ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... lanterns warned the traveler of danger, but it seemed as if they spoke not of the dangers of the present but of those graver dangers that once had been. We spent the night at the Eagle Hotel. The rain continued to fall and by its soothing patter on the leaves and roof above us we were ushered into the ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... he came out. The only time when Grumps was thoroughly nonplussed was when Dick Varley's whistle sounded faintly in the far distance. Then Crusoe would prick up his ears and stretch out at full gallop, clearing ditch, and fence, and brake with his strong elastic bound, and leaving Grumps to patter after him as fast as his four-inch legs would carry him. Poor Grumps usually arrived at the village to find both dog and master gone, and would betake himself to his own dwelling, there to lie down and sleep, and dream, perchance, of rambles and gambols ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... twenty months, just, since Wilford died; and George Washington asked Martha Custis for her hand within less time than that after her husband's death," he said to himself one wet October afternoon, when he sat listening dreamily to the patter of the rain falling upon the windows, and looking occasionally across the fields to the farmhouse, in the vain hope of spying in the distance the little airy form, which, in its waterproof and cloud, had braved worse storms than this at the time ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... for these who die as cattle? Only the monstrous anger of the guns. Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle Can patter out their hasty orisons. No mockeries for them; no prayers nor bells, Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,— The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells; And bugles calling for them ...
— Poems • Wilfred Owen
... down the sky," the cold wind softened and grew still; the stars swelled out larger; the rats came, and then came puss, and the rats went with a scuffle and patter; the pagan grey came in like a sleep-walker, and made the barn dreary as a dull dream; then the horses began to fidget with their big feet, the cattle to low with their great trombone throats, and the cocks to crow as if to give warning for the last ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... set his feet so firmly and with such precision that not even the rustle of a leaf or the crackling of a twig would have warned the sharpest ear of his approach. The wind was in his favor, too, blowing from the creek toward him. The doe, which he could not yet see but the patter of whose light hoofs he had heard as she trotted with her fawn to the drinking place, could not possibly have discovered his presence; yet she continued to raise her muzzle at intervals and snuff ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... the King's daughter was sitting at table with the King and all the court, and eating from her golden plate, there came something pitter patter up the marble stairs, and then there came a knocking at the door, and a voice crying "Youngest King's daughter, ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... by the altar-railing, give us a start, like crackers, whenever they laugh. And this reminds me of my own village church where, during sermon-time on bright Sundays when the birds are very musical indeed, farmers' boys patter out over the stone pavement, and the clerk steps out from his desk after them, and is distinctly heard in the summer repose to pursue and punch them in the churchyard, and is seen to return with a meditative countenance, making believe that nothing of the sort has happened. The aunt and ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... birds, some to swine, some to parrots, and some to loathsome reptiles curled round the half-decayed bodies of sheep. The intermittent sounds—now a cough, now a horrible wheezing or throat-clearing, now a little patter of conversation—were just, he declared, what you hear if you stand in the lion-house when the bones are being mauled. But these comparisons did not rouse Hewet, who, after a careless glance round the room, fixed his eyes upon a thicket of native spears ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... a knock came at the door, and here we made the one serious mistake for which I blame myself. Instead of opening the door ourselves, we allowed the girl to do so. We heard her say, 'Mother, there are two men in the house waiting to see you,' and an instant afterwards we heard the patter of feet rushing down the passage. Forbes flung open the door, and we both ran into the back room or kitchen, but the woman had got there before us. She stared at us with defiant eyes, and then, suddenly ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... in her chamber, listening to the sound of merry voices in the hall without, or the patter of feet, as the fast arriving guests tripped up and down the stairs. She had heard the voice of J.C. De Vere as he passed her door, but it awoke within her bosom no lingering regret, and when an hour later Nellie stood before her, arrayed in her bridal robes, she passed her hand caressingly over ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... set up the heirs of a new Roman Empire.... Words, words, all second-hand. The refuse of the libraries scattered to the winds.—Like all his comrades, young Jeannin went from one showman to another, listened to their patter, was sometimes taken in by it, and entered the booth, only to come out disappointed and rather ashamed of having spent his time and his money in watching old clowns buffooning in shabby rags. And yet, such is youth's power of illusion, such was his certainty of ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... like to hear upon the roof The patter of each tiny hoof Of Santa's reindeer overhead, When I am ...
— Christmas Entertainments • Alice Maude Kellogg
... at El-Muwaylah, described in my last volume,[EN18] on the auspicious Wednesday, December 19, 1877, under a salute from the gunboat Mukhbir, which the fort answered with a rattle and a patter of musketry. All the notables received us, in line drawn up on the shore, close to our camp. To the left stood the civilians in tulip-coloured garb; next were the garrison, a dozen Bash-Buzuks en bourgeois, and mostly armed with matchlocks; then came out quarrymen in uniform, but without weapons; ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... moonlight night four swains with their guitars stationed themselves under the windows of the handsome old house and sang plaintive love songs for an hour or more. Finally a shutter was pushed open very gently, and the four hearts went pitter-patter, anticipating the sight of a lovely young girl's face. Instead, appeared an old, black one, capped by a snowy turban, and these words floated down: "I'se sorrie, gen'le-men, but de young ladies is all gone out—but I sure is pleased wid you-all's music!" The quartet was composed ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... it up, is largely fictitious in value—or comes inevitably to be thought so—I would like to have you step forward and name it. I have been all through that phase of it, and I know; and I also know by heart the patter of the persons who recommend it. Further, I know the person round the forties doesn't live who enjoys this sort of thing—no matter what he says about it; and without enjoyment exercise is of no use or worse than useless. It can be done, of course; and lumps of ...
— The Fun of Getting Thin • Samuel G. Blythe
... thing one expects in India than in Europe. Although our soldier-servant had never been on parade in his life (I had taught him to salute when at Petrograd by making him salute himself in front of the big glass in my room, a plan worth any amount of raucous patter from the drill-sergeant), the very fact of his being in khaki seemed to turn him into a Russian scholar by that mysterious process adopted by British soldiers in foreign lands. Wigram had a grammar, and I had known a little Russian in the past; but in the absence of Meyendorff and the courier ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... almost distinguish those little Arabs from the by-streets and slums of Leeds. They were running about in tatters, shouting themselves hoarse with delight, and turning unlimited catharine-wheels in their happy delirium. I could hear them distinctly clapping their hands; I could not hear the patter of their feet, though—the poor little fellows were bootless. Then they ceased their play for a moment. Somebody was beckoning to them to follow him. He quietly led them beneath the branches of the very biggest tree in the garden. He pointed his finger upwards. ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... expectations a crowd slowly gathered. The beauty of the girl and the dark, handsome face of the musician, his picturesque bare head, were sufficient for these cynical passers-by. They understood. Operatic celebrities, having a little fun on their own. So quarters and dimes and nickels began to patter into Cutty's ancient derby hat. Broadway will always contribute generously toward a novelty of this order. Famous names were tossed about ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... shingle and hold the boat; I have just got the antigrav turned off, otherwise I think it would have been carried away. There are two or three more big waves and a patter of spray; ...
