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More "Shrill" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The shrill treble of the weeping women in the shed was almost lost in the strong bass of the soldiers. "Cora Moses, who used to sing in our church choir, sang that beautiful hymn as she drifted away to her death amid the wreck," said the chaplain. "She died singing it. There was only ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... notes, soft notes and shrill notes, all travel at the same rate. If bass notes traveled faster or slower than soprano notes, or if the delicate tones of the violin traveled faster or slower than the tones of a drum, music would be practically impossible, because at ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... have your fortune told, my bonny sir?" she queried in a shrill voice. "I bring absent ones together, tell you how to gain the love of the one ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... hollow roar of the locomotive, and the shrill scream from the steamboat, are heard here all day; a continuous stream of life ever bustles through the city, and, standing as it does on the very verge of western civilisation, Chicago is a vast emporium of the trade of the districts east ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... heard people walking in the lobby, hunted for burglars, traced the sounds to a room whence their was no outlet, and found nobody. This kind of thing went on till Mrs. Ricketts despaired of any natural explanation. After mid-summer, 1771, the trouble increased, in broad daylight, and a shrill female voice, answered by two male voices was added to the afflictions. Captain Jervis came on a visit, but was told of nothing, and never heard anything. After he went to Portsmouth, "the most deep, ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... A shrill piercing scream, like the cry of a tortured soul, rang out of the forest, rising clear and trembling above the tolling of the bell and the noises of ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... lips! And now, good-night to Cypris, in the arms of her lover! But lo, in the morning we will all of us gather with the dew, and carry him forth among the waves that break upon the beach, and with locks unloosed, and ungirt raiment falling to the ankles, and bosoms bare will we begin our shrill sweet song. ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... go - don't touch me - what right have you to interfere? Who are you, to touch me?' she flashed out, shrill ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... began to twitch violently and his under lip quivered faster, and he whimpered with anger, and cried with a shrill voice, in Yannish, to the captain of his torturers that there was a spirit in the room. I feared not, for living men cannot lay hands on a spirit, but all the torturers were appalled at his anger, and stopped their work, for their hands ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... the council members see me, they will learn that I have betrayed them. And some may be there who know of my part in other enterprises. By showing proof—Jupiter! they would bring confusion or death upon me. I must not be there, and yet—and yet I must. They wait for the shrill voice to declare the fulness of time. Unless I be there the king may be no wiser for his coming. I will go, but I will not tell Herod of the long way underground to the street of tombs. I will announce the fulness of time and quit the council before its proclamation is made. ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller
... The dissolute scoundrel that had wrecked her life? Where was he? Dumfounded, I managed to bow politely enough, but my stupefaction was covered by Judith rushing across the room and uttering a strange sound which resolved itself into a shrill, hysterical laugh as she reached the door which she opened and slammed behind her. I heard her scream hysterically in the passage; then the slam of another door; and the silence told me that she had shut herself in her bedroom. Disregarding the new husband's presence, I ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... door opened, and Mrs. Field stood there, a tall black shadow hardly shaped out from the gloom. The women all arose and hurried toward her. There was a shrill flurry of greeting. Mrs. Field's voice arose ...
— Jane Field - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... manes and tails flying, the mustangs came on apace and passed us in a trampling roar, the white stallion in the front. Suddenly a shrill, whistling blast, unlike any sound I had ever heard, made the canyon fairly ring. The white stallion plunged back, and his band closed in behind him. He had seen our saddle horses. Then trembling, whinnying, ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... stole the donkey?" cried a shrill voice at the door, and from behind the hawker was poked a touzelled curly head, and a grinning face which sadly needed washing. "You leave this cove alone, won't y? He's a pal o' mine. ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... just entered Kerk's outer office when a shrill screaming burst out of the phone-screen. It took Jason a moment to realize that it was a mechanical signal, not ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... At this juncture, the shrill whistle of the approaching train was heard, and this fact enabled the detective to decline the proffered beverage. After a hearty hand-shake from the nervous little clothier, Manning sprang upon the train and in a few moments later he was on his way ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... her name. It had been the immemorial habit of the village to christen children either by Bible names, or by those of the cardinal and other virtues; so that one was for ever hearing in the village street or on the green, shrill sounds of "Prudence! Prudence! thee cum' out o' the gutter;" or, "Mercy! drat the girl, what bist thee a-doin' wi' little Faith?" and there were Ruths, Rachels, Keziahs, in every corner. The same with the boys: they were Benjamins, Jacobs, Noahs, ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... lie— Vandals to the Dawn, Night and Dusk! And vulpine labyrinths of hell Where pirates of a star are thron'd As dews cloak bones that pierce the sky, Wowed witches with a gorce's lust When vales list to a clanging bell That some encharnel'd hybrid domed, Sweats cesspools with the pall of fear, Shrill sounds permeate the barren air, Each shatter'd light before a well, Ends its flame in short, spastic gasps. And stars that burn but once a year, (Veined Aureoles to altars where, When sins are told unto each knell As chanting runes are hushed with clasps Of winds ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... was nobody either there or on the racks. The carriage at the far side was locked, and so, now, was the door next the platform. The great glass dome was brilliantly lighted so that anything suspicious would have been detected instantly. The guard's whistle rang out shrill and clear, and Catesby had a glimpse of Mr. Skidmore making himself comfortable as he swung himself into his van. The great green and gold serpent with the brilliant electric eyes fought its way sinuously into the throat of the wet and riotous night ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... Their peculiar, shrill cry of "crack, crack, crack—rackety, rackety, rackety," repeated from the throats of dozens, as they sometimes stooped quite close to our ears, became at length almost unbearable. It seemed as if they had lost their senses in ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... will perch on any wrist that is rightly held out to her, so she be properly called," and he whistled shrill, trying to edge ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... loves from us did fare And left us to endure estrangement and despair. Whenas the burdens all were bounden on and shrill The camel-leader's call rang out across the air, Fast flowed my tears; despair gat hold upon my soul And needs mine eyelids must the sweet of sleep forbear. I wept, but those who spied to part us had no ruth On me nor ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... a shrill treble voice, and a little curly-headed apparition came running out of the bedroom, ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow
... tremendous popping of pistols and muskets for the first minute or two, and a good deal of smoke drifting hither and thither; then, with wild hurrahs, the Europas dashed forward, cutlass in hand, cutting, slashing, and pointing; the air resounded with cheers, oaths, execrations, and shrill screams of pain; the decks grew slippery with blood, prostrate bodies tripped us up here and there, and then, suddenly, the Frenchmen flung away their weapons and dived below, leaving us the victors of the fight and in ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... except the tinkling of tiny bells all about me that were set to swinging as I moved along. The crusted snow was strewn with them; every twig was hung, and every pearl-bent grass blade. Then off through the woods rang the chime of louder bells, sleigh bells; then the shrill squeal of iron runners over dry snow; then the broken voices of men; and soon through the winding wood road came the horses, their bay coats white, as all things were, with the glittering dust of the ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... buttons at the side. When we met he was standing still at the turning and looking about him, attentively. Noticing that I was looking at him with interest, he asked me in a sugary, though rather shrill voice: ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Forever varying with the sound, The circling band moves round and round. Now slowly rise the swelling notes When every crest more lively floats; Now tossed on high with gesture proud, Then lowly mid the circle bow'd; While clanging arms grow louder still, And every voice becomes more shrill; Till fierce and strong the clamor grows, And the wild war whoop bids it close. Then starts Skunktonga forth, whose band Came from far Huron's storm-beat strand, And thus recounts his battle feats, While his dark club the ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... I lost. The reply came to me in a shrill falsetto. So grotesque was the effect of this treble from a bulk so squat and broad and hairy as the silhouette before me that ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... earthlie states, direct our course aright, And shew where we shall dwell, according to thy will, In seates of sure abode, where temples we may dight For virgins that shall sound thy laud with voices shrill. ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (2 of 8) - The Second Booke Of The Historie Of England • Raphael Holinshed
... entertaining. They were conducted by a guards lieutenant with a pronounced limp, who went by the name of "Cork-leg." Even when speaking of a matter of no importance his voice would become louder and louder until it threatened to reach a shrill scream. On one occasion when the interpreter was not present, some unoffending person asked the Hun a question in English. Cork-leg replied, with a dreadful roar, that we must understand that the language of the camp was German, and German only. Things were going a little too far, ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... higher grew the mirth, louder and louder swelled the tumult, until, when the uproar appeared to have reached its height, there was a pause—a silence as profound as it was sudden and appalling. Then there rang through the wide deserted halls and chambers a shrill despairing shriek, whilst far and near, above, below, around, rose mocking and insulting laughter. Dauntless as Anna was, and firm as was her reliance on the protection of Heaven, it would perhaps be too much to say that she felt no quickening of the pulse, ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... land made them strangers in their own place, this raw bank of earth shutting them off disconcerted them. As they worked in the fields, from beyond the now familiar embankment came the rhythmic run of the winding engines, startling at first, but afterwards a narcotic to the brain. Then the shrill whistle of the trains re-echoed through the heart, with fearsome pleasure, announcing the far-off come near ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... wagtail does, calling his wings to his assistance when chasing a particularly nimble creature. He has the habit of frequently expanding his tail. This species utters a loud and pleasant call, also a shrill cry like that of the spotted forktail. All torrent-haunting birds are in the habit of uttering such a note; indeed it is no easy task to distinguish between the alarm notes of the various species that ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... making him, Mrs. Woolstan!" cried one of his sisters, with a shrill laugh. "It's a rule in this house to put the stopper on Jim when he begins to talk about cricket. If we didn't, there'd be no ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... whole street joined in, and they gave long, shrill, ear-piercing shrieks and strange calls, that rung down the ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham
... cruelty which they were want to exhibit in war, that the great capital was suddenly startled by a voice of warning in the streets—a voice which sounded everywhere, through corridor, and lane, and square, bazaar and caravanserai, one shrill monotonous cry—"Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown." A strange wild man, clothed in a rough garment of skin, moving from place to place, announced to the inhabitants their doom. None knew who he was or whence he had come; none had ever ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... into a great array of faces, and heard for the first time the low unceasing rumble of an angry mob. Afterward he marveled at that constant guttural roar, how it went on and on, humming like a tune, never stopping, disconnected quite from the occasional shrill or heavy voices that rang out in distinguishable words. The mayor looked coolly down into those upturned faces, he listened a moment to the rumble of a thousand throats, then he took off his derby with ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... that it was the talking bird calling to him in this way, for he had heard Black Joe rattle along just like an educated poll parrot. Then he recognized the shrill tones of Miss Muster; and at the same moment caught sight of the ...
— Fred Fenton on the Crew - or, The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... when great matters are ripe for decisions one way or the other, the little accident as often as not decides. There was a hurrying of light feet in the corridor outside, a swift, peremptory knocking upon the door. The same woman's voice called in rather a shrill note through the panels! "Harry! Why don't you come? We ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... power, gallant days, bustling days, worth the bravest days of chivalry at least; tall battalions of native warriors were marching through the land; there was the glitter of the bayonet and the gleam of the sabre; the shrill squeak of the fife and loud rattling of the drum were heard in the streets of country towns, and the loyal shouts of the inhabitants greeted the soldiery on their arrival, or cheered them at their departure. And now let us leave the upland, and descend to the sea-bord; there ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... that the expression of sexual longing in music is identical with that of religious longing. It is quite true, again, that a soft and gentle voice seems to every normal man as to Lear "an excellent thing in woman," and that a harsh or shrill voice may seem to deaden or even destroy altogether the attraction of a beautiful face. But the voice is not usually in itself an adequate or powerful method of evoking sexual emotion in a man. Even in its supreme vocal manifestations the sexual ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... And shrill the fife plays; My love, for the battle, His brave troop arrays; He lifts his lance high, And the people he sways. My blood it is boiling! My heart throbs pit-pat! Oh, had I a jacket, With hose and with hat! How boldly I'd follow, And march through the gate; Through all the wide ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... from whence the novel noise proceeded. Frederick Delaval again blew a piercing shriek on the whistle; and when the Wild Bull heard it, and once more felt the stinging lash of the heavy whip, he swerved round, and with a bellow of pain and fury trotted back to the herd. The young man blew another shrill whistle, and cracked the long lash of his whip until its echoes reverberated like so many pistol-shots. The Wild Bull's trot increased to a gallop, and he and the whole herd of the Chillingham Cattle dashed rapidly away from the pic-nic party, and in ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... he to cross. Not even he would dare the perils of the river—almost certain death. For a moment he thought, then wheeled and sped away into the jungle, uttering a peculiar cry, shrill and piercing. Now and again he would halt to listen as though for an answer to his weird call, then on again, deeper and deeper into ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... there rang out on the still night air the most awful shriek I ever heard, the wail of a woman in horror and dismay. Then dull, heavy blows; oaths, curses, stifled exclamations; a fall that shook the windows; Gleason's voice commanding, entreating; a shrill Chinese jabber; a rush through the hall; more blows; gasps; curses; more unavailing orders in Gleason's well-known voice; then a sudden pistol shot, a scream of "Oh, my God!" then moans, and then silence. ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... better use of notes, or sweet or shrill, By quivering string, or modulated wind; Trumpet or lyre—to their harsh bosoms chill, Admission ne'er had ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... enough, but to make matters worse, just at that very minute he heard a shrill, angry voice shout, "Hi, there! Get out of there!" He didn't need to be told whose voice that was. It was the voice of Farmer Brown's boy. Right then and there Buster Bear nearly had a fit. There was that awful pail fast over his head so that he couldn't see a thing. Of course, that meant ...