— The Lost Kafoozalum • Pauline Ashwell
... we had passed well beyond the equatorial belt that Johnny grew visibly worse. In a week he had to lie still on his couch beneath the awning, and the patter of his feet ceased on the deck. The captain, who was a bit of a doctor, said to ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... window-panes and play at hide-and-seek all over me and my little mate; they would kiss and caress us, and we learned to love them very much—they were so warm and gentle and merrisome. Sometimes the raindrops would patter against the window-panes, singing wild songs to us, and clamoring to break through and destroy us with their eagerness. When night came, we could see stars away up in the dark sky winking at us, and very often the old mother moon stole out from ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... We may illustrate by an example. Suppose I am believing, by means of images, not words, that it will rain. We have here two interrelated elements, namely the content and the expectation. The content consists of images of (say) the visual appearance of rain, the feeling of wetness, the patter of drops, interrelated, roughly, as the sensations would be if it were raining. Thus the content is a complex fact composed of images. Exactly the same content may enter into the memory "it was raining" or the assent "rain occurs." ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... the row connected with their rush, the cowardly assailants were themselves unable to hear the patter of swiftly-approaching footsteps, coming from the rear. They evidently shouted, in order to keep their courage up, and prevent Ralph from ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... with a patter of soft feet, the converts, the doubtful, and the open scoffers, troop up to the veranda. You must be infinitely kind and patient, and, above all, clear-sighted, for you deal with the simplicity of childhood, the experience of man, and the ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... there is a stir in the room near you. You hear the patter of little feet on the stairs, and the sound of childish voices in the drawing-room. What transports of admiration, what peals of joyous clamor, fall on your sleepy ears! The patter on the stairs sounds louder and louder, the ringing voices come nearer and nearer; ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... me for, my friend? What Hungarian Jew patter are you jabbering at us? I don't know Hebrew. One isn't a Jew because one is a bandit. I don't even steal any longer. I'm above that; I kill. ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... time supper had been eaten, the storm voices had dwindled from boisterous violence to exhausted quiet, and even the soft patter of warm rain died away until through the door, which now stood ajar, the visitor could see the moonlight and the soft stars that seemed to hang just ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... the screened front porch, where Daddy Morrison was reading beside the electric lamp, and had just picked up his magazine, when there was a patter of little feet and Sister threw her arms ...
— Brother and Sister • Josephine Lawrence
... as the rain begins, the wind drops. The only sound is the patter of rain dropping like fine shot on the young rye and the ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... rose; As bends the barque's mast in the gale, When rent are rigging, shrouds, and sail, It wavered 'mid the foes. No longer Blount the view could bear: "By heaven and all its saints! I swear, I will not see it lost; Fitz-Eustace, you with Lady Clare May bid your beads, and patter prayer - I gallop to the host." And to the fray he rode amain, Followed by all the archer train. The fiery youth, with desperate charge, Made, for a space, an opening large - The rescued banner rose - But darkly closed the ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... great "HISTORICUS" part, I years ago appeared. The Thunderers stage then knew my art, But now that pitch is queered! They swear that I apostatised To follow W.G., And patter about "Parnellite juice," And holloa ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, May 14, 1892 • Various
... was, when that Mother stooped to learn The language written in your infant face. For years she walked your pace, And none but she interpreted your chatter. Who else felt interest in such pitter-patter? Or, weary, joined in all your games with zest, And managed with a minimum of rest? Now, is it not your turn To bridge the gulf, to span the gap be- tween you? To-day, before Death's angel over-lean you, Before your chance is gone? This is ...
— The Verse-Book Of A Homely Woman • Elizabeth Rebecca Ward, AKA Fay Inchfawn
... ordinary motives which make for good conduct—prudence, self-respect, loyalty, etc., etc.—are of no avail, and that they must inevitably be bad men if they had not "found religion"? If such talk does no positive harm, it is only because men have learnt to discount the patter of theology. Yet here we find Mr. Wells, after vigorously disclaiming any participation in the Bishop's beliefs, falling into the common form of episcopal patter, and telling me, for example—a benighted ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... on thee," swirls through her brain, and she is cold—very cold, and sits aloof and will not talk, cannot talk. Ever the patter of the horse's feet in the valley is borne upward by the wind, and she feels in her soul the faltering of a little heart. She dares not hope that it will start up again; she cannot bear the fear that ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... towards him with a graceful movement of greeting, yet her face showed no consciousness of the interval that had elapsed since they met; he almost fancied himself transported back to the sitting-room at Sidon with the monotonous patter of the leaves outside, and the cool moist breath of the bay and alder coming in at ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... Tar luck's to be a Warrant Officer; We ain't like to get no further, if we even get as fur. 'Tain't encouraging, my hearty. As for me, I'm old and grey, 'Tis too late now for promotion if it chanced to come my way; And my knowledge, and my patter, and my manners—well I guess They mayn't be percisely fitted for a dandy ward-room mess. But the Navy of the Future, TOMMY ATKINS, is our care, We have gone through many changes, and for others must ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 31, 1891 • Various
... the miserable days that followed when the very sun in heaven seemed dark to poor Eric's wounded and crushed spirit. He hardly knew how they went by. And when they buried Vernon in the little green churchyard by Russell's side, and the patter of the earth upon the coffin—that most terrible of all sounds—struck his ear, the iron entered into his soul, and he had but one wish as he turned away from the open grave, and that was, soon to lie beside his beloved little brother, ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... the Commandant followed him indoors to the kitchen, where they found Ruth stooping over the great hearth, already busy with the morning fire. Across the planching overhead sounded the patter ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... it, and that was along the bank where he had entered, and where obviously all night long his pursuers had kept fires burning. Further conjecture on this point, however, was interrupted by a crashing in the willows and the rapid patter ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... This was the moment, if ever, to make her wish known—to assert her will. With a running patter of slippers, she ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... her pardon; also he remained where he was, and heard the drops from the tree patter hollow on ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... she was hemming. The bird was hopping about, pecking at a banana which they had thrown to him; a light breeze made the shadow of the artu leaves dance upon the grass, and the serrated leaves of the breadfruit to patter one on the other with the sound of rain-drops falling ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... forward slowly, so that the flapping of the oilskins against the stair-rail would not be heard. The steady patter of rain on the deck planks drowned what little noise we made, and as we emerged into the hood a gust of wind drove the moisture into our faces. I could feel my heart thump, yet it was more because of her proximity than any excitement of adventure. So far as I could perceive, peering out into ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... terrible. He was hurrying now, although he had not formerly been conscious of it, hurrying into the lights and comforts and noise of the town. There might only be for him now a night and day of freedom, but, during that time, he must not, he must not be alone. The patter of Bunker's feet beside him pleased him. Bunker was now a fact of great ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... feel Narcone staring at him now, as he sat nodding to the senseless patter of the Chief in a sort of breathless, terrifying suspense. Would his own face recall to the fellow's mind that night in the forest of Terranova and set his fears aflame? Blake's reason told him that such a thing was beyond the faintest probability, yet the flesh upon his back was crawling ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... can never be known. He was so entirely taken aback that he paused, clearing his throat with but one amazed exclamation of her name; but before his astonishment and indignation had shaped itself into words, their interview was interrupted. An irregular patter of hasty little steps, and outcries of a childish voice behind, had not caught the attention of either in that moment of excitement; but just as Nettie delivered this cruel outbreak of feminine pride and self-assertion, the little pursuing figure made up to them, and ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... Paullinus said that he would pass again that way to see his friend, "for we are friends, I know." And so he went into the wood. It was a wood of very ancient trees, and the dark leaves roofed over the grassy track making a tunnel. The heavens too grew dark above, and Paullinus heard the drops patter upon the leaves. Generally he loved well enough to walk in the woodways, but here it seemed different. He would have liked a companion. Something sinister and terrible seemed to him to hide within those gloomy avenues, and the feeling grew stronger every moment. ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... adventurous journey—maids thrilling with fear and curiosity on the threshold of entrance—women who had borne and perhaps buried children, who could remember the clinging of the small dead hands and the patter of the little feet now silent—he marvelled that among all those faces there should be no face of expectation, none that was mobile, none into which the rhythm and poetry of life had entered. "O for a live face," ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... deck. When the bow of the great vessel plunged down into the big Atlantic waves, the smother of foam that shot upwards would be borne along with the wind, and spatter like rain against the purser's window. Something about this intermittent patter on the pane reminded the purser of the story, and so he told ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... thinking the cabin grew suddenly dark and from above came a shouting and patter of feet. Down upon us swept one of the abrupt, violent squalls that are met with in those latitudes. I lashed Huldricksson fast in the berth ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... seasons—not only the civilised rooks, with their libraries of knowledge in their old nests of reference, but the stray things of the hedge and the chiffchaff from over sea in the ash wood. They go on without me. Orchis flower and cowslip—I cannot number them all—I hear, as it were, the patter of their feet—flower and bud and the beautiful clouds that go over, with the sweet rush of rain and burst of sun glory among the leafy trees. They go on, and I am no more than the least of the empty shells that strewed the sward of the hill. Nature sets no value upon life, neither ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... food, they crawled in and coiled themselves about the walls, wrapped deep in their blankets. Contrary to the Indian custom, they left the low door open for air, and just when Will felt himself well disposed for the night he heard the first patter of ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... they are large enough for any man to see, even were his sight as foggy as that of Peter Patter, who never could see when it was time to ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... circumstances would tackle under the glaring heat of the afternoon's sun. Mosquitoes—harbingers of malaria—and fire-flies buzzed in swarms, snakes and lizards, their hitherto undisturbed solitude rudely shaken by the stealthy patter of three score pairs of bare feet, wriggled across the swampy ground, while overhead thousands of frightened birds flew in large circles, chattering the while in a way that would alarm every Boche within a ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... us went to see "Patter versus Clatter," after all, having all some previous engagement, so that, though it was literally given for our special amusement, we were none ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... time of their sanctification, they were nameless, and no more to be named but by hallowed names; so then he appealed to me.' 'Dinias?' I put in; 'Who is Dinias?' 'Oh, he's a dance-for-your-supper carry-your-luggage rattle- your-patter gaming-house sort of man; eschews the barber, and takes care of his poor chest and toes.' 'Well,' said I, 'paid he the penalty in some wise, or showed a clean pair of heels?' 'Our delicate goer is now fast bound. The governor, ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... mother is sure to feel chilly, as she will never sit in the cabin. Father will settle her comfortably in a chair on deck and proceed to unfasten the rugs. Every one will look on, for there is nothing else to do on board ship but stare at your companions. Then patter, patter, patter, down the rice will fall, and roll along the deck. I can see it all! And the more they blush, the younger they will look; and the angrier and more confused they are, the more natural ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... fireplace, caught up a heavy kettle, and threw it down on the hearth. The hens flew up with a great clamor and whir of wings; Mrs. Sloane's shrill, mocking laugh arose above it. She began talking in a high-pitched voice, flinging out vituperations which would seem to patter against the closed door like bullets. Suddenly she stopped, as if her ire had failed her, and listened intently to a low murmur from the other room. She nodded ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the shooting of bolts, the sounds of voices and presently the quick patter of feminine footsteps which McGuire, now completely oblivious of Peter, ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... answer to their eager request, Lieutenants Blackett and Fairburn were galloping madly across the intervening space, each with his handkerchief fastened to the point of his sword, and both shouting and gesticulating. Bullets began to patter around them, but heedless they dashed on. It seemed impossible they could ...
— With Marlborough to Malplaquet • Herbert Strang and Richard Stead
... that?" said he in English. "Carnehan can't talk their patter, so I've made him my servant. He makes a handsome servant. 'T isn't for nothing that I've been knocking about the country for fourteen years. Didn't I do that talk neat? We'll hitch on to a caravan at Peshawar till we get to Jagdallak, and then we'll see if we can get donkeys ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... every side; For they knew their Gipsy Joe of old, His free wild words and his laughter bold: So high and low all gathered together By the village well in the autumn weather, Lured by the gipsy's bargain-chatter And the reckless lilt of his hare-brained patter. And there the Revd. Salvyn Bent, The parish church's ornament, Stood, as it chanced, in discontent, And eyed with a look that was almost sinister The Revd. Joshua Fall, the minister. And the Squire, it happened, was riding by, With ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann
... comes back to me, even now, I realise why rhyme is so needful in poetry. Because of it the words come to an end, and yet end not; the utterance is over, but not its ring; and the ear and the mind can go on and on with their game of tossing the rhyme to each other. Thus did the rain patter and the leaves quiver again and again, the ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... minutes before eight o'clock, Air Mail Pilot Steve Chapman was enjoying a quiet cigarette while waiting for the mechanics to warm up the five hundred horses of his mail plane satisfactorily. Halfway through, he heard, from behind, a quick patter of feet, and, turning, he observed a figure clad in flannel trousers and sweater. The cigarette dropped right out of ...