— The Adventures of Buster Bear • Thornton W. Burgess
... built a wall with their bodies to block the drive at Ypres. America refuted them for the third time, when she proved her love of world-liberty greater than her affection for the dollar, bugling across the Atlantic her shrill challenge to mailed bestiality. Germany has made the grave mistake of estimating human nature at its lowest worth as she sees it reflected in her own face. In every case, in her judgment of the two great Anglo-Saxon races, she has been at ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... than 470 species of land snails of a single genus, Achatinella, are to be found in the mountains of Hawaii, a fact of marked interest to science in observing environmental effect upon the differentiation of species. One of these the natives call pupu kani oi or "shrill voiced snail," averring that a certain cricketlike chirp that rings through the stillness of the almost insectless valleys is the voice of this particular species. Emerson says that the name kahuli is ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... and yellow silks in alternate stripes. He was accompanied by the officers of his palace, and his guard, beautifully mounted, and followed by the native population of Sennaar, both men and women, who uttered shrill cries, which were now and then interrupted by the sound of a most lugubrious trumpet which preceded the Sultan, and which was blown by a musician who, judging from the tones he produced, seemed to be afflicted ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Dongola and Sennaar • George Bethune English
... fried cakes, and in apples, peaches, pears, and other fruits, make intolerable uproar behind their booths on the long quay before the church; though the venders of mulberries (for which the gardens of the Giudecca are famous) fill the air with their sweet jargoning (for their cries are like the shrill notes of so many singing-birds); though thousands of people pace up and down, and come and go upon the bridge, yet the Festa del Redentore has now none of the old-time gayety it wore when the Venetians thronged the gardens, and feasted, sang, danced, and flirted the night away, and at dawn ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... where she is," cries a little, shrill voice from the background. It comes from Tommy, and from that part of the room where Tommy and Mabel and little Bertie are having a game behind the window curtains. Blocks, dolls, kitchens, farm yards, ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... darkness below. The sandy lane stretched behind us like a ribbon of twilight,—nothing to be seen but it and the ebony mass of bush and tree lining it on either side. We hastened on. A minute later and we heard behind us a sound like the winding of a small horn, clear, shrill, and sweet. Sparrow and I wheeled—and saw nothing. The trees ran down to the very edge of the wharf, upon whose rotten, loosened, and noisy boards we now trod. Suddenly the clouds above us broke, and the moon shone forth, whitening the mountainous clouds, the ridged and angry ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... and hand-to-hand conflict was at its height, a shrill cry was suddenly heard in rear of the enemy, and at once, as if by a preconcerted plan, those natives who were disputing the landing broke and fled, while, at the same moment, a body of some 300 cavalry debouched from the shelter ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... tell you something, brothers,' began Kostya, in a shrill little voice; 'listen what my dad told ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... disaster did befall. Holding that traitor to be brave, I sought to meet him face to face— Rushing to seek him with my mace, I nearly found a warrior's grave. My army then was near the hill, When suddenly the massive stones Came crashing down, with cries and moans, While clarions sounded loud and shrill. A rain of stones both great and small Down on the crowd of warriors crashed, On every side destruction flashed, Thy heart the slaughter did appal. Like a strong flood the blood did flow, Inundating the ravine; So sad ...
— Apu Ollantay - A Drama of the Time of the Incas • Sir Clements R. Markham
... smiling forests, whence the tuneful cries Of clustering pea-fowls shrill and frequent rise, Teach tender feelings to each human breast, And please alike the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... men were leaning over the table, drunk and noisy; a woman's laugh was shrill, senseless. Senseless! That, for Lee Randon, described the whole proceeding. He had looked forward to the dance with a happy anticipation, and, now that it was here, even before he had come, he was out of key with it. The efforts of the people about him to forget ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... but the discomfort he felt aggravated his ugly mood. He reached forth one of his great arms and, seizing the child by the shoulder, threw him roughly to the ground. The little one, more frightened than hurt, cried loudly. His shrill shriek of terror reached the ears of the dwarf. Alarmed, Andy sprang to the window and ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... an expression of horror ran across the face of the loquacious fellow; he grew gradually conscious of the significance of his words. The listeners had formed a compact circle around him, and a shrill voice rang out from the crowd: "It was surely the corpse that was wrapped up ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... the poor moorhen at the very moment when her chicks were in the process of hatching. Already there was a chip in the side of each egg, and a tiny bill began to protrude, the owner of which was raising a shrill clamour of welcome to the world. The girls laid them hastily down ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... rasping sound came Dodd's shrill whistle. Just audible to human ears, though probably sounding like the roar of thunder to those of the beetles, there was no need to wonder what ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... shattered the peaceful atmosphere. Aida, who had been gurgling apoplectically, sprang snarling from the basket, and made for the intruder open-mouthed. Her shrill ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... back upon Time's old track, And dream of the days long past, When Rome leant here on his sentinel spear And loud was the clarion's blast;— As wild and shrill from Martyr's Hill Echoed the patriot shout; Or rush'd pell-mell with a midnight yell The rude ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... promises of additions in both kinds; and I was extricating myself as well as I could from my petitioners, with the assurance that I would come by-and-bye and visit them again, when I felt my dress suddenly feebly jerked, and a shrill cracked voice on the other side of me exclaimed, 'Missus, no go yet—no go away yet; you no see me, missus, when you come by-and-bye; but,' added the voice in a sort of wail, which seemed to me as if the thought was full of misery, 'you see many, many of my offspring.' These melancholy ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... opposite side of the square another orator was haranguing the crowd. A young Quaker woman had got up upon some steps, moved in spirit, as she declared, to denounce the wickedness of war, and to urge the townsmen to peaceful methods. Her shrill voice rose high and piercing, and she invoked Heaven to bless the work of those who would endure all things ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... their candles, and went up stairs, the parties continued the battle: Mrs. Bolingbroke brought quotations innumerable to her aid, and in a shrill ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... the lovers had left the domain some hours before. This intelligence made the count somewhat uneasy, and remounting his horse, he set out in quest of the truants upon the road which he learned they had taken. He penetrated the forest for some distance, and at length was startled by hearing shrill screams ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... the heavens seemed to be "a sheet of flame." He also spake by his servant, and the response from the people was in tears and sobs, groans and shouts; and at the conclusion of nearly every sweep of the preacher's wonderful flights could be heard above the whole a shrill shout from the hostess, followed by a tornado of amens! When the sermon closed the storm ceased, and the "slain of the Lord were many." Memorable night! The people found neither slumber nor weariness, and when ...
— Elizabeth: The Disinherited Daugheter • E. Ben Ez-er
... at his watch. It was 10:30. Suddenly there came a shrill whistle from the little bridge of the submarine, standing high above the vessel, and covered with heavy canvass. The officer in command, Captain Von Cromp himself, dressed hi heavy oilskins, raised a hand, ...
— The Boy Allies Under Two Flags • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... him into the country to spend a few weeks at a farm-house. The farmer's wife, Mrs. Hill, was very glad to have him come, for she had no girls or boys of her own, to make the house pleasant. She liked to see Willie running about, and hear his shrill voice calling after the ...
— The Nursery, Number 164 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... stern. It was little short of the rarest good fortune there was no accident by the way. Everybody turned out to see the brigades off. Merrily stepped the black battalions, their women-folk raising the usual shrill cry of jubilation, whilst the bands played the favourite air, "O, dem Golden Slippers." Regimental bands do droll things occasionally. I remember in the year of the Dongola Campaign and the cholera visitation, ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... and impositions in the departments, were actually fighting for food. The girls behind the buffet remained nobly at their posts, but the situation had outgrown their experience. Every now and then a crash of crockery or crystal was heard over the din of shrill voices, and occasionally a loud protest. Away from the buffet, on the fine floor of the restaurant, a few waitresses hurried distracted and aimless between the tables at which sat irate and scandalized persons who firmly believed themselves to be dying of hunger. A number ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... crossed the threshold than he saw their jaws part, their eyes grow small, their entire faces expand; and he heard the tempestuous puffing of the fat men, the rusty grating jeers of the lean ones, amidst all the shrill, flute-like laughter of the women. Opposite him, against the hand-rails, some young fellows went into contortions, as if somebody had been tickling them. One lady had flung herself on a seat, stifling and trying to regain breath with ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... the shrill blast of a trumpet. Custard, his forefeet firmly planted on Miss Kirby's chest, his head cocked enquiringly, promptly barked a ...
— Patricia • Emilia Elliott
... new friend, and we all sat silent for a little, till she broke out into a sweet shrill song, and held us all entranced with the wonder of her clear voice; and the old grumbler sat looking at her lovingly. The other young people sang also in due time; and then Ellen showed us to our beds in small cottage chambers, fragrant and clean as the ideal of the old pastoral poets; and the ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... had a great charm in conversation, as in the lecture-room. It was never loud, never shrill, but singularly penetrating. He was apt to hesitate in the course of a sentence, so as to be sure of the exact word he wanted; picking his way through his vocabulary, to get at the best expression of his thought, as a well-dressed woman crosses the muddy pavement ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... snapped Dodeth in a sudden interruption. His legs stopped their rhythmic tramp. His voice rose from its usual eight-thousand-cycle rumble to a shrill squeak. "Fry it, Wygor, if you weren't such a good field man, I'd have sacked you long ago! Your trouble is that you have a penchant for bringing me problems that you ought to be able to solve by yourself and then flipping right over on your back and holding ...
— The Asses of Balaam • Gordon Randall Garrett
... her voice anywhere. It had the rare distinction of music and perfect diction. Amidst the shrill vulgarity which counterfeited wit in the average upper class gathering of the period such a voice must have sounded like the song of a robin in a ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... meaning; a shout rose, shrill, tumultuous, broken with laughter. She had reminded them of the subject which a short time ago ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... his tawny mane bristling around his hideous head, kept his eyes fixed upon another banth that charged erratically hither and thither, with shrill screams of pain, and horrid roars of hate ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... lift it, they are trusted with the real baby. Her parents probably do not mean to be unkind, and use makes this treatment bearable, but to an outsider it seems unnecessarily rough, and even brutal. Her mother shouts at her in a shrill treble perpetually; her father enforces his orders with a ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... until her head was even with the lower branches, three warriors holding her while two others extended her arms and fixed them to two stout limbs. What the fastenings were Thurstane could guess from the fact that he saw blows given, and heard the long shrill scream of a woman in uttermost agony. Then there was more hammering around the sufferer's feet, and more shrill wailing. She was spiked through the palms and the ankles to the tree. It ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... Dyson has had a stroke of palsy and will die, there is certainly none; for I saw that shrill Morning Post, Lady Greenwich, two hours ago, and she ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... than the gloom. And every shot brought a volley in return. Smoke mingled with the gloom. In the slight intervals between rifleshots there were swift, rustling sounds and sharp thuds from arrows. Then the shrill strife of sound became continuous; it came from all around and closed in upon the doomed caravan. It swelled and rolled away and again there ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... I touch her it'll wake her up with a start," said her grandfather anxiously. But before they had settled the knotty point, the engine-driver, growing tired of waiting, let off a shrill whistle from his engine and with the sound the little sleeper stirred, opened her eyes, and sat up suddenly. The porter hastily disappeared from the doorway, the station-master left the carriage too, but the guard remained, and nodded and smiled ...
— The Story of Jessie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... whoever he is," cried Bompard. "No use hunting for him. Listen, there's more." Voices shrill and voices bubbling came through the blackness from here and from there. The men tried to locate them and rowed now in this direction, now in that—always wrong. Once a voice sudden and shrill and close to the boat cried "A moi," and at the same instant Bompard's oar struck something, ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... early, but his sleep was fitful from the sense that Sue was so near at hand. At some time near two o'clock, when he was beginning to sleep more soundly, he was aroused by a shrill squeak that had been familiar enough to him when he lived regularly at Marygreen. It was the cry of a rabbit caught in a gin. As was the little creature's habit, it did not soon repeat its cry; and probably would not do so more than once or twice; but would ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... sun-sifted dusk of the green lane. Here the desert silence was like a benediction of peace, broken now and then by the faint, shrill note of an insect, or the occasional soft, mournful plaint ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... the child that this style of behavior was not very "speckerful;" so she hastily dropped on her knees before her auntie, and began to say her prayers. The change was so sudden, from the shrill crow of a chicken to the gentle voice of a little girl praying, that no one could keep a sober face. Prudy ran into the closet, and Dotty laughed ...