— Under Arctic Ice • H.G. Winter
... not miniature horses, but genuine ponies, with all the deviltry, endurance, and speed of their kind. They were jet-black, about waist high, and of great intelligence. They drew a neat little rig, capable of accommodating two, at a persistent rapid patter that somehow got over the road at a great gait. And they could keep it up all day. Although perfectly gentle, they were as alert as gamins for mischief, and delighted hugely in adding to the general row and confusion ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... a frightful scowl and a faint aroma of garlic, "patter your pater-nosters as fast as you conveniently may. You have but ten minutes to exist. Has either ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... ceasing, a basso ostinato, gives color to Kleczynski's contention that the prelude in B minor is a mere sketch of the idea fully elaborated in No. 15. "The foundation of the picture is the drops of rain falling at regular intervals"—the echo principle again—"which by their continual patter bring the mind to a state of sadness; a melody full of tears is heard through the rush of the rain; then passing to the key of C sharp minor, it rises from the depths of the bass to a prodigious crescendo, indicative of the terror which nature in its deathly aspect excites in the heart of man. Here ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... the rain begins, the wind drops. The only sound is the patter of rain dropping like fine shot on the young rye and ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... of bird-song, a patter of dew, A cloud, and a rainbow's warning, Suddenly sunshine and perfect blue— An April day in the morning. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... the stunned troopers recovered their senses they found a sight which sent them to their knees to patter prayers. For over the arch of the bridge dangled the corpse of the Jacobin. And on its breast it bore a paper setting forth that this deed had been done by Gaspard de Laval, and the Latin ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... step out to meet them, appearing vaguely, high, motionless and patient; with a rustling plaint of its innumerable leaves through which every drop of water tore its separate way with cruel haste. And then, to the right, the house surged up in the mist, very black, and clamorous with the quick patter of rain on its high-pitched roof above the steady splash of the water running off the eaves. Down the plankway leading to the door flowed a thin and pellucid stream, and when Willems began his ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... "there's a man for you. He knows every move of the game—can patter like an archbishop." So saying, he handcuffed the Shifty with such enthusiasm that the convert swore a ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... in volumes over the mountain tops; their summits still bright and snowy, but the lower parts of an inky blackness. The rain began to patter down in broad and scattered drops; the wind freshened, and curled up the waves; at length, it seemed as if the bellying clouds were torn open by the mountain tops, and complete torrents of rain came rattling ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... girl sat alone in her chamber, listening to the sound of merry voices in the hall without, or the patter of feet, as the fast arriving guests tripped up and down the stairs. She had heard the voice of J.C. De Vere as he passed her door, but it awoke within her bosom no lingering regret, and when an hour later Nellie stood before her, arrayed in ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... strangely prolonged. I at last seated myself by the fire, and lulled by warmth and the patter of the rain on the window, I fell asleep. I may have dreamt, for during my sleep I had a vague semi-consciousness as of hands being softly pressed on my pockets—no doubt induced by the story of the robbery. When I came fully ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... Victoriar Cross to get top o' this hill! Walk along, Lord Carnarvon! you ain't sitting in a cab'net council here, you know. Don't leave Sir Garnet do all the work, you know. Forward, my lucky lads! creep up it!" and by the time he had shrieked out this and a lot more patter, behold! we were at the top of the hill, and a fresh, lovely landscape was lying smiling in the sunshine below us. It was a beautiful country we passed through, but, except for a scattered homestead here and there by the roadside, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... all strategy. There was none of the pomp or glory of war, only its horrible butchery. The ranks simply dashed into the woods. Soon came the patter of shots, the heavy rattle of musketry, and then there streamed back the wreck of the battle—bleeding, mangled forms, borne on stretchers. In those gloomy shades, dense with smoke, this strangest of battles, which ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... later that the sudden quick patter of feet sounded in the hall, and Harriet ran in—danced in—her eyes were shining; she was a picture of youth and ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... she had another piece in her hand which she was hemming. The bird was hopping about, pecking at a banana which they had thrown to him; a light breeze made the shadow of the artu leaves dance upon the grass, and the serrated leaves of the breadfruit to patter one on the other with the sound of ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... of their equine breast-work he sent a ball through the district attorney's hat. Once he miscalculated in making a detour, and over-stepped his margin. Littlefield's gun flashed, and Mexico Sam ducked his head to the harmless patter of the shot. A few of them stung his horse, which pranced promptly ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... present to you the concluding item of my entertainment. I will cause this lady to disappear under your very eyes, without the aid of any mechanical contrivance or artificial device." This was the merest showman's patter, for, as a matter of fact, it was not a very wonderful illusion. But as he led his wife forward to present her to the audience the conjurer was wondering whether the mishaps that had ruined his chance would meet him even here. If ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... little working-girl. A very simple dress—things I had made especially for that—a little bundle in a black napkin carried in my hand—so I walked along where the shops are. It's tiresome, because to do it right, you have to patter along fast. Then I stop before a shop, and nine times out of ten, there you are! A funny thing is that the men—you'd imagine they had agreed on the words to approach you with. They have only two ...
— Damaged Goods - A novelization of the play "Les Avaries" • Upton Sinclair
... Here they come!" was the shout passed along from cabin to cabin, announcing the patter of a pack of dogs, howling, ravenous, their bodies covered with mud, running about without finding rest, driven on day and night, with the madness of persecution in their eyes. The huerta seemed to shudder, closing the doors of ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Some animal with stealthy crackling tread was ranging the hillside, and the roar of the little fall, so far from lulling him to sleep—as he had imagined it would—stimulated his imagination till he could discern in it the beat of scurrying wings and the patter of pernicious padded feet. "If I am appalled by the wilderness now, what would it seem to me were I ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... had never seemed so long to Ursula. She could not rest or sleep. It was midnight before she heard the patter of a handful of gravel on her window-panes. In a trice she was leaning out. Below in the ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... another way, a desert trail owning no peril more affrighting than its own dread waste and limitless monotony; and when his eyes behold the dismal prospect, and his feet have pressed the hitherward sands of this desert of despair, a man may well pause to gird his loins, to cross himself and patter such a prayer for strength and fortitude as his creed ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... open, their bed-tarps folded to shed as much moisture as possible. The soggy patter of the rain on her teepee lulled the girl to sleep but she was frequently roused. A dull muttering materialized suddenly into a sharp thunderstorm and the canvas walls of her teepee were almost continuously illuminated by successive flashes. The picketed ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... the dimness, she ventured a remark which died abruptly as she caught her breath. Beneath the low canopy of branches the ground was bare of vegetation, and on the cool brown earth, packed hard by the patter of webbed feet, a dozen or more sea-parrots were sitting not ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... mind to open it: the paper—damp with the rain—seemed to hold a certain fatefulness within its folds. At last she read the letter, and long after she had read it she sat at the open window, listening to the dreary, monotonous patter of the rain, and to the distant sounds of moving horses and men, the rattle of wheels, the bugle calls, the departure of the allied troops to meet the armies of the great adventurer on ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... and then of North Country burr, his English was pure and refined. In ordinary life, too, he spoke excellent French, although in the ring he had to follow the classical tradition of the English clown, and pronounce his patter with a nerve-rasping Britannic accent. He never told me his history. But there he was, the principal clown, and as perfect a clown as clown could be, with every bit of his business at his fingers' ends, in ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... of the Nordenfeldt when a sentry's keener ears caught a peculiar whispering rustle. As Schultz turned his head to listen, the whisper grew in volume to the sound of a hail-storm—the patter of bare feet on sand. Faint light on spears rippled round the base of the hills. Schultz sprang inside the barrier barking at his men to open fire. He deflected the muzzle of his gun and began pumping nickel into the advancing mass of ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... noise of feet— Rattle and clatter and patter and beat! Old Puss makes a flying leap from her chair, With a half-awake and startled stare, Striving to ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates
... Narcone staring at him now, as he sat nodding to the senseless patter of the Chief in a sort of breathless, terrifying suspense. Would his own face recall to the fellow's mind that night in the forest of Terranova and set his fears aflame? Blake's reason told him that such a thing was ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... so penetrated by an unimagined tenderness and joy, that he will declare himself incapable of ever loving again, and may actually be so. Having no rivals and a deeper soil, love can ripen better in such a constant spirit; it will not waste itself in a continual patter of little pleasures and illusions. But unless the passion of it is to die down, it must somehow assert its universality: what it loses in diversity it must gain in applicability. It must become a principle of action and an influence ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... on our ears save the soft puff now and then of a porpoise, the slow creak of the masts as we swayed gently on the swell, the patter of the reef-points, and the occasional flap of the hanging sails. An awning covered the fore and after parts of the schooner, under which the men composing the watch on deck lolled in sleepy indolence, overcome with excessive heat. Bloody Bill, as the men invariably called him, was standing at ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... enough to wander more than one hundred yards from home. But this wretched brute in our field was moving at the pace proper to feeding time, and, judging by its deliberate sluggishness, it seemed to be inviting death. When the short pitter-patter of the terriers' feet sounded on the grass, Bunny made a clumsy attempt to quicken his pace; the leading dog plunged at him, and by a convulsive effort the rabbit managed to swirl round and get clear. Then the second dog shot in; then came one or two quick, ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... to print a triolet When space is clamouring for matter We try to put it off and yet We have to print a triolet It is with infinite regret That we admit the silly patter We have to print a triolet When ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... stood thinking, not quite resolved to take one, there was a patter of little feet, a merry laugh, and a bright vision ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... know anything definite of its ups and downs—unless it passes into fog or pours, then everybody can see it dropping through the air. I began to feel that it would pour soon around Jim, and I shuddered, for I thought I already heard the patter of light feet in the hall. Some of the gray poetry of loneliness began to spread around my disturbed and anxious soul for fear no drippings like that would ever fall on me. Race suicide conscientiously practiced ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... get a chance, the work people do it, the employers do it, the politicians do it. I know. We all do it. Women actually don't understand that they're selling themselves often even when a priest does patter a few clap-trap phrases over them. Oppression on every hand and we dare not destroy it. We haven't courage enough. And things will never be any better while Society is as it is. So I hate what Society is. ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... a beautiful sight to see the king standin' with his mouth open, lookin' at his poor ould goose flyin' as light as a lark, and betther nor ever she was: and when she lit at his fut, patter her an the head, and, 'Ma vourneen,' says he, 'but you are the darlint o' the world.' 'And what do you say to me,' says Saint Kavin, 'for makin' her the like?' 'By gor,' says the king, 'I say nothin' bates the art o' man, barrin' the bees.' 'And do ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... losing ground. Now in silence they galloped ahead, the regular muffled patter of their horses' feet upon the frozen sod sounding like the distant rattle of a snare-drum. Once again even with the buckboard, they lapsed ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... pair had a crook in their lot. Childlessness was then an especial sorrow, and many a prayer had gone up from both that their solitary home might be gladdened by children's patter and prattle. But their disappointed hope had not made them sour, nor turned their hearts from God. If they prayed about it, they would not murmur at it, and they were not thereby hindered from 'walking in all God's commandments and ordinances blameless.' ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... not be pleaded as an excuse. Ever since he went to Chicago last fall we've been fighting because the boys bring me home from parties. I suppose he had to go and learn to be a pharmacist, but—it's hard on me. He wants me to patter along by myself like a—like—like a hen!" Fairy said "hen" ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... sitting around the camp-fire at bed-time, when I heard a distinct patter on the leaves. "Something coming," I whispered. All held still, then out of the gloom came bounding a snow-white Weasel. Preble was lying on his back with his hands clasped behind his head and the Weasel fearlessly ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... the bay-window; and I was deep in one of the Waverley novels. Banners streamed, bugles blew, spears gleamed, knights jostled in my world. Oh for a wet afternoon again like that twenty-five years ago, with the monotonous patter of rain in my ears, to go back to Coeur de Lion and Edith and Saladin! And not alone the time and the books, and the old high heart with the old longings and resolves, and the old fearless eyes to look out upon the world, but the old companions as well, with their ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... Till, rousing, I looked afresh on your face as you gazed— Behind you an old gnarled fruit-tree in one still fire Of innumerable flame in the sun of October blazed, Scarlet and gold that the first white frost would spill With eddying flicker and patter of dead leaves falling— looked on your face, as an outcast from Eden recalling A vision of Eve as ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... answer to his questions, there was a patter of bare feet on the stairs and in came Luis, his great dark eyes looking twice their normal size and his voice shrill with excitement, as he tried ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... in that it embarrasses me. When I come in, in the evening, three little maids escort me to my room, one fixes the mosquito bar, one gets my gown, and one helps to undress me. When they have done all they can think of, they get in a row, all bow together, then pitter patter away. ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... another, till many hundreds of torches were aflame, sputtering, smoking and sending up tongues of flame into the black air. Again a word of command, and the even tramp of footsteps began to be heard, a mere patter as of big raindrops upon stones at first, but swelling gradually, and increasing, till the sound roused great echoes from the glowing buildings, while the blazing pitch flared up, brighter and brighter, into ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... to see his friend, "for we are friends, I know." And so he went into the wood. It was a wood of very ancient trees, and the dark leaves roofed over the grassy track making a tunnel. The heavens too grew dark above, and Paullinus heard the drops patter upon the leaves. Generally he loved well enough to walk in the woodways, but here it seemed different. He would have liked a companion. Something sinister and terrible seemed to him to hide within those gloomy avenues, ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Red lanterns warned the traveler of danger, but it seemed as if they spoke not of the dangers of the present but of those graver dangers that once had been. We spent the night at the Eagle Hotel. The rain continued to fall and by its soothing patter on the leaves and roof above us we were ushered into the land ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... the play which he was financing, he was shocked and disappointed. He was in a more than usually sentimental mood that afternoon, and had, indeed, at the moment of Archie's arrival, been dreaming wistfully of soft arms clasped snugly about his collar and the patter of little feet and all that sort of thing.-He gazed ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... pitch and freckled with knots, spoke joyously of life that would not die, and the woodpeckers came and hammered on it as though it were still a part of the forest, and red squirrels chattered on the roof and scampered about in play with a soft patter of feet. ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... and a russet gown, with a bow and arrows, and bearing wild geese in his hand!" Or stately Ogier the Dane, recalled from Faery, asking his way to the land that once had need of him! Or even, on some white night, the Snow-Queen herself, with a chime of sleigh-bells and the patter of reindeers' feet, with sudden halt at the door flung wide, while aloft the Northern Lights went shaking attendant spears ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... inspector broke off in the middle of his sentence. Ruth, shrinking in her chair, turned her head fearfully towards the door, which still stood half open. Arnold was looking breathlessly in the same direction. Faintly, but very distinctly, they heard the patter of footsteps climbing the stone stairs. It sounded as though a man were walking upon tiptoe, yet dragging his feet wearily. The inspector held up his hand, and his subordinate, who had been searching the inner room, came stealthily out. Ruth, obeying her first impulse, opened her lips ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... open gun-port. Glancing around after some while, I saw no one and wondered, for here was the main gun-deck. Ten great pieces a side I counted, with ports for divers more. I was yet wondering at the emptiness about me when I heard sudden uproar from the deck above my head, shouts, cries, a rush and patter of many feet, and above all ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... show-cases, and seated himself at his desk. The little window in the rear was still uncovered, and revealed the light on the desk where the master wrote. He heard the scratching of his pen on the paper, and the patter of rain-drops outside, for the night was stormy. There was another sound in the shop, softer than fall of the rain, and finer than chirp of a cricket, or humming sound of a mosquito: the toys in ...
— Harper's Young People, April 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... held counsel and deliberated in a room against whose outside wall one could hear the constant patter of machine gun bullets raining thick from the opposite bank of the river. Monsieur Muzart, the Mayor, seemed to be everywhere at once, and was always the first on the spot when anything ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... well in the sky, showing clear every detail in that scene of desolation, when they arrived. Patter, patter, patter sounded their hoof-beats in the distance. More and more loud they grew, muffled yet penetrating in the silence of night, always augmenting in volume. Out of the shadows figures came dimly into view, taking form against the background ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... could hear and distinguish the feet in the nursery. There was the patter of little Alan's feet, and the stumble of Robin Beg's. There was the shuffle of the nurse-maid, and the firm light tread of Granya. Soon she would come down, after the children were safely to bed, and little Alan's prayers were heard. And they ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... was not sorry when they were gone; the stillness of the house rested her. But she missed Colin. Last Sunday he had been there, sitting beside her in his chair by the hearth, reading. Today he was with Jerrold at the Manor. The soft drizzle turned to a quick patter of rain; a curtain of rain fell, covering the grey fields between the farm and ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... the old hall despite its many years, seen such a running to and fro, heard such a patter of flying feet, such merry voices, such gay, and heart-felt laughter. For here was Miss Priscilla, looking smaller than ever, in a great arm chair whence she directed the disposal and arrangement of all things, with ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... being unquestionably the better boxer. He boxed coolly and scientifically, but what his opponent lacked in style he made up in determination. Twice his furious attacks drove Harcourt to the ropes, and twice the latter extricated himself nimbly and good-humouredly. Between the thud of gloves and the patter of their feet on the canvas-covered boards their breathing was audible in the tense ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... so little about the love you mean." Her voice trailed to silence; and in a lull of the storm they heard the thin patter of rats on the floor below, the stir of bats ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... upon the stair I hear A patter coming nearer and more near, And then upon my chamber door A gentle tapping, For dogs, though proud, are poor, And if a tail will do to give command Why use a hand? And after that a cry, half sneeze, ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... rain softened to a leafy patter, the patter to a drip, and a watery moon came glimmering through the clouds. With my enemy's rapier in hand I began cutting a course through the thicket. Radisson's fire no longer shone. Indeed, I became mighty uncertain which direction to take, for the rush of the river merged with ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... in one grab, and darted towards the door through which Hansen had just disappeared. Here he paused, tilting, and his smile twinkled at them with understanding. "Good-night, Miss Neal. Hope you have a good time, Vic." His heel clicked twice on the steps outside, and then the patter of his racing feet across ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... reason, when she woke the next morning, Lydia half hoped that the soft patter against her window was of rain drops. But it was the wind-tossed maple leaves, whose scarlet and gold were drifting deep on the lawn and garden. There never was a more brilliant October day than this, and at three ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... a quick patter of feet, and Bock, growling, ran down the aisle. In the same instant, Aubrey, obeying some unexplained impulse, gave Roger a violent push back into the Fiction alcove, seized Titania roughly in his arms, and ran with her toward the back of ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... mite, that's a moral, and patter won't level 'em up. Wy yer might as well talk of a popgun a holding its own with a Krupp. 'Ow the brains and the ochre got fust ladled hout is a bit beyond me, But to fancy as them as has got 'em ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 22nd, 1890 • Various
... was so silent—though there were more than twenty people in it—that nothing could be heard but the patter of the rain against the window-shutters, accompanied by the occasional hiss of a stray drop that fell down the chimney into the fire, and the steady puffing of the man in the corner, who had now resumed his ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... Immediately over the rear truck of the train a huge white ball of smoke sprang into being and tore out into a cone like a comet. Then came, the explosions of the near guns and the nearer shell. The iron sides of the truck tanged with a patter of bullets. There was a crash from the front of the train and half a dozen sharp reports. The Boers had opened fire on us at 600 yards with two large field guns, a Maxim firing small shells in a stream, and from riflemen lying on the ridge. I got down from ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... water," rapidly replied the second voice in the other corner. And then, as if by a concerted movement, a series of bibular invitations and acceptances were rolled backwards and forwards with a volubility of utterance that threw Patter versus Clatter into ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... over a tea-party, but sum up a life's history with "he had become one of our merchant princes," or "he was now a great artist, with the world at his feet." Why, there is more real life in one of Gilbert's patter-songs than in half the biographical novels ever written. He relates to us all the various steps by which his office-boy rose to be the "ruler of the queen's navee," and explains to us how the briefless barrister managed to become a great and good judge, "ready to try this breach of ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... in the Plaza de Toros now is at night. The custodians know me and let me moon about in the dark. When all that is ignoble and mean has faded away with the daylight, it seems to me the ghosts of the old time come back upon the sands. I can fancy the patter of light hoofs, the glancing of spectral horns. I can imagine the