— Little Folks Astray • Sophia May (Rebecca Sophia Clarke)
... deal of confusion in the building. Hurried footsteps came and went up and down the passages; now and then he heard approaching voices, which tantalizingly passed on, or died away before reaching his door. Once a shrill shriek—a woman's shriek—rang through the corridor and caused him to ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... moving softly as if she were under an enchantment which she feared to break by a gesture. An ecstasy as inarticulate as grief kept him silent, and it was into this silence that the voice of Abby floated, high, shrill, ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... heaps of garbage. Even in her terror she had a faint sense of grim enjoyment at the thought of how horrified Mr. Huntley would be could he know. She almost hated him for his solicitous care of her when she compared it with his indifference to these ragged shrill-voiced women about her. She paused at length before one of the low hovels and timidly knocked. At the same moment the door suddenly opened and a young man came lounging heavily out. By the light from ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... at first, being full of tears, But as it cleared, it grew full loud and shrill, Growing a windy shriek ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... the water-melons and gourds which it finds when it goes forth at night in search of food. However, it is in no way particular, being almost as omnivorous as the hog. Its senses of smell and hearing are very acute. Its eyes, though, are small and its ears short. Its voice is a shrill kind of whistle, such as one would not expect to proceed from an animal of such massive bulk. It is extremely fond of the water, and delights in floundering about in the mud. It can swim and dive also admirably, and will often remain underneath the surface for many ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... controlled, would then place his money on seventeen—"dix-sept," he would say to the croupier to make it quite clear—and the ball would be spun. As it slowed down, the tension in the crowd would increase. "Mon Dieu!" a woman would cry in a shrill voice; there would be guttural exclamations from Germans; at the edge of the crowd strong men would swoon. At last a sudden shriek ... and the croupier's voice, trembling for the first time for thirty years, "Dix-sept!" Then gold and notes would be pushed at the Chevalier. He would stuff his ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... year agone, when wildly shrill The wind sat singing on this bough, The churchyard on the neighboring hill Had not so many graves as now. When the May-morn, with hand of light, The clouds above her bosom drew, And o'er the blue, cold steeps of night Went treading out the stars ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... into business is interesting enough. But even more striking is what looks like a conversion of business into religion. Business is so serious that it sometimes assumes the shrill tone of a revivalist propaganda. There has recently been brought to my attention a circular addressed to the agents of an insurance society, urging them to rally round the firm, with a special effort, in what I can only call a "mission-month." I quote—with apologies to the unknown ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... this much straight," he said in shrill complaint: "I turned on the light you're talking about. I hadn't been ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... wagoner had set His sevenfold teme behind the steadfast starre, That was in ocean waves yet never wet, But firme is fixt, and sendeth light from farre To all that in the wild deep wandering are: And chearful chanticleer with his note shrill Had warned once that Phoebus' fiery carre In haste was climbing up the easterne hill, Full envious that night so long ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... doctor's whistle across the street. He was up in a moment looking in all directions, for though he heard him, he could not see his master. He leaped out of the buggy and ran across the street, from where the sound seemed to come. As he ran the whistle was repeated loud and shrill, but ...
— Zip, the Adventures of a Frisky Fox Terrier • Frances Trego Montgomery
... separate sentences; at the same time weaving the leaves of the cocoa-nut into different forms, which he afterwards deposits upon the ground where the bones have been interred; the deity is then addressed by a shrill screech, which is used only upon that occasion. When the priest retires, the tuft of feathers is removed, and the provisions left to putrify, or ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... going to tell you now. We are going to sit outside after dinner. You must come to us there. No good having smart friends unless you make use of them," she added, with a shrill little laugh. ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... at Bleakridge. And everywhere in the deepening twilight I could see the urchins, often hatless and sometimes scarcely shod, scudding over the lamp-reflecting mire with sheets of wavy green, and above the noises of traffic I could hear the shrill outcry: "Signal. Football Edition. Football Edition. Signal." The world was being informed of the might of Jos Myatt, and of the averting of disaster from Knype, and of the results of over a hundred ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... poison stealing Through his hot blood; the bristling yellow glare Spiking his eyes with fire, till he went reeling, Stifled and blinded, on—and did not care Though he were taken—wandering round and round, 'Jerusalem the Golden' quavering shrill, Changing his tune to 'Tommy Tiddler's Ground': Till, just a lost child on that dazzling hill, Bewildered in a glittering golden maze Of stinging scented fire, he dropped, quite done, A shrivelling wisp within a ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... be cooled since. It is not the loud noise of words that is best heard in heaven, or that is constructed to be crying to God. No, this is transacted in the heart more silently to men, but it striketh up into the ears of God. His ear is sharp, and that voice of the soul's desires is shrill, and though it were out of the depths, they will meet together. It is true, the vehemency of affection will sometimes cause the extension of the voice; but yet it may cry as loud to heaven when it is kept within. I do not press such extraordinary degrees of ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... apple-hued face bowed in reply. He bowed with difficulty, for in his arms he held a huge grey cat, which still mewed with the excitement of the chase. Rats had been turned loose on the floor, and it had accounted for them to the accompaniment of a shrill urging from the bed. Now the sport was over, and the domestics who had crowded round the door to see it had slipped away, leaving only Anton and ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... pre-eminently her color, setting off each and every one of her charms and suggesting the roundness and softness and whiteness her drapery concealed. She was one of those rare beings whose every pose is instinct with grace. And her voice—It was small, rather high, at times almost shrill. But in every note of its register there sounded a mysterious, melancholy-sweet call to the responding ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... suddenly down to an easy keel, rocking in that glassy sea as if in a tide rip. The deck was awash with oil. Far out in the bay the ripples widening from the schooner blurred the reflections of the stars. The Chinamen swarmed up the hatch-way, voluble and shrill. Again the "Bertha Millner" lifted and sank, the tubs sliding on the deck, the masts quivering like reeds, the timbers groaning aloud with the strain. In the stern something cracked and smashed. Then the trouble died away, the ripples faded into the ocean, and the schooner settled to her keel, ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... themselves from Bob's lines and ran forward. In a few minutes they were dragging the terrified fugitives from the trams and driving them along the street. They came towards us, wailing aloud in high shrill voices, like women. Behind them came Bob's volunteers, carrying the wounded dragoon, and supporting a couple of the fugitives who had been knocked down by the soldiers. The howling men were pushed through the ranks to the rear. ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... Williams was concluding the communion service, the door of the church was burst open, and old Ike, tottering into the aisle, cried out in a shrill voice:— ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... and the Red House had been buzzing hives since dawn, Mrs. Carre handling her forces and volunteers and supernumeraries with the skill of a veteran, and with encouragement so shrill and animated that it sounded like scolding, but was in ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... the northern wagoner had set His sevenfold teme behind the steadfast starre, That was in ocean waves yet never wet, But firme is fixt, and sendeth light from farre To all that in the wild deep wandering are: And chearful chanticleer with his note shrill Had warned once that Phoebus' fiery carre In haste was climbing up the easterne hill, Full envious that night so long ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... deadline. Never, I believe, in those times when almost daily the Argonaut-laden boats were sailing for the Golden North, was there one in which the sporting element was so dominant. The social hall reeked with patchouli and stale whiskey. From the staterooms came shrill outbursts of popular melody, punctuated with the popping of champagne corks. Dance-hall girls, babbling incoherently, reeled in the passageways, danced on the cabin table, and were only held back from licentiousness by the restraint of their ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... was so paralysed with terror that he could do nothing but set up a shrill screaming, clinging to the boat with both ...
— Drolls From Shadowland • J. H. Pearce
... both kinds; and I was extricating myself as well as I could from my petitioners, with the assurance that I would come by-and-bye and visit them again, when I felt my dress suddenly feebly jerked, and a shrill cracked voice on the other side of me exclaimed, 'Missus, no go yet—no go away yet; you no see me, missus, when you come by-and-bye; but,' added the voice in a sort of wail, which seemed to me as if the thought was full of misery, 'you see many, many of my offspring.' These melancholy words, ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... workmen out of my own pocket; for the Duke, after giving Lattanzio Gorini orders to discharge their wages, at the end of about eighteen months, grew tired, and withdrew this subsidy. I asked Lattanzio why he did not pay me as usual. The man replied, gesticulating with those spidery hands of his, in a shrill gnat's voice: "Why do not you finish your work? One thinks that you will never get it done." In a rage I up and answered: "May the plague catch you and all who dare to think I ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... turned and saw the eye in the wall. Throwing down thread and web she moved angrily to the door, gave a shrill scream and flew out under the sky. Like a white speck against the blue hills, she appeared for a little while and then ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... time when my stern teacher began to give sudden war-whoops over my head in the morning while I was sound asleep. He expected me to leap up with perfect presence of mind, always ready to grasp a weapon of some sort and to give a shrill whoop in reply. If I was sleepy or startled and hardly knew what I was about, he would ridicule me and say that I need never expect to sell my scalp dear. Often he would vary these tactics by shooting off his gun just outside of the lodge while I was yet asleep, at the same time giving ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... boatmen on the wharf, rising above the ringing of discordant bells, and the rumble of railway trains. There was clanging and clashing of metal on every side, hauling of ropes, pitching and heaving of merchandise, with now a shrill scream from the throat of some dainty craft hard by, and again a hoarse sepulchral response from a larger vessel as it came or went. There was a buzz of human voices expressive of every sort of agitation and confusion, and quietly through it all, the great waves slapped against the shore ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... struck the ship and shook it from end to end; and presently the machinery came to a full stop. Then there was hurrying of feet on deck, and they could hear the boatswain's shrill pipe, and the captain giving commands. The steerage was soon a scene of terror. Those who rushed up the stairs were met with fastened doors, and were compelled to remain below. Women screamed and prayed and ...
— Added Upon - A Story • Nephi Anderson
... his side, he ventured in the light of day into Main Street or strode up and down on the rickety front porch of his own house, talking excitedly. The voice that had been low and trembling became shrill and loud. The bent figure straightened. With a kind of wriggle, like a fish returned to the brook by the fisherman, Biddlebaum the silent began to talk, striving to put into words the ideas that had been accumulated by his mind during long years ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... of the Demoiselles Denis, the chevalier was not thinking of uniting the three thousand livres which this generous mother gave to her daughters to the thousand crowns a year which the Abbe Brigaud had bestowed on him. The shrill treble of Mademoiselle Emilie, the contralto of Mademoiselle Athenais, the accompaniment of both, had recalled to his recollection the pure and flexible voice and the distinguished execution of his neighbor. Thanks to that singular power which a great preoccupation gives us over ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... awakened by hearing the doctor's whistle across the street. He was up in a moment looking in all directions, for though he heard him, he could not see his master. He leaped out of the buggy and ran across the street, from where the sound seemed to come. As he ran the whistle was repeated loud and shrill, but no doctor ...
— Zip, the Adventures of a Frisky Fox Terrier • Frances Trego Montgomery
... to whisper to each other, and in arranging their positions behind their respective masters, they knocked several of the guns together. In the same moment, the two leading elephants discovered us, and, throwing their trunks up perpendicularly, they blew the shrill trumpet of alarm without attempting to retreat. Several trumpets answered the call immediately from different positions in the high grass, from which, trunks were thrown up, and huge heads just appeared in many places, as they endeavoured ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... comparatively young. Yet he looked like animated waste matter. His face seemed to hang on him. His mouth was loose and void of expression. His eyes were bleared and ever on the move. He spoke mostly in a toneless drawl, that sometimes turned into a shrill whine, but also at rare intervals could change into a soft, heart-winning purr. His clothing was poorer and coarser than that of any other person seen by Keith. Once or twice it seemed to the boy like a repulsive uniform, and he heard his parents speak with mingled ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... the Marquis d'Aubremel the monies he is expecting," said the man, and his voice, shrill and silvery, like a musical box or the bell of a clock, impressed Felix painfully. The voice grated on the nerves. "I have drawn a receipt in regular form," said Felix, extending his hand. But the solicitor's clerk leaned his back against the door, without stirring ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... the locomotive, and the shrill scream from the steamboat, are heard here all day; a continuous stream of life ever bustles through the city, and, standing as it does on the very verge of western civilisation, Chicago is a vast emporium of the trade of the districts east ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... into Queenstown harbor, and then stopped. The anchor chains rattled, the big iron grasped the bottom, and the vessel was still. What a sensation to be once more at rest! Now out from the shore came a tender to take Queenstown passengers ashore. Small boats came alongside from which came shrill cries to those far above on deck. A small rope was thrown up which was caught and hauled in by the interested spectators. At the end of the small rope there dangled a heavier one, and at the end of that there was a loop into which a good-sized Irish woman ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson
... containing the icon glittered, illuminated on all sides by tall candles ornamented with golden spirals. The candelabra was filled with tapers, and from the choir sounded most merry tunes sung by amateur choristers, with bellowing bass and shrill ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... an unsuspected listener to this conversation. Lawrence had come in from the field for a drink, and was standing in the open kitchen doorway, within easy earshot of the women's shrill tones. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... with, and it is ignored only at the expense of feasibility. Some later Romanticists, therefore, such as Spohr and Mendelssohn, came back immediately to the comfortable middle register as the real vocal register of song. The thirst for shrill sounds had made men entirely forget that a song must be easy to sing just because it must always be sung suggestively and never be delivered with full dramatic execution. Do not our singers, who since Schubert's time are ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... irresistible, dangerful and gloomy, breaking silence only by the loud fierce cry of the gong. Two rivers of people swarmed along the sidewalks, spattered with black mud, which made each shoe leave a scarlike impression. Overhead elevated trains with a shrill grinding of the wheels stopped at the station, which upon its leglike pillars seemed to resemble some monstrous kind of crab squatting over the street. The quick fat puffings of the engines could be heard. Down an alley there were somber curtains of ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... and dances were accompanied by the monotonous beating of the native drum, tun, by the shrill sound of reed flutes, xul, by the tinkling of small metal bells, [c]alakan, which they attached to their feet, and by rattles of small gourds or jars containing pebbles, known as zoch. Other musical instruments mentioned, are the chanal, the whistle (pito, Dicc. Anon.), ...
— The Annals of the Cakchiquels • Daniel G. Brinton
... L. B.—All the open and secret Copperhead organs raise a shrill cry on account of what they pervert into McClellan's general Report of his unmilitary campaigns. When a commander is in the field, he is in duty bound, as soon as possible, that is, in the next few weeks, to send to his superior or to the Government, a Report of each of his military movements ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... head lay upon the polished table I saw the Hindu put a short double-reed pipe to his mouth, and next instant the room was filled with weird, shrill music, while at the same moment he unfastened the side of the little box and ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... worst moods, there lies in him a singular attraction. A wild tone pervades the whole utterance of the man, like its keynote and regulator; now screwing itself aloft as into the Song of Spirits, or else the shrill mockery of Fiends; now sinking in cadences, not without melodious heartiness, though sometimes abrupt enough, into the common pitch, when we hear it only as a monotonous hum; of which hum the true character is extremely difficult to fix. Up to this hour we have never fully satisfied ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... the quick beat of the hearts that remember, the tenderness of those who think upon old sorrows,—all these make the day a lovelier and a sadder festival. So men's hearts were stirred, they knew not why, when they heard the shrill fife and the incessant drum along the quiet Barlow road, and saw the handful of old soldiers marching by. Nobody thought of them as familiar men and neighbors alone,—they were a part of that army which had ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... girls arrived, and a more maddening cargo I can't imagine. I gave orders to keep them forward, but their shrill presence nevertheless penetrates aft. ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... streak came into the sky, and perfume burst from the bushes, and the woods rang, not only with songs some shrill, some as sweet as honey, but with a grotesque yet beautiful electric merriment of birds that can only be heard in this land of wonders. The pen can give but a shadow of the drollery and devilry of the sweet, merry rogues that hailed the smiling morn. Ten thousand of them, ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... do not understand Greek—only Arabic? Well, he asks me to give him money to pay for his dinner and his night's lodging. You must forgive him, for he is but a simple peasant, and cannot believe that anyone may be lodged and fed without payment. I will explain to him, the pig!" And explain he did in shrill, high notes, of which no one ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... Indian thought that brandy must be a decoction of hearts and tongues, "because," said he, "after drinking it I fear nothing, and I talk wonderfully." In Java there is a tiny earthworm which now and then utters a shrill sound like that of the alarum of a small clock. Hence when a public dancing girl has screamed herself hoarse in the exercise of her calling, the leader of the troop makes her eat some of these worms, in the belief that thus she will regain her voice and ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... hour. The jack and chimney near allied, Had never left each other's side; The chimney to a steeple grown, The jack would not be left alone; But up against the steeple reared, Became a clock, and still adhered; And still its love to household cares By a shrill voice at noon declares, Warning the cook-maid not to burn That roast meat which it ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... keep the rockers swinging, And deepen slumber in the shut blue eyes, And the shrill cadences of her high singing Are to the babe but ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... gathered about the well. Straightening myself up, I saw a group of maids from the village, and, in the middle, one who bent over the water. Presently she scrambled to her feet, glanced over her shoulder and gave a shrill scream. ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... mysterious light. Let them listen more intently to the flutes and harps and they will discover quite a different melody beneath—a melody by no means bewitching or soothing, nor inviting us to dreams, sweet forgetfulness, soft couches, and tender embraces, but a shrill and mocking tune that is at times insolently discordant and that strikes us as decidedly modern, realistic, and threatening. As the poet himself expressed it in his ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... on the great flatboat that had followed us, carrying our provisions and our horses, my own mare, Fatima, with her proudly arched neck. Before I had time to think of my manners I had put my fingers to my lips and uttered through them the shrill whistle with which I had used to call her. Instantly her head was flung swiftly up, and I saw her start as if to come to me, while up the bluff was borne her shrill whinnies, high above the shouts of the men, who had ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... Gard set off after them to see the end of the matter, and suddenly, as the roadway dipped between high banks and became a hollow way, the white beast gave a shrill squeal, flung up his heels, jerked himself free, and vanished like a streak of light into the darkness of the lofty bank ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... the hut rose a low sweet song, at which all the simple Indians bowed their heads in reverence; and the English were hushed in astonishment; for the voice was not shrill or guttural, like that of an Indian, but round, clear, and rich, like a European's; and as it swelled and rose louder and louder, showed a compass and power which would have been extraordinary anywhere (and many a man of the party, as was usual in musical old England, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... never discovered for just at that moment a shrill scream ran through the night, followed by the exclamation in ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... suddenly with a quaint curtsy. Her voice was shrill and piping, but softened somewhat by age. "Is dis yere whar Mistuh Ryduh lib, suh?" she asked, looking around her doubtfully, and glancing into the open windows, through which some of the preparations for the evening ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... yellow daffodils, And East to West, and West to East, Fling answering welcome-fires, By dawn and day-fall, on the jocund hills. And ye, winged minstrels of her fair meinie, Being newly coated in glad livery, Upon her steps attend, And round her treading dance and without end Reel your shrill lutany. What popular breath her coming does out-tell The garrulous leaves among! What little noises stir and pass From blade to blade along the voluble grass! O Nature, never-done Ungaped-at Pentecostal ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... windfalls about which the new growth had sprung up. Its top was like the thin edge of a wedge, and the farther side dropped, a steep sand-bank, to the stream which flowed at its foot. When we were hardly more than half-way up, there was the sound of a shot and a funny, little shrill cry from Job. Bruin had been climbing the sand-bank, and was nearly at the top when Job fired. The bullet evidently struck him for, doubling up, his head between his legs, he rolled over and over to the foot of the bank. When I reached the top of the hill he ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... little things put together. I was greatly impressed with this fact one morning as I stood watching the workmen erecting the steel framework for a tall office building. A shrill whistle rang out as a signal, a man over at the engine pulled a lever, a chain from the derrick was lowered, and the whistle rang out again. A man stooped down and fastened the chain around the center of a steel beam, stepped back and blew the whistle once more. Again the ...
— Power of Mental Imagery • Warren Hilton
... thy nest, Robin-redbreast! Sing, birds, in every furrow; And from each hill, let music shrill Give my fair Love good-morrow! Blackbird and thrush in every bush, Stare, linnet, and cock-sparrow! You pretty elves, amongst yourselves Sing my fair Love good-morrow; To give my Love good-morrow Sing birds, ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... with a turn as quick as a lightning flash he swung the horse round on its hind legs in a quarter circle and before the astounded Mexican could tighten the loop there were two flashing reports and a bullet had crashed through each wrist. Antone's arms dropped on his saddle, and through the shrill din of the mingled Spanish and English curses he shrieked at Mead came the sharp cracking of three revolvers. Emerson Mead felt one bullet whistle through his sleeve and one through the rim of his sombrero, as, with the rope still on his shoulders, he ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... while ago, and perhaps I have forgotten it. I cannot tell, my dear. It is only from April in her own person that one hears this immemorial message. And as for me? Eh, I go into the April woods, and I find trees there of various sizes that pay no attention to me, and shrill, dingy little birds that deafen me, and it may be a gaudy flower or two, and, in any event, I find a vast quantity of sodden, decaying leaves to warn me the place is no fitting haunt for a gentleman afflicted with rheumatism. So ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... night with soiled feet, coats and trousers, "this ain't the way ter git ter be president." He organized a company of "regulators" in the boys' dormitory, and when any fellows turned in with soiled feet, coats and trousers, Steve's shrill whistle summoned the army and a lively pillow fight ensued which was hard on the pillows but always brought victory for nightgowns. And when a boy refused to brush his hair in the morning the regulators ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... handkerchiefs tied round their dark heads—washed, with a fine impartiality, soiled linen and vegetables in an iron trough, grated for a third of its length, before a fountain of debased and flamboyant design. Their voices were alternately shrill and gutteral. It was perhaps as well not to understand too clearly all which they said. On the left came a break in the high, painted house-fronts, off which in places the plaster scaled, and from the windows ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... firmly holden, and his enemy was still unprovided with the means of defence. Now did Sir Lancelot begin to doubt what course he should pursue, when suddenly the damsel, who, having bound up the wounds of the captive knight as he lay, and now sat a little way off watching the event, cried out with a shrill voice— ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... to go round to Kangwe and ask Mme. Jacot, of the Mission Evangelique, if she will take me in. The air is stiff with mosquitoes, and saying a few suitable words to them, I dash under the mosquito bar and sleep, lulled by their shrill yells of ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... could do was to watch with fearful eyes and straining ears for his coming, and slink out of the way with her child, lest both should be beaten as well as cursed; for faithful old Keery, once daring to face him with a volley of reproaches from her shrill tongue, was levelled to the floor by a blow from his rapid hand, and bore bruises for weeks that warned her from interference. Not long, however, was there danger of her meddling. When the baby was a year and a half old. Keery, in her out-door labors,—now grown burdensome ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... the West and East Shall flock and flit about the feast Like doves that cooled, with waving wing, The banquets of the Cyprian king. Old shapes of song that do not die Shall haunt the halls of memory, And though the Bow shall prelude clear Shrill as the song of Gunnar's spear, There answer sobs from lute and lyre That murmured of ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... never known whether this effect was produced by the presence of a multitude, by shrill and discordant sounds, or by returning recollection, too powerful for his enfeebled frame. He was tenderly carried from the crowd, and restoratives having been applied, in vain, the melancholy burden was slowly and carefully ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... drive Michael heard steps coming. Then a struggle and a shrill giggle. Some young people were coming to the wake, and he knew a boy had tried to kiss a girl in the dark. He felt a dull ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the tower of St. Hathelswide, he walked up the narrow entry from the market-place, along which the editor-reporter had shot the previous night, and, after a preliminary reconnoitring of the premises, tapped at a door marked "Editorial." A shrill voice bade him enter, and he turned the handle to find himself inspecting an unusually untidy and littered room, the atmosphere of which seemed chiefly to be derived from a mixture of gas, paste and printers' ink. Somewhere beyond ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... angel, sitting high in glory, Heard this shrill wail ring out from Purgatory: "Have mercy, ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... other in his shrill voice. "I'm ashamed of myself, gentlemen, but the strain I've been under— When you've ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... had not been idle. He slipped the handcuffs from his slender wrists and seizing the club of one of the fallen policemen, aimed a blow at the second man who leaped at Johnny. A moment later, Johnny heard his shrill whisper: ...
— Triple Spies • Roy J. Snell
... these things to sell for? Why not let each one give ten cents for . going to the party?" asked Winny Curtis, in a tone that was very nearly a squeak, so shrill and ...
— A District Messenger Boy and a Necktie Party • James Otis
... The well-appointed king[1] at Hampton pier Embark his royalty;[2] and his brave fleet With silken streamers the young Phoebus fanning: Play with your fancies; and in them behold Upon the hempen tackle ship-boys climbing; Hear the shrill whistle, which doth order give To sounds confus'd; behold the threaden sails, Borne with the invisible and creeping wind, Draw the huge bottoms through the furrow'd sea, Breasting the lofty surge: O, do but think You stand upon the rivage,[3] ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare
... not have long to wait, for presently a tall, gaunt figure strode out of the brambles some yards from the fallen horse and uttered a hoarse shout, upon which Ab sprang from the spot where he had fallen and ran toward the newcomer, giving vent to shrill ...
— The Broncho Rider Boys with Funston at Vera Cruz - Or, Upholding the Honor of the Stars and Stripes • Frank Fowler
... stock still for the fraction of a second. Then he pulled out his whistle and blew loudly and insistently. Before the shrill call had died away, he was striding towards the passage, with Viner ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher
... Barbara, in a shrill whisper. "If he is not asleep, wait until he is. I would not have him wakened, but I must have the ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... country squire, straight from his cow-sheds and his hunting dogs; a young blond German giant, 32 years old, in the very prime of his massive strength and endurance; plentiful hair cropped short, ruddy face, blond beard, bright blue eyes, big fists; high, shrill voice, strangely out of keeping with his physical bulk. For years afterward, this peculiar voice became the stock in trade of newspaper writers. However, it was what ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... a minute or two, closing my desk, finding my coat, when I heard some one come into the outer office, a visitor, for little Pete's voice went up to a shrill yap with the information that I was busy. Then the knob turned, the door opened, and there stood Cummings. At first he saw only me ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... where painters who have not a cent in the world mix with beggars and guttersnipes to cajole a little hot food out of soft-hearted soldiers at mess-time. Convent doors where ragged lines shiver for hours in the shrill wind that blows across the bare Castilian plain waiting for the nuns to throw out bread for them to fight over like dogs. And through it all moves the great crowd of the outcast, sneak-thieves, burglars, beggars of every description,—rich beggars and poor devils who have ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... in the castle of Avenel, when a winded bugle sent its shrill and prolonged notes from the shore of the lake, and was replied to cheerily by the signal of the warder. The Lady of Avenel knew the sounds of her husband, and rushed to the window of the apartment in which she was sitting. A band of about thirty ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... is one of indescribable animation. The cabmen drive furiously this day their broken-kneed nags, who will soon be found on the horns of the bulls, for this is the natural death of the Madrid cab-horse; the omnibus teams dash gayly along with their shrill chime of bells; there are the rude jests of clowns and the high voices of excited girls; the water-venders droning their tempting cry, "Cool as the snow!" the sellers of fans and the merchants of gingerbread picking up their harvests in the ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... even the golden rod and the purple aster, those hardy children of autumn, began to hang their heads with thirst. All day long, the grasshopper and locust sent through the hot, panting air, their shrill notes, stinging the ear with discord. The heaven above looked like a dome of brass, and a thin, filmy smoke ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... the screaming of women, and the scuttling of poultry, and then we were out in the country again, with the long, steep incline of the Redhill Road before us. My uncle waved his whip in the air with a shrill view- halloa. ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... been left for some time to the tender mercies of the women and children; the men having assembled together to hold, as we afterwards found, a consultation regarding our disposal—their savage yells and cries reaching our ears even above the shrill shrieks and shouts of the women. It was evident that our captors were engaged in a hot discussion, but not one of them, we had reason to suppose, was lifting up his voice in ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston
... receive hypnotic indoctrination and, while unconscious, have an operation performed on his ears which would enable him to hear sounds well above the normal audible range. He would be able to hear the shrill sonar-cries of bats, for instance, and, more important, he would be able to hear voices when the speaker used a First Level audio-frequency step-up phone. He would also receive a memory-obliteration ...