agile tread of Romero, the deadly thrust of Montes, the whisper of long-vanished applause, and the clapping of ghostly hands. I am growing too old for such skylarking, and I sometimes come away ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... one's head against; impinge; boost [U.S.]; bunt, carom, clip y; fan, fan out; jab, plug [Slang]. strike, knock, hit, tap, rap, slap, flap, dab, pat, thump, beat, blow, bang, slam, dash; punch, thwack, whack; hit hard, strike hard; swap, batter, dowse^, baste; pelt, patter, buffet, belabor; fetch one a blow; poke at, pink, lunge, yerk^; kick, calcitrate^; butt, strike at &c (attack) 716; whip &c (punish) 972. come into a collision, enter into collision; collide; sideswipe; foul; fall foul ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... addressed the envelope and hurried away to mail it. And so long as we are here in the court-house, and the custodian is gone, would you like to step in and see Martin Culpepper across the hall? It is still in the basement now, and if you are quiet, so quiet that the slipping patter of a rat's foot on the floor comes to you, a sound as of a faint whining will come to you also. There—now it comes again. No, it is not a dog; it is a man—a man in his agony. Shall we open the great iron door, ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... showers hover Over all the starry spheres And the melancholy darkness Gently weeps in rainy tears, What a bliss to press the pillow Of a cottage-chamber bed, And to listen to the patter Of the soft ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... scene, with its velvety shadows and silvery light, impressed every member of the party, so that they rode on in silence, the horses' hoofs sounding loudly, and the night being so still that the patter of the advance guard and of those in the rear was ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... would let a man go without saying good-by at all," he thought in irritation, but the patter of Kintuck's feet set his thought in other directions. As he topped the divide, he drew rein and looked at the great range to the southeast, lit by the dull red light of the sun, which had long since set to the settlers in the valley. His heart was for a moment ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... gale, When rent are rigging, shrouds, and sail, It waver'd 'mid the foes. No longer Blount the view could bear: 'By heaven and all its saints! I swear, I will not see it lost; Fitz-Eustace, you with Lady Clare May bid your beads, and patter prayer,— ...
— The Prose Marmion - A Tale of the Scottish Border • Sara D. Jenkins
... "Never mind the patter, son," the Admiral said mildly. "I know what the questions are. I've read all the memoirs of the crew. They've been coming out at the rate of about two a year for some time now. I had my own reasons for not wanting to add ...
— Greylorn • John Keith Laumer
... antique patter backstage, until I sometimes wonder whether I'm in Central Park, New York City, nineteen hundred and three quarters, or somewhere in Southwark, Merry England, fifteen hundred and same. The truth is ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... time for conjecture. A patter of footsteps interrupted me from the next room, and a frightened, feminine voice broke the stillness of the outer study. Even before the owner of that voice stepped in to my presence, I ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... been dry and hot for the last few days; at noon the thermometer rose to 100 deg. under the tent. Suddenly it became cloudy, and a few drops of rain began to patter down. There was every appearance of a storm, and our people began to collect towards the tents. At this time another courier arrived from the new Sultan, Abd-el-Kader, of Aghadez, respecting us. His highness says:—"No ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... and down the long slopes of Buckeye Hill the flowers were already effacing the last dented footprints of the winter rains, and the winds no longer brought their monotonous patter. In the pine woods there were the song and flash of birds, and the quickening stimulus of the stirring aromatic sap. Miners and tunnelmen were already forsaking the direct road for a ramble through the woodland trail and its sylvan charms, and occasionally breaking into ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... Patty, and nothing for them. They pretend to wisdom, knowledge, and genius that they don't possess. They fake up a lot of patter talk and pass it off for philosophy, or psychology, or lord knows what! And there isn't an ounce of brains in the whole fool bunch of them! That's what makes me mad! They fool you into believing their drivel ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... along the steep hillside by a lane which wound muddily downward to the grasslands, under high hazel hedges. The new leaves dripped showers at every gust of the wind, then a gleam of wan sunlight brightened distant vistas of the way, while Joan heard the patter of a hundred hoofs in the mud, the bleat of lambs, the deeper answer of ewes, the barking of a shepherd's dog. Soon the cavalcade came into view—a flock of sheep first, a black and white dog with a black and white pup, which was learning his ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... or no practice, require no sleight-of-hand skill and are independent of any apparatus. The only articles called for are ordinary coins, cards, matches, etc., such as are always at hand. An excellent line of patter, in which humor predominates, is included for each trick and there are ...
— The White Christmas and other Merry Christmas Plays • Walter Ben Hare
... slow of motion, so that by the time she was fairly standing, they were far down the field and running helter-skelter by the side of the fence. As she stared dully after them she could see the twenty-two curly tails bobbing along, and she heard the soft patter of eighty-eight sharp little double hoofs ...
— Among the Farmyard People • Clara Dillingham Pierson
... changed. Her appearance was altered. She was thinner, much thinner and very white and listless. The old air of gayety and bubbling spirits was gone. Her step seemed to drag, instead of the bright patter her feet used to make; and his anxiety increased and finally he decided that he must talk ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... there was a series of explosions, and they could even hear the patter of bullets striking the piled-up ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... Sometimes the sunbeams would dance through the window-panes and play at hide-and-seek all over me and my little mate; they would kiss and caress us, and we learned to love them very much—they were so warm and gentle and merrisome. Sometimes the raindrops would patter against the window-panes, singing wild songs to us, and clamoring to break through and destroy us with their eagerness. When night came, we could see stars away up in the dark sky winking at us, and very often the old mother moon stole out from behind a cloud to give us a kindly smile. ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... handle of his cavalry revolver as he guided Buford down to the right where there seemed to be a hollow among the slopes. Just as he came trotting briskly round a little shoulder of the nearest ridge there was a rush and patter of hoofs on the other side of it, an exclamation, half-terror, half-menace, a flash and a shot that whizzed far over his head. A dark, shadowy horseman went scurrying off into space as fast as a spurred and startled horse could carry him; a broad-brimmed slouch ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... never learnt very much at school. I got the lessons into my head as long as I had to patter them off by heart like a parrot,—but the teachers were all so dull and prosy, and never took any real pains to explain things to me,—indeed, now when I come to think of it, I don't believe they could explain!—they needed teaching themselves. ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... must I wear, Laura? Do people wear evening dress? Where shall we sit? What time shall we get back? How are you going? What time must I be ready? Will you have dinner before you go or take sandwiches with you?"—how long the patter of questions would have run on it is hard to say, if the extreme naivete of the last one had not drowned them in universal laughter, ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... been unable to sleep in my own apartment, and so I had stolen into the great hall through the heavily curtained entrance at the end farthest from the balcony. As I entered I heard a peculiar, soft sound above the patter of the fountain. Neranya's cage was partly concealed from my view by the spraying water, but I suspected that the unusual sound came from him. Stealing a little to one side, and crouching against the dark hangings ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... a stoical frame of mind, and I saw no good in repining. I unhitched Peg, sponged her foot, and tied her to a tree. I would have made more careful explorations to determine just where I was, but a sharp patter of rain began to fall. So I climbed into my Parnassus, took Bock in with me, and lit the swinging lamp. By this time it was nearly ten o'clock. There was nothing to do but turn in, so I took off my boots and lay down in the bunk. Bock ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... over their partners' heads, and thus interwoven, the circle balanced before breaking up. Other times, other dances—ours is now the day of the trot and the tango. But they lack the life, the verve of the old dances, the old tunes. To this day when I hear them, my feet patter in spite of me. You could not dance to them steadily, with soft airs blowing all about, leaves flittering in sunshine, and water rippling near, without getting an appetite commensurate to the ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... his shield, now helm, now cuirass scatter, While straight and back strokes, aimed now low, now high, Which good Rogero's head and bosom batter, And arms, by thousands and by thousands fly Faster than on the sounding farm-roof patter Hailstones descending from a troubled sky. Rogero, at his ward, with dexterous care, Defends himself, and ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... beyond the circle of light, paused while my lips moved in a vague smile of response, then moved on into the shadow. The low, deep quiet of the corridor resumed its hold on me. The patter of reflection in my brain ...
— A Diary Without Dates • Enid Bagnold
... accordance with true proportion. I say true proportion, because I shall never feel it right that music-hall comedians should receive a bigger salary than a Prime Minister; at least, not until they sing better songs and take a finer view of life in their "patter" than most ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... expense. Alongside the street a very red-faced, bulbous-nosed and ancient ruin with a patriarchal white beard was preparing to give phrenological readings. I had seen him earlier in the day, and had been amused at his impressive glib patter. Now, however, he had become foolishly drunk. He mounted the same boxes that had served as the executive desk, and invited custom. After a moment's hesitation a burly, red-faced miner shouldered his way through the group and sat down on the edge ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... for an old habitant to stand by, even cap in hand. Yet he could scarcely take his eyes from the familiar face as it changed in phosphorescent light. The features lifted themselves with firm nobility, expressing an archangel's beauty. Sainte-Helene's lips parted, and above the patter of the reciting Recollet the watchers were startled by one note like the ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... patter, patter! patter! which came from hurrying feet in the pasture. And there sounded a click! click! click! which came from scrambling feet climbing over the wall. And there sounded further thuds which came from those same feet as they ...
— The Tale of Snowball Lamb • Arthur Bailey
... wishing I was up in one. It seemed impossible to connect death-dealing bombs with those floating silver shapes. Shrapnel burst all round them, and then the Zepps. seemed suddenly to become alive, and they answered with machine guns, and the patter of bullets and shrapnel could be heard all around. The Commander of one of the Zepps. apparently fearing his airship might be hit, must have given the order for all the bombs to be heaved overboard at once, for suddenly twenty-one fell simultaneously! You can imagine what a ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... emptied themselves of their rushing throngs, the patter of feet and the murmur of voices had given place to measured individual marches here and there, the dripping of cave-spouts and the flapping of awnings could be heard tattling of showers past and future, and the last organ-grinder had left the ungrateful ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... floor above, and a rumour of feminine voices drifted down, interrupted by an occasional sibilant rustle of silk, or a brief patter of high-heeled feet: noises which bore out the conjecture that madame's maid was undressing and putting her to bed; a ceremony apt to consume a considerable time with a woman of Liane's age and disposition, passionately bent on preserving to the grave a semblance of freshness in her charms. ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... of cordial hostess she was wont to play with especial acceptability, but now she had lost its every line, its most trivial patter. She said not one word as Bayne clasped her hand with the conventional greeting, but only looked at him with her hazel eyes ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... to Petersburg wid Capt. Douglas, dat Miss Janie's second husband. Our train went dat fast, dat it took my breaf away. But de cars goes much faster, gwine to Patter-a-rac now. ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... said. "Don't he talk. Learned the patter at Oxford College, I expect." He turned on his lame leg. "Anyway, we know now where ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... exhaust-pipes and furniture—what on earth can they tell you that you have not heard already? A mere grinding-out of commonplaces! How often one has covered the same field! They cannot even put their knowledge, such as it is, into an attractive shape or play variations on the theme; it is patter; they have said the same thing, in the same language, for years and years; you have listened to the same thing from other lips, in the same language, for years and years. How one knows it all beforehand—every note in that barrel-organ of echoes! One leaves them feeling like ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... off the dally, but clung to the rope. High-Tail whirled and started for the corral. Little Jim set back on his heels, but Little Jim was a mere item in High-Tail's wild career toward freedom. A patter of hoofs in the dark, and Little Jim and the calf disappeared around the ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... who was blind as well and had no sense save touch, found in her fingers, which had gathered up the force of all the other senses, the power to reproduce on this instrument of music the movement of things that moved about her—the patter of the leaves of the fig-tree in the patio of her home, the swirl of the great winds on the hill-top, the plash of rain on her face, and the rippling of the levanter in ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... prolonging the vibrations, seems to deaden them; and besides, who could hear us, in the depths where we now are? Then, groping in the absolute darkness, he makes his way up the sloping passage. The hurried patter of his sandals and the flapping of his burnous grow faint in the distance, and the cries that he continues to utter sound so smothered to us soon that we might ourselves be buried. And meanwhile we do not move. ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... himself on his horse and was off after the dim figure that raced down the west trail which led to the Pass. He did not heed Judith's call nor the quick patter of hoofs behind him. On and on through the frosty April night, Prince barking joyfully before, the Moose galloping at top speed, the stars sliding overhead. On past the Browns' noisy corral, past Falkner's brightly lighted cabin, and up the lifting trail to the Pass. The broken black line ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... rising, like a fog, from the cold surface of the river. All signs, too, portended a rainy night. The thunder was muttering off in the southwest, intermittent flashes of lightning lit up the sky, and scattering drops of rain were even then beginning to patter on the hurricane deck and ripple the bosom of the stream. What should I do? I must have a blanket, that was certain. But all my life the belief had been instilled into me that stealing was well-nigh the most disgraceful of all crimes, and that a thief was a most ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... minutes they were ready. The lightning flashes were less frequent, and the thunder was muttering far away amid the secret places of the Bernina. The wind was rising again. Instead of sleet it carried snowflakes, and these did not sting the face nor patter on the ice. But they clung everywhere, and the sable rocks were taking unto themselves a ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
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