— Temple Trouble • Henry Beam Piper
... round and round, now riding backward, now forward, now on one foot, now on his hands with his feet in the air. Then he leaped upright, and putting his fingers to his mouth he gave a shrill whistle. At that the white steed suddenly dashed into the ring and galloped up beside the black one, and now Teddy rode with a foot on each. Faster and faster he rode, crying "Houp-la!" and even the King clapped his hands. Once and twice he rode round the ring and past the platform, ...
— The Counterpane Fairy • Katharine Pyle
... down the cliffs; but the mother bird flew towards me with such piteous cries that even in my danger I could not be so cruel, so I removed the little ones to a crevice close at hand and seated myself upon their nest, thankful of the refuge it afforded. And now I heard a shrill whistle from Robbie Rosson, by which I understood that, seeing my comparative safety, he was going to find some place where he could get down to the beach, there to wait until I should bring the boat round ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... sure—dogs! There were no barking dogs to greet him. It was curious, he thought, for these isolated families always had plenty of dogs and no "breed" or "Injun" outfit ever kept fewer than six. There were no shrill voices of children at play, no sound of an axe or a saw ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... the bed of fir-boughs he had made for her, lay Gloria. He did not look that way. The wind was rising; he heard it go rushing through the tree-tops; it struck with sudden, relentless impact; it set the shivering needles to shrill whistling; it made the staunch old trunks shudder. He heard the canvas flap-flapping by Gloria's bed; above him tossing boughs scraped ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... shrill cry of "crack, crack, crack—rackety, rackety, rackety," repeated from the throats of dozens, as they sometimes stooped quite close to our ears, became at length almost unbearable. It seemed as if they had lost their senses in the excitement of so unusual and splendid a ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... instant, with eerie, jubilant interruption, the waiting-woman made the very air shudder with a laugh of such shrill exultation and riotous abandon that Lal Lu, for a moment forgetful of her own extremity, gazed with unconcealed amazement and alarm upon the ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... the meaning of this strange company, and it so frightened him that he attempted to hide behind a tree, in the hope that they might pass without seeing him. But no sooner had he secreted himself than a strange, shrill chattering came from the foremost of the group, and in an instant Toby emerged ...
— Toby Tyler • James Otis
... Arden, child, whose blood is in your veins, who fought and fell at Barnet, crying shrill and fierce, 'Edward my King, St. George and victory!' And the young Edward, near him as he fell, called to a knight to lay hand to his heart, for Edward knew and loved him well, and had received of him money ...
— A Warwickshire Lad - The Story of the Boyhood of William Shakespeare • George Madden Martin
... was terrific. Howls, shrill yelps, thumps and crashes. Then came a crash louder than any preceding it, a splash of water across the sill, and from the doorway leaped, or flew, an object steaming and dripping, fluttering with fly paper, and with a giant lobster clamped firmly to its tail. The lobster was knocked ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the larger wherry, immediately shipped their oars, grappled with the drifting skiff, and held it fast. Wood, then, beheld two persons, one of whom he recognised as Rowland, spring on board the chase. A fierce struggle ensued. There was a shrill cry, instantly succeeded by a ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... and the lute: Though others think the lute was first devis'd In imitation of a tortoise-back, Whose sinews, parched by Apollo's beams, Echo'd about the concave of the shell: And seeing the shortest and smallest gave shrill'st sound, They found out frets, whose sweet diversity (Well-touched by the skilful learned fingers) Raiseth so strange a multitude of chords. Which their opinion many do confirm, Because Testado signifies a lute. But if I ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... talk in her shrill voice, from time to time sucking in the superfluous saliva with a ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... called, and wondered at the shrill sound of her own voice. "'Dolph!" She was standing erect, crooking her arm. The dog dropped on his fore-paws, crouched, and sprang through the hoop she made for him; crouched, sprang back again, alighted, and broke into a ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... houses, to sleep, spin wool, and think of Boodh, if of anything at all, the dead, long winter through. The yaks alone can find anything to do: so long as any vegetation remains they roam and eat it, still yielding milk, which the women take morning and evening, when their shrill whistle and cries are heard for a few minutes, as they call the grunting animals. No other sounds, save the harsh roar and hollow echo of the falling rock, glacier, or snow-bed, disturbed the perfect silence of the day or night.* [Snow covers the ground at Yangma from December till April, and the ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... of angels, one is apt to hear the rustling of their wings," added Rose, as a shrill whistle came up the avenue accompanied by ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... as if inhabited by dancing ghosts. Somewhere, crockery rattled. There was an alarming creaking, as if great timbers were grinding together. And there was, over all, a shrill, menacing, unceasing howl—the same dread sounds that had ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... await its charge. With a shrill scream she sped forward, running at the full of her speed across the moonlight directly towards that shadowed part of the encircling wall within whose thickness I had my gazing place; and then, throwing ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... by an usher of the court. Sir William read the note as he sat on the bench, and having looked towards the fair scribe, he received from her a glance and a smile that were fruitful of much misery to him. Within four months the courteous Sir William Scott was tied fast to a beautiful, shrill, voluble termagant, who exercised marvellous ingenuity in rendering him wretched and contemptible. Reared in a stately school of old-world politeness, the unhappy man was a model of decorum and urbanity. He took reasonable pride in ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... land fowls. We saw none but eagles of the larger sorts of birds, but five or six sorts of small birds. The biggest sort of these were not bigger than larks, some no bigger than wrens, all singing with great variety of fine shrill notes; and we saw some of their nests with young ones in them. The water-fowls are ducks (which had young ones now, this being the beginning of the spring in these parts), curlews, galdens, crab-catchers, cormorants, gulls, pelicans, and ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton
... the captain he might be discovered bluffing in another—so he resolved to investigate. Accordingly at an hour when he knew Terence should be in the engine room he took up the speaking-tube at the head of his bed and blew into it. But no shrill whistle signalled his desire in the engine room, and though Michael blew until he was red in the face and his lips hurt him cruelly, reluctantly he came to the conclusion that Herr August Carl von Staden had the situation very well in hand and Terence Reardon in the latter's ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... kettle had had the last of its solo performances. It persevered with undiminished ardor; but the cricket took first fiddle, and kept it. Good heaven, how it chirped! Its shrill, sharp, piercing voice resounded through the house, and seemed to twinkle in the outer darkness like ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... those knaves?" cried he, with a shrill voice, rapping on the floor with his cane. "Where are those ignorant fellows, those pedants, those ill-bred men that did not wait for me? Ah! so you are the patient," said he to the stupefied king. "That is good. Put out your tongue. Quick! I ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... Electricity (that thing which to us is only a name and of which we know nothing), forgets home, wife, child, supper; and midnight finds him in his laboratory, where he has been since sunrise—just imagine, if you please, the shrill greeting that is in cold storage for him when he stumbles home, haggard and worn, at dawn. How can he explain why he did this thing and answer the questions as to who was there, and what good it all ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... rapidly. Already snow fell fast in big thick flakes. To make it worse, the wind was beginning to rise. It came in shrill ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... the bush, and then circling round, reached the west side of the creek, in the dry bed of which he hoped to find Bolter. He examined the ground carefully, expecting to find some track of the missing horse, but not a sign could he see. Half an hour or more elapsed, when he heard Harry's shrill cooey; but, from the faintness of the sound, he knew that his brother must be a long way off. Putting spurs to his horse he galloped forward, expecting every moment to see Bolter dash out of the creek and make for the west. At last he caught sight of Harry, and directly afterwards, ...
— The Young Berringtons - The Boy Explorers • W.H.G. Kingston
... was a clatter by the fountain, and the shrill small pipe of D'Aurigny, the youngest boy ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... sensational French books appear to be translated. But as French painters and actors now habitually surpass all others even in what are claimed as the English qualities,—simplicity and truth,—so do French prose-writers excel. To be set against the brutality of Carlyle and the shrill screams of Ruskin, there is to be seen across the Channel the extraordinary fact of an actual organization of good writers, the French Academy, whose influence all nations feel. Under their authority we see introduced into literary work an ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... possible more cowardly: I felt my heart sink, as after uttering some half-intelligible words, the sable visitor departed. While drinking tea in solitude, musing on the old familiar faces of my former home, never was the croaking of the frog so loud, the curlo's note so shrill, the evening air so gentle. I heard the negro servants without expressing their astonishment that, now as massa was gone, missus wouldn't call in Miss Jane (the maid), and make her 'peak' to her; adding—'Rosevale ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... converted into a cinema at the opposite end. Between these alluring extremities are various cafes, each with its chairs and tables, and each with a gramophone that pours its notes into the night. The panting of Caruso mingles with Tetrazzini's shrill exultation. ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... which their cottage stood, they saw two travelers approaching on foot. Close behind them came the fierce dogs, snarling at their very heels. A little farther off ran a crowd of children, who sent up shrill cries, and flung stones at the two strangers, with all their might. Once or twice, the younger of the two men (he was a slender and very active figure) turned about and drove back the dogs with a staff which he carried in his ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... did the hunter reply. He strode on and on and they watched him climbing up and up the mountainside till he was lost to view. At last he gained the rim of the nest and looked in. The old birds were away, but the fierce young eagles greeted him with shrill cries and fiery, flashing eyes. The hunter's heart was full of anger and he quickly bent his bow, loosing the war arrows one after another till the last one of the hateful birds lay ...
— A Treasury of Eskimo Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss
... of the young chairman was withdrawn from the fighting-line, and the figure of the working-woman stood alone. With her lean brown finger pointing straight at the more outrageous of the young hooligans, and her voice raised shrill above their impertinence— ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... started into life at the words. That ravenous second hunger of poverty—the hunger for money—roused them into tumult and activity in a moment. "Two of you for more lanterns, if you have them! Two of you for the pickaxes and the tools! The rest after me to find the beam!" They cheered—with shrill starveling voices they cheered. The women and the children fled back on either side. We rushed in a body down the churchyard path to the first empty cottage. Not a man was left behind but the clerk—the poor old clerk standing on the flat tombstone sobbing and wailing over the church. The servant ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... ears as well as our eyes. Such a mingling of bird voices! The "spring o' th' year" of the meadow larks and the mingled squeaks and music of the robins are brought up by the wind from the river bottom, and the shrill clear "phe-be" of the chickadee is one of the prettiest sounds now, just as it was in February. Pretty soon a bevy of them come flitting and talking along, like a girl botany class on the search. Before they have passed out of sight the loud and prolonged "O-wick-o-wick-o-wick-o-wick" ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... foot of the stairs, looking up. When the watcher on the third floor spoke at last it was in a voice he didn't instantly recognize. He would have taken it for Claude's, only that it was so frightened and shrill. ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... I rebel!" cried the old woman with a shrill voice. "Why, what right has the pacha to drag me from my poor hovel; and what can he want with an old woman like me? It's not for his ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... three times, clear and shrill. The cuckoo flapped his wings, made a bow to the mandarins, and retired to his ...
— The Cuckoo Clock • Mrs. Molesworth
... are fresh and vigorous, these outside impressions often lose, I think, their sharp savours. One is preoccupied with one's own happy schemes and merry visions; the bird sings shrill within its cage, and claps its golden wings. But on such soft and languorous days as these days of early spring, when the body is unstrung, and the bonds and ties that fasten the soul to its prison are ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... mother's cottage. I had hardly rung the bell before the house door was opened violently; my worthy Italian friend, Professor Pesca, appeared in the servant's place; and darted out joyously to receive me, with a shrill foreign parody ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... especially as he noted great anxiety and incessant movement in the one, and complete passiveness in the other. She who sat in the outer seat was watchful, busy, and ready to press the other's arm at the least provocation, but if either spoke it was always the other. It was not till the quick rush and shrill whistle of a passing train made one start and not the other, that he got the idea that one of them was deaf. As this was the one by the window, he felt that their peculiar actions were now accounted for, and indeed thus far it all tallied with what we might expect from Georgian traveling ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... holiday of the year, the silence that they would carry back into the solitudes with them. Numbers gave them courage of voice, and in its manifestation there was the savagery of the forests that hemmed them in. Shrill voices rose in meaningless cries above the roaring of the fire. Caribou whips snapped fiercely. Chippewayans, Crees, Eskimos, and breeds crowded in the red glare. The factor's men shouted and sang like mad, for this was the company's annual "good time"—the ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... and gesticulations in the tonneau. Out of the gabble a shrill voice rose be-seechingly in English. "We will walk, meester'. If you pleese, meester! We are 'fraid for ride wit' ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... its cradle the signs of sensibility are broken cries. Their acuteness, their ascending form, indicate the weakness, and physical sorrow of man. When the child recognizes the tender cares of its mother, its voice becomes less shrill and broken; its tones have a less acute range, and are more poised and even. The larynx, which is very impressionable and the thermometer of the sensitive life, becomes modified, and produces sounds and inflections in perfect unison with ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... at once, you hussy," he said, shaking his fist, "or you'll have reason to regret it. I'll have you whipped." His cracked voice rose to a shrill shriek as ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... for the salt in the perspiration which exuded from the human bodies. Harris swore he would cease to eat, for he could not take even a mouthful of food without at the same time taking in a multitude of bees. Often, too, their machetes cut into great hornet nests. Then, with the shrill cry, "Avispas!" Rosendo would tear recklessly through the matted jungle, followed by his slapping, stumbling companions, until the maddened insects gave up the chase. Frequently they walked into huge ant nests before they realized it, sometimes the great tucanderas, so ferociously poisonous. ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... the three of us turned down the gallery toward the kitchen. As we approached the door we heard a murmur of voices, one rising every now and then in a shrill wail which furnished a sort of chorus. Radnor whispered in my ear that he reckoned Nancy had "got um" again. Though I did not comprehend at the moment, I subsequently learned that "um" referred to a sort of emotional ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... time of need. It was a beautiful sight, exciting and stirring; with the beat of horses' hoofs, the clatter of harness, the rumble of wheels tearing along over the ground, the flash of a sabre now and then, the ringing words of command, and the soft, shrill echoing bugle which repeated them. I only wanted to understand it all; and in the evening I plied Preston with questions. He explained things ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... was dressing, as she would say, "to keep a date" with a beau, who would soon be waiting on the corner nearest her home in the Big Barracks tenement-house. She smiled as she heard the shrill catcall of a lad in Forsyth Street. She knew it was Dutch Johnny's signal to Chrissie Bergen to come down and meet him at the street doorway. Presently she heard another call—a birdlike whistle—and ...
— Different Girls • Various
... grasp. Out of the confusion she picks and clings to certain isolated facts. At the first explosion, she rushed, terrorized, into the street, gazing up to the heavens, and shaking her withered old fists above her head, she cried in her shrill, quavering voice: "Now look at that! They told us the Kaiser was dying. It's a lie. It's a lie, you see, for here he comes throwing his cursed bombs ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... really from a spirit of Popery and rebellion, they contrived a plot, to make the swearing to those Princes odious in the eyes of the people. To this end, they hired certain women of ill fame, but loud shrill voices, under pretence of selling fish, to go through the streets, with sieves on their heads, and cry, "Buy my soul, buy my soul;" plainly insinuating, that all those who swore to King William, were just ready to sell their souls for an employment. This cry was revived at the death of Queen Anne, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... as of terrible thunder shook the little town from end to end, and as it died away the street lamps went out, and the tinkle of falling glass sounded on the pavements of the Market-Place. And in the second of dead silence which followed, a woman's voice, shrill, terrified, shrieked loudly, once, somewhere in ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... had one salutary effect. It frightened Sally out of her feeble old wits, confirming, as it did, Dr. Guy's fable of the periodical fits of madness to which the young lady was prone. She related to her mistress, in shrill falsetto, what ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... obdurate enough to be insensible to the voice of a reproving conscience. He was, of all the overseers, the most dreaded by the slaves. His presence was painful; his eye flashed confusion; and seldom was his sharp, shrill voice heard, without producing horror and ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... first, his gifts and affections recoiled and against which he continued to protest. On his passage through the turbulence of his time he reminds us of one of those fatal shells which rend the air as they shoot, distinct even through the roar of battle by their swift, shrill anguish and effecting their end ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... there was a clatter by the fountain, and the shrill small pipe of D'Aurigny, the youngest boy in ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... morning, he was rowing slowly along in the bay, when he was startled by the sound of his grandfather's pipes, wafted clear and shrill on a breath of southern wind, from the top of the town. He looked at his watch: it was not yet five o'clock. The expectation of a summons to play at Lossie House, had so excited the old man's brain that he had waked long before his usual time, and Portlossie ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... lost no time in propping it against the low pigsty wall. Scrambling gingerly along its rungs he was able to lean across the morass that separated him from his slowly foundering offspring and extract her like an unwilling cork from it's slushy embrace. A few minutes later he was listening to the shrill and repeated assurances of the nursemaid that her previous experience of filthy spectacles had been on a ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... to sleep, spin wool, and think of Boodh, if of anything at all, the dead, long winter through. The yaks alone can find anything to do: so long as any vegetation remains they roam and eat it, still yielding milk, which the women take morning and evening, when their shrill whistle and cries are heard for a few minutes, as they call the grunting animals. No other sounds, save the harsh roar and hollow echo of the falling rock, glacier, or snow-bed, disturbed the perfect silence of the day or night.* ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... in the parks of the city, during the breeding season, one's attention is repeatedly attracted by the pitiful shrill call of a sparrow fallen on the pavement upon its first attempt at flight, or by the stronger note of a mother sparrow, sharply bewailing the fate of a little one, killed by the fall, or ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various
... sky, And swept the plain, and stripped the woodlands bare, And shook the firmament. We closed our eyes And waited till the heaven-sent plague should pass. At last it ceased, and lo! there stood this maid. A piercing cry she uttered, sad and shrill, As when the mother bird beholds her nest Robbed of its nestlings; even so the maid Wailed as she saw the body stripped and bare, And cursed the ruffians who had done this deed. Anon she gathered handfuls of dry dust, Then, holding ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... young lass had a wee pickle tow, And she thought to try the spinnin' o't; She sat by the fire, and her rock took alow, And that was an ill beginnin' o't. Loud and shrill was the cry that she utter'd, I ween; The sudden mischanter brought tears to her een; Her face it was fair, but her temper was keen; O dole for ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... his hunting dogs; a young blond German giant, 32 years old, in the very prime of his massive strength and endurance; plentiful hair cropped short, ruddy face, blond beard, bright blue eyes, big fists; high, shrill voice, strangely out of keeping with his physical bulk. For years afterward, this peculiar voice became the stock in trade of newspaper writers. However, it was what ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... a high-pitched voice out of the darkness, shrill and unnatural with terror and fatigue. The next moment Fanny Glen herself, bareheaded, panting from her rapid run, white-faced in the light cast by the lantern held by the staff officer, pushed through the group ...
— A Little Traitor to the South - A War Time Comedy With a Tragic Interlude • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... counting with great exactness every second that intervened between its opening. Presently a little window at the side opened and a lean but well-browned face, framed in the grim border of a dusky night-cap, protruded. Then a sharp, shrill voice inquired, "Who's there?" ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... would be drugged and transposed to the First Level, where he would receive hypnotic indoctrination and, while unconscious, have an operation performed on his ears which would enable him to hear sounds well above the normal audible range. He would be able to hear the shrill sonar-cries of bats, for instance, and, more important, he would be able to hear voices when the speaker used a First Level audio-frequency step-up phone. He would also receive a memory-obliteration from the moment of his abduction, and a set of pseudo-memories of a visit to the Heaven of ...
— Temple Trouble • Henry Beam Piper
... unusually handsome equipment, was a novelty even to the river people; and each afternoon of her starting, crowds came aboard to bid farewell to friends and roam over the vessel, or collected on the bluffs above to see her swing out to the shrill notes of her "calliope," the best and least discordant on the river. A few evenings before we left, a large party had collected in honor of General Earl Van Dorn. He had recently resigned; and the commission as colonel of the only regiment of regular cavalry in ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... war-clubs of stone in their hands, and quivers at their backs filled with stone-headed arrows; the squaws, cutting smoke-dried meat with knives of flint, and boiling it in rude earthen pots of their own making, driving away, meanwhile, with shrill cries, the troops of lean dogs, who disputed the meal with a crew of hungry children. The whole camp, indeed, was threatened with, starvation. The three white men could get no food but unripe berries, from the effects of which Hennepin thinks they might all have ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... needed anything MORE to settle her, here assuredly was enough. He had hold of his small grandchild as they retraced their steps, swinging the boy's hand and not bored, as he never was, by his always bristling, like a fat little porcupine, with shrill interrogation-points—so that, secretly, while they went, she had wondered again if the equilibrium mightn't have been more real, mightn't above all have demanded less strange a study, had it only been ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... had grown shrill, almost out of control. But now suddenly he broke off, his mouth still working, and his face went deathly white. The finger he was pointing at Dal wavered and fell. He clutched at his chest, his breath coming in great gasps and staggered back into ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse
... The voice had the shrill twang of the commercial traveler, the daring explorer who penetrates the depths of the forests as well as the heart of the cities, and the answer came in the distinct patois of ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... chew of tobacco in among his back teeth, he told his men to follow him and he would show them his little racket. Marching up to the solid line of lances, he gathered an armful and put them in the pit of his stomach, and, as he sank to the earth, he spoke in a shrill tone of voice to posterity, saying, "Clear the track for Liberty." He ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... "Jim." Every afternoon it came up in the west again, swept back toward the east, and went out of sight in the Big Sioux. If a herd chanced to be grazing too near its path as it approached, they were scattered right and left in wild confusion by a shrill toot! toot! that could be heard at the farm-house. But when the way was clear the cloud traveled swiftly and silently, stringing itself, on sunny days, to a low white ribbon, or, if the air was damp and the heavens ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... long, were quite entertaining. They were conducted by a guards lieutenant with a pronounced limp, who went by the name of "Cork-leg." Even when speaking of a matter of no importance his voice would become louder and louder until it threatened to reach a shrill scream. On one occasion when the interpreter was not present, some unoffending person asked the Hun a question in English. Cork-leg replied, with a dreadful roar, that we must understand that the ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... voice of the genuine English people, the voice of the working classes, begins to be heard. The people re-echo the key-note struck by a J. S. Mills, by a Bright, a Cobden, and others of like pure mind and noble heart. The voice of the genuine English people resounds altogether differently from the shrill falsetto with which turf hunters, rent-roll devourers, lords, lordlings, and all the like shams and whelps try to intimidate the patriotic North, and comfort the ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... docked and the command was given for the troops to debark, loud welcome was sounded by sonorous "hooters," screaming sirens and shrill ship and loco whistles. ...
— The Delta of the Triple Elevens - The History of Battery D, 311th Field Artillery US Army, - American Expeditionary Forces • William Elmer Bachman
... you killing the noxious weeds, young chap? Are you making it straight and clean? Are you going straight, At a hustling gait, Do you scatter all that's mean? Do you laugh and sing and whistle shrill, And dance a step or two? The road you hoe leads up a hill; The harvest is up ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... interfered with my enjoyment of the drive. It was a perfect day on which to regain one's liberty. The sun shone down from a blue sky flecked here and there with fleecy white clouds, and on each side of the road the hedges and trees were just beginning to break into an almost shrill green. The very air seemed to be filled with a delicious sense of ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... "Gate."—Suppose we visit one of the "gates." It is early morning. Everything is noise and confusion. Here are merchants peddling their wheat, or dates, or honey, their wool or their flax. Customers are haggling over prices. Each one is shouting with a shrill voice and with many gestures that the price asked is an outrage. Besides the merchants there are judges. Here sits one of the city elders with a long white beard. Before him are two farmers disputing over a boundary line—also witnesses ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting
... fifteen, when the stave was concluded with a shrill "Spell, oh!" and the gang relieved streaming with perspiration. When the saltpetre was well mashed, they rolled ton waterbutts on it, till the floor was like a billiard table. A fleet of chop boats then began to arrive, so ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... was sealed. We were in a narrow path surrounded by the enemy, without the possibility of escape. How shall I describe what followed. The women wrung their hands and sobbed piteously in their despair. The children, terrified, uttered shrill and piercing cries, while the men, goaded to madness, vented their rage in hurried exclamations, and were determined to sell their lives as dearly ...
— Acadian Reminiscences - The True Story of Evangeline • Felix Voorhies
... Misses Langford, after one well-satisfied survey from the door, bent their steps homeward, looking forward to the pleasure with which grandpapa and Aunt Mary would see it to-morrow. As they went in the deepening twilight, the whole village seemed vocal: children's voices, shrill and tuneless near, but softened by distance, were ringing out here, there, and ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of wood, the grinding of one vessel against the other at the concrete pier, the shrill tooting of the whistles, and the confused shouts of the respective captains of the craft made a din out of which it ...
— The Moving Picture Boys at Panama - Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal • Victor Appleton
... prairie was a wonderful sight. As the steamer ploughed its way through the matted weeds, Frank could see in the narrow openings their trailing roots hanging far down into the clear cool depths below. Above these open spaces thousands of sea-birds were hovering with shrill cries, while ever and anon one of them would swoop down into the water, re-appearing instantly with a fish ...
— Harper's Young People, April 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... "over there—behind the pushcart—th' guy with th' peanuts!" And he pointed where, from amid a throng of vehicles, a gaily painted barrow emerged, a barrow whereon were peanuts unbaked, baked, and baking as the shrill small whistle above its stove proclaimed to all and sundry. It was propelled by a slender, graceful, olive-skinned man, who, beholding Spike, flashed two rows of brilliant teeth and halted ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... for class, woman does her share of the world's work. Among the poor, of the two it is she who labours the longer. There is a many- versed ballad popular in country districts. Often I have heard it sung in shrill, piping voice at harvest supper or barn dance. The ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome
... the strong-minded girl, shrill with her triumph, quite carried away by her excitement, all undaunted by the prospect of bloodshed before her eyes. And it was he who moved, with but a shrug of the shoulders, and gave himself ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... That sang and shrieked their soul out at the skies A shapeless earthly storm of shapes began From all ways round to move in on the man, Clamorous against him silent; and their feet Were as the wind's are fleet, And their shrill songs were as ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... enveloped in a dense fog, and the first thing I recognised on leaving the house was my dog Robber, who had been stolen from us a year before. At first I thought it was a ghost, but I called out to him sharply in a shrill voice. The animal seemed to recognise me, and approached me cautiously, but my sudden movement towards him with outstretched arms seemed only to revive memories of the few chastisements I had foolishly inflicted on him during the latter ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... afternoon. Far away I could hear the sound of the advancing beaters—the cries of the boys, the occasional barking of a dog, and the shrill piping of the headkeeper's whistle. Suddenly three birds swung into view round the face of the hill, and made straight for the line of butts. They were just below me, nearer to Standish's butt than mine, but I put up my gun ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... not yet risen, and a cold gray mist crept up from the valley, closing high up and around the wood-girdled brow of the mountain as billows around a rock in the sea. The faint, far-off crowing of cocks added to the weirdness; for their shrill voices alone broke through the silence which came down with the mist. Around the brow of Sand Mountain the vapor made a faint halo—touched as it was by the splendid ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... crow, shrill and clear, made us start from the luxurious languor of our contentment; for we had scarcely looked to find poultry on this Hill of Surprises. Turning in the direction of the homely, familiar note, we beheld a garden. In this garden walked the cock—a two-legged gentleman of gorgeous plumage. If ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... darling?" I cried, dropping the length of film on the floor. Garnesk made a grab for the shade. Myra gave a short, shrill little laugh, which had a slightly ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... upon by four powerful Tibetans, who held him pinned to the ground as if he had been the fiercest of bandits. Mansing was a philosopher. He had saved himself the trouble of even offering any resistance; but he too, was ill-treated, beaten and tightly bound. At the beginning of the fight a shrill whistle had brought up four hundred[27] armed soldiers who had lain in ambush round us, concealed behind the innumerable sandhills and in the depressions in the ground. They took up a position round us and covered ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... them still!" cried a shrill voice, just as he thought he had succeeded; and poor Dick, who, an hour ago, had almost forgotten he was a new boy, had to endure a storm of laughter, and look as much at his ease as he could, while all Templeton mounted on chairs, and stretched its necks to ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... occupants do not keep private vehicles, adorn these areas with charming plants, small tropical trees, blooming flowers, statuary, and fountains. Here and there hang cages containing bright-colored singing birds, parrots, and paroquets, not forgetting to mention the clear, shrill-voiced mocking-bird, which is a universal favorite. The Mexican macaw is pretty sure to be represented by a fine member of his species in these ornamental patios. He is a gaudy, noisy fellow. The head, breast, and back are of a deep red, the wings yellow, blue, and green. The tail is composed of ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... Rue Jessaint? I do not know, for when, a year later, I attempted to re-find this bal it had disappeared.... We could hear the hum of the pipes for some paces before we turned the corner into the street, and never have pipes sounded in my ears with such a shrill significance of being somewhere they ought not to be, never but once, and that was when I had heard the piper who accompanies the dinner of the Governor of the Bahamas in Nassau. Marching round the porch of the Governor's Villa ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... almost brushing, but never quite touching my skin. I could distinguish the difference between the smaller and the larger, the latter having a deeper swish, deeper and longer drawn-out. Their voices were so high and shrill that the singing of the jungle crickets seemed almost contralto in comparison. Finally, I began to feel myself the focus of one or more of these winged weasels. The swishes became more frequent, the returnings almost doubling on their track. Now and then a small ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... to relight my pipe, when drama broke loose with the swift unexpectedness which was characteristic of the place. The stillness of the night was split by a sound which I could have heard in a gale and recognized among a hundred conflicting noises. It was a scream, a shrill, piercing squeal that did not rise to a crescendo, but started at its maximum and held the note; a squeal which could only proceed from one throat: the deafening war-cry ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... what?" cried Migwan, her voice shrill with amazement. "Oh, how do you do, Mrs. Evans." For Gladys's mother, proceeding more leisurely up the walk than her impetuous daughter, was just coming up the steps. "What's this about ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... the timber and disappeared. The cowboy rode slowly, peering through the timber. Presently came the trample of frightened sheep—a shrill bleating, and then silence. Fadeaway loped out into the open. The sheep were running in all directions. He whistled the dog to him. Chance's muzzle dripped red. The dog slunk round behind the horse, knowing that he had done wrong, despite ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... but little heed to our dull manner of ambling through the service; to the brisk clerk's manner of encouraging us to try a note or two at psalm time; to the gallery congregation's manner of enjoying a shrill duet, without a notion of time or tune; to the whity-brown man's manner of shutting the minister into the pulpit, and being very particular with the lock of the door, as if he were ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... And now the shrill, startling battle cry swelled to the hysterical pack yell, and, gathering depth and volume, burst out into a frantic treble roar. A long gray line detached itself from the woods; mounted officers, sashed and debonaire, trotted jauntily out in front ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... were other ways of communicating with Cynthia besides the back door and the vicarious personalities of those who ruled over her. Youth has its own methods of telegraphy, and the hills people are master hands at secrecy. There was a certain bird-note for which Sandy was famous: a low but shrill pipe that had startled old Ivy more than once and was nearly always successful in causing Cynthia to materialize in due time. So Sandy, from the shelter of trees back of the Stoneledge smoke-house, gave his peculiar and penetrating call. A second time he gave it and then Ivy issued forth and, cocking ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... the castle, or a game akin thereto, half a dozen holding the circular mound round the old pit, while the rest attacked them and endeavoured to storm the position. For some time the game went on with much shouting on the part of the boys and shrill shrieks from the girls, as they were pulled or pushed ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... may not be a living, thinking, feeling being, on whose not unkindly bosom we wear out our little lives, but whose high loves are with the stars, beyond our sight, and her voice too deep and musical for ears used to our shrill human speech? Who shall say surely that she is not conscious of our presence, of some of our doings when we tear her breast and lay burdens upon her neck and plough up her fair skin with our hideous works, or when we touch her kindly and love ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... the view. At last, she was seen to wear, and in so doing, before she was brought to the wind on the other tack, she was so close to them that they could distinguish the men on board: they could see the foaming water as it was hurled from her bows; hear the shrill whistle of the boatswain's pipes, the creaking of the ship's timbers, and the complaining of her masts; and then the gloom gradually rose, and in a few seconds ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... waves was gloomy and fearsome. Here is the harbor. . . From behind its stone wall, comes the sound of human voices, the plashing of water, singing and shrill whistling." ...
— Twenty-six and One and Other Stories • Maksim Gorky
... word said. The girl's breath was coming in great gasps from the fright and shock she had received, but Dale's was shrill and laboring from the ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... I helped him all I could; and if I was sometimes a little discouraged and homesick, he never guessed it. And I never was much of either; for I was busy always, and there was my babies—" Dolly's voice broke into a shrill wail as she spoke the word, and she sat with her face hidden a little while before she could go ...
— Stephen Grattan's Faith - A Canadian Story • Margaret M. Robertson
... Brady's version of the Psalms was used alternately with a favourite anthem arranged by some of the members. "We'll wash our hands," the basses led off in stentorian tones. Then the tenors followed. Then the trebles in shrill voices—"washed hands." Finally, after a pause, the whole choir shouted triumphantly, "in innocencee"; and the congregation bore it, my friend naively remarks. The orchestra on one occasion struck work. ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... themselves in the performance of this piece, instantly complied. Scarcely had they reached the fourth bar, when Jack Richards, who had not for a long time perpetrated a joke, produced a harsh, brassy-toned, German eolina, and "blew a blast so loud and shrill," that the Dutch pug began to bark, Carlo to howl, and the other nuisance, Master Charles, to cry. The German eolina was of itself bad enough, but these congregated noises were intolerable. Uncle John aimed a desperate blow with a large ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... other writer of genius in the nineteenth century who was so bitter in dealing with human frailty as Ibsen was. By the side of his cruel clearness the satire of Carlyle is bluster, the diatribes of Leopardi shrill and thin. All other reformers seem angry and benevolent by turns, Ibsen is uniformly and impartially stern. That he probed deeper into the problems of life than any other modern dramatist is acknowledged, but it was his surgical ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... Not the mother's shrill whooping, but the sight of the strange guests, transformed them into mutes. The carriage outside had filled them with wild alarms, but the sight of their parents alive, and entertaining guests of shining quality, was almost as satisfyingly ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... us, and Cavor sat with a cylinder of compressed oxygen at hand to restore our pressure. We looked at one another in silence, and then at the fantastic vegetation that swayed and grew visibly and noiselessly without. And ever that shrill piping continued. ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... drawing-room. The others straggled after her. She rather liked thus to emphasize her lack of convention as a hostess, making a pose of never remembering the proper thing to do. Now she moved here and there, laughing her shrill rather mirthless laugh, calling everybody "dearie," uttering abrupt little platitudes. Keith found himself left behind, and rather out in the cold. The company had quite frankly segregated itself into couples. The room was well adapted to ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... feathered orchestra—incessant, fearless—for each of its pieces—from the sweet trombone of the dove to the shrill clarionet of the jay—knows that it is safe. There are no guns about. We have with us, and have had for five and twenty years, a family of colored people who know our ways and meet them intelligently and faithfully. When we go away—as we do each winter and sometimes during the other seasons—and ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... figures so habited and accoutred, as at once moved the most severe countenance to mirth, and the most cheerful heart to sadness; it seemed impossible that such messengers could bring less than a defiance. The men, without any circumstance of duty or good manners, in a pert, shrill, undismayed accent, said that they brought an answer from the godly city of Gloucester; and extremely ready were they, according to the historian, to give insolent and seditious replies to any question; as if their business were chiefly, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... with much handling. The Negro's pile, and that of Jung Sin, were about equal, but there were only two or three in front of the third player. And just as Allan caught sight of them, the sticks clicked, and a shrill objurgation burst from that third as the last of his markers were raked in by Jung Sin's taloned hand. The circle hunched closer, there was a ribald, taunting laugh from Ra-Jamba and Jung Sin glanced over his shoulder into a ...
— When the Sleepers Woke • Arthur Leo Zagat
... Robin-redbreast! Sing, birds, in every furrow; And from each hill, let music shrill Give my fair Love good-morrow! Blackbird and thrush in every bush, Stare, linnet, and cock-sparrow! You pretty elves, amongst yourselves Sing my fair Love good-morrow; To give my Love good-morrow Sing ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... began his song, began—and almost fainted away, for he heard quite distinctly some one behind his back, keeping tune with him in a shrill voice. He stopped. The voice stopped, too. He sang, and the ...
— Folk Tales from the Russian • Various
... No sooner had visitors crossed the threshold than he saw their jaws part, their eyes grow small, their entire faces expand; and he heard the tempestuous puffing of the fat men, the rusty grating jeers of the lean ones, amidst all the shrill, flute-like laughter of the women. Opposite him, against the hand-rails, some young fellows went into contortions, as if somebody had been tickling them. One lady had flung herself on a seat, stifling and trying to regain breath with her handkerchief over ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... bold ones, With bale of my comrades, Thinks Aegir, brine-thirsty, His throat he can slake? Though salt spray, shrill-sounding, Sweep in swan's-flights above us, True heroes, ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... frightened at my own wild imaginings. I thought of the nuns who had been murdered so cruelly, and I listened to the voice of the storm, as to the despairing wail of a lost soul. The wind swept fiercely through the leafless branches, now roaring like a tornado, again rising to a shrill shriek, or a prolonged whistle, then sinking to a hollow murmer, and dying away in a low sob which sounded to my excited fancy like the last convulsive sigh of a breaking heart. Once and again I paused, faint and dizzy with hunger and fatigue, feeling as though ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... ore. I bent me o'er the deep smooth stream, And plunged the gold to get,— But oh! it vanished with my dream— And I got dripping wet! O'er lonely heath and darksome hill, As shivering home I went, The mocking Wizard whispered shrill, 'Thou'dst better ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich
... to feel that she was trembling and that her cheek against his forehead, for she was taller than he, was burning hot. "Good gracious, my dear!" he said, in the shrill voice his size indicated, "anybody'd think you were the patient ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... risen. I saw two figures standing in the porch of Graves's house. I was about to call to them and warn Graves that Bo was loose and dangerous—when a scream—shrill and frightful—rang in my ears. I saw Graves turn to his bride and catch ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... Helmholtz goes so far as to state that the expression of sexual longing in music is identical with that of religious longing. It is quite true, again, that a soft and gentle voice seems to every normal man as to Lear "an excellent thing in woman," and that a harsh or shrill voice may seem to deaden or even destroy altogether the attraction of a beautiful face. But the voice is not usually in itself an adequate or powerful method of evoking sexual emotion in a man. Even in its supreme vocal manifestations the sexual ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... high poised in air, Shuts close his pinions to his breast If chance his mate's shrill call he hear, And drops at once into her nest:— The noblest captain in the British fleet Might envy William's ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... chaise. Frank Knapp drew a sword from his cane and made a thrust at one, and Joseph with the but-end of his whip gave the other a heavy blow across the face. This bold resistance made them fall back. Joseph sprung from the chaise to assail the robbers. One of them then gave a shrill whistle, when they fled, and, leaping over the wall, were soon lost in the darkness. One had a weapon like an ivory dirk-handle, was clad in a sailor's short jacket, cap, and had whiskers; another wore a long coat, with bright buttons; all ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... straths were all astir with preparations for the march. No boy or man who could carry arms, 'twixt the ages of sixteen and sixty, but buckled his claymore to his side and made ready to leave. Listen to the wild shout of the men, the shrill notes of bagpipes, the wailing of weeping women and children! Oh, it was a stirring time; my Scotch blood leaps in all my veins as I think of it even now. Right on our side; might on our side! We ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... charges and cries, till the shrill trumpet and the stentorian trombone strike the full call in antiphonal song. The tempest increases with a renewed charge of the strings, and now the more distant calls have a slower sweep. Later the battle song is in the basses,—again in clashing basses and trebles; nearer strike the broad ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... wife, cursed of the gods!" she cried in her high, shrill voice. "Not even a girl can she bear her master. May she eat ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... Excites us to arms, With shrill notes of anger And mortal alarms. The double double double beat Of the thundering drum, Cries, "Hark! the foes come; Charge, charge, 't is too late ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... hands a second time, and then with shrill indignation the creature flew down from the tree, and set off in the direction of the ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... strife assailed my ear, In suburb-ways, one summer morn; A wretched alley I drew near Whence on the air the sounds were borne— Growls breaking into curses clear, And shrill retorts of keener scorn. ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... spoke, some bird among the evergreens uttered a shrill, plaintive cry, rather than song—a sound which the thrush occasionally makes in the winter, and which seems to express something of fear, and pain, and impatience. "What does she say?—can you ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the beach, the wet sands of which afforded a firm footing for the horses. The bold and rapid movements of the troops, as they went through their military exercises, the apparent ease with which they managed the fiery animals on which they were mounted, the glancing of their weapons, and the shrill cry of the trumpet, all filled the spectators with astonishment; but when they heard the thunders of the cannon, and witnessed the volumes of smoke and flame issuing from these terrible engines, and the rushing sound ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... a bugle from his side, and blew both loud and shrill, And four and twenty belted knights came trooping owre ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... but, one day, who should come travelling that way but a rogue of a Fiddler, with his fiddle under his arm. The day was warm, and he was tired; so down he sat under the shade of the oak-tree to rest his legs. By-and-by he heard a little shrill voice piping and crying, "Let me out! let me out! let ...
— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle
... Rengger, states[5] that the monkeys (Cebus azaroe), which he kept in Paraguay, expressed astonishment by a half-piping, half-snarling noise; anger or impatience, by repeating the sound hu hu in a deeper, grunting voice; and fright or pain, by shrill screams. On the other hand, with mankind, deep groans and high piercing screams equally express an agony of pain. Laughter maybe either high or low; so that, with adult men, as Haller long ago remarked,[6] the sound partakes of the character of the vowels (as pronounced in German) O and ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... PAN. Shrill, shrill Over the hill! The hunter is hot - this is the kill! Scream! Scream! Dissolving the dream Of life, the knife to the heart of the wife! The fountain jets Its flood of blood, And the moss that it wets Is an ...
— Household Gods • Aleister Crowley
... infantry carried hand grenades and bombs and flung them ahead of them as they ran, and, finally, there was no thicket of barb-wire to check the swing and impetus of the rush. The trench was reached, and again the clamour of voices raised in fear and pain, the hoarse rancour of hate, the shrill agony of death, rose high on the sounds of battle. The rush swept up on the trench, engulfed it as a wave engulfs the cleft on a rock beach, boiled and eddied about it, and then . . . and then . . . swept roaring over it, and on. The counter-attack had succeeded, and the victors were ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... of fathers, mothers, and wives, hustled by the police, are pressing round the doors to hear whose lad has been taken, whose is let off. One of the rejected comes out and announces that Piotr is taken, and at once a shrill cry is heard from Piotr's young wife, for whom this word "taken" means separation for four or five years, the life of a soldier's wife as a servant, often ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... discordant music from thousands of musical instruments—conches and horns, cymbals and drums, arose in wild confusion. Shouts of defiance in a dozen tongues and from two hundred thousand throats rose wild and shrill upon the air, while clear above all the din were heard the strange vibratory cries of the warriors ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... purple even Melts around thy flight; Like a star of heaven, In the broad daylight Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight: ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... felt him creep carefully out of bed, heard him fumbling for his dressing gown, and saw a shaft of light as the studio door was cautiously opened. A moment later a rustling sounded through the transom, followed by the shrill whisper of Madame Corriani. Listening, she ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... ring within the ears Of Agamemnon's queen, that she anon Start from her couch and with a shrill voice cry A joyous welcome to the beacon-blaze, For Ilion's fall; such fiery message gleams From yon high flame; and I, before the rest, Will foot the lightsome measure of our joy; For I can say, My master's dice fell fair— Behold! the triple sice, the lucky flame! Now be my ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus
... even forgot to expectorate, which produced at times a wheezing in his chest like the sounds of an organ. His whistling lungs gave out every note of the asthmatic scale from the deep and hollow tones up to the shrill crowing of ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... doubtful credit, told to frighten babes But farewell now to unsuspicious nights, And slumbers unalarmed. Now, ere you sleep, See that your polished arms be primed with care, And drop the night-bolt. Ruffians are abroad, And the first larum of the cock's shrill throat May prove a trumpet, summoning your ear To horrid sounds of hostile feet within. Even daylight has its dangers; and the walk Through pathless wastes and woods, unconscious once Of other tenants than melodious birds, Or harmless flocks, is hazardous and bold. Lamented change! to which ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... earth and sky— When on the whispering winds there came The Teton's shrill and thrilling cry, And heaven was pierced with shafts of flame! The sun seemed rising through the haze, But with an aspect dread and dire: The very air appeared to blaze!— O God! ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... the lofty hills, which shoot out like spurs of the Cordilleras along this part of the coast, the Indian warriors, springing from their ambush, sent off a cloud of arrows and other missiles that darkened the air, while they made the forest ring with their shrill warwhoop. The Spaniards, astonished at the appearance of the savages, with their naked bodies gaudily painted, and brandishing their weapons as they glanced among the trees and straggling underbrush that choked up the defile, were taken by surprise and thrown for a moment ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... contest between these factions began as early as 1866. In that year, Congress enacted a law authorizing the Treasury to withdraw the greenbacks from circulation. The paper money party set up a shrill cry of protest, and kept up the fight until, in 1878, it forced Congress to provide for the continuous re-issue of the legal tender notes as they came into the Treasury in payment of taxes and other dues. Then could the ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... in where the family were all seated at supper, and instantly everything in the way of decorum at meals was demoralized. Every one jumped up, and Betty and Richard were surrounded and tumbled about and hugged and kissed by all—until a shrill, childish voice raised a shout of laughter as little Janey said: "What are we all kissing Betty for? She hasn't been away; she's been here all ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... and silence Grew the afternoon of Summer; With a drowsy sound the forest Whispered round the sultry wigwam, With a sound of sleep the water Rippled on the beach below it; From the cornfields shrill and ceaseless Sang the grasshopper, Pah-puk-keena; And the guests of Hiawatha, Weary with the heat of Summer, Slumbered in the ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... rose from a tiny mumble to a clattering surf, to a huge and saw-edged wave. Voices dinned in his head, shrill and deep, hard and soft, a senseless stream of talking, jumbled together into words, words, words. Somebody dropped a glass and it was like a bomb ...
— The Sensitive Man • Poul William Anderson
... every now and then by a louder exclamation in Gaelic. Quite half of the throng are discoursing in this language. It is possible to note the difference in the character of the Celt and Teuton. The former gesticulates, splutters out a perfect torrent of alternately shrill, guttural, and intoned Gaelic; he shrugs his shoulders, he throws his arms about, he thrills with vivacity. The Teuton expresses quiet, sententious canniness in every gesture and every utterance; he is a cold-blooded man and keeps his ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... exciting scene. The place was pretty well lighted, and the birds and beasts were all alive in their several dens and cages, walking up and down, and each uttering remonstrances after its own manner, the shrill notes of birds mingling with the moan of the beasts of prey and chattering of the monkeys. Feeding time had been put off till night to suit the undergraduates, and the undergraduates were proving ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... thin, And to the stack, or the barn-door, Stoutly struts his dames before: Oft listening how the hounds and horn Cheerly rouse the slumbering morn, From the side of some hoar hill, Through the high wood echoing shrill: Sometime walking, not unseen, By hedgerow elms, on hillocks green, Right against the eastern gate Where the great Sun begins his state Robed in flames and amber light, The clouds in thousand liveries dight; While the ploughman, near at hand, Whistles o'er the furrow'd ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... pavements, illuminated by flares of light so that all the ugliness was only too apparent. Little children played in and out, under the barrows and along the gutters; a public-house stood at the corner near Shamrock House, and exactly opposite the Salvation Army added its brass band and shrill ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... sent to Mamula, the governor of Dalmatia, ordering him to create a majority hostile to the Emperor's letter of December 5, 1860, in which he had invited the two provinces to send their delegate to a conference at which the union would be discussed. The shrill protests of the German party were successful; for the next few years the Slavs were being pushed into their pit and then helped half-way out again. Schmerling, the German, would evolve an electoral system by which the Parliament ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... brought through many losses into any show of muster, were put under arms, with that appearance of military discipline which might encourage our own party, and seem most formidable to the disorganized multitude of our enemies. Even music was not wanting: banners floated in the air, and the shrill fife and loud trumpet breathed forth sounds of encouragement and victory. A practised ear might trace an undue faltering in the step of the soldiers; but this was not occasioned so much by fear of the adversary, as by disease, by sorrow, and by fatal ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... one of the saleswomen hands you up a check and some ribbon you must measure the ribbon carefully to see that the firm is not being cheated," she explained in a shrill voice, "and if one of the girls makes a mistake ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon
... they left, a dirty little hand touched Old Glory and a shrill little voice said: "I'd like to leave my flag ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... pause, then came a shrill piping over the wire, startled and inquiring. Scanlon saw the ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... Timlin speaks, his voice so shrill and loud Fills with amazement all the list'ning crowd; But soon the wonder ceases, when 'tis found That empty vessels make the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 6, 1841, • Various
... herd is usually led by an old buck, who watches over the safety of the others while feeding. When an enemy approaches, this sentinel and leader strikes the ground sharply with his hoofs, snorts loudly, and emits a shrill whistle; all the while fronting the danger with his horns set forward in a threatening manner. So long as he does not attempt to run, the others continue to browse with confidence; but the moment their leader starts to fly, all the rest follow, ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... shelter a small sloop. The seagulls had also discovered its beauty, for thousands hovered about it, and the small harbor was alive with them. The island was a favorite nesting-place for them as well, and their shrill cries at being disturbed almost obliterated ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... imploringly, his arm outstretched toward his broken regiment. The lull in the firing made a moment of strange quiet, broken only by groans and the hard, gasping curses of men locked in the death-grip. Therefore the shrill young voice carried far, ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... from our four-footed companion woke us up with a start. We seized our arms. The dog, with his ears laid back, his tail between his legs, turned his nose to the wind with an anxious glance, and set up a fresh howl, which was answered by the shrill prolonged cries of the coyotas, or ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... lorn mother! cease thy wailings drear; 25 Ye babes! the unconscious sob forego; Or let full Gratitude now prompt the tear Which erst did Sorrow force to flow. Unkindly cold and tempest shrill In Life's morn oft the traveller chill, 30 But soon his path the sun of Love shall warm; And each glad scene look ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Roman nostrils of Mr. Wopsle. I heard Mr. Hubble remark that "a bit of savory pork pie would lay atop of anything you could mention, and do no harm," and I heard Joe say, "You shall have some, Pip." I have never been absolutely certain whether I uttered a shrill yell of terror, merely in spirit, or in the bodily hearing of the company. I felt that I could bear no more, and that I must run away. I released the leg of the table, and ran for ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... do not pray for peace, Nor ask that on my path The sounds of war shall shrill no more, The way be clear of wrath. But this I beg thee, Lord, Steel Thou my heart with might, And in the strife that men call life, Grant ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... into a church already so packed with people that a pin could scarcely drop, and about a pie which turned out to be no other than this same superintendent himself. The old people laughed till the tears rolled down their cheeks. They had exactly the same shrill laugh and both went red in the face from the effort. Paklin noticed that people of the Subotchev type usually went into fits of laughter over quotations from Gogol, but as his object at the present moment was not so much in amusing ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... in adieux to the farmer and his family, they rode off at full speed in pursuit of the fugitives. But they had not ridden more than a hundred yards, and had but just reached the four cross-roads, when they were both startled by a shrill— ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... existence when he should come down. Luckily some of the men were attracted to the scene, who secured his bullship and rescued the child. Willard was not seriously hurt, and the instant he regained his feet, he turned round, shook his tiny fist at the now retreating animal and shouted out in a shrill treble, "When I get to be a big man I'll toss you in ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... breezy call of incense-breathing morn, The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed, The cock's shrill clarion or the echoing horn, No more shall rouse them from ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... indication of the old clock, uttered in a solemn, peaceful voice becoming an aged person, the hour of eleven rang out in a shrill, grotesque fashion, with juvenile impertinence, from a petulant little clock of the vicinity, and a few minutes later, to add to the confusion and the chronometric disorder, the bell of a neighbouring church gave ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... happy? No one who came near him,—from his nieces whom he petted and spoiled, down to the little negroes who rolled, unrebuked, over the grass before his window in summer, or woke him on a Christmas morning with their shrill "Christmas gift, Massa John!" Not that Uncle John was a busybody, troubling himself about many things, and seeking out occasions for obtruding his kindnesses. He lived so secluded a life in the old family-house on the outskirts of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... no let a poddy sleep, and be d—d till ye?" again screamed the shrill voice of Angus Mohr; "hoo mony mair o' ye southron prutes is coming ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... untranslated into visibilities. And yet (as we who gaze upon it thus are fain to think) if peradventure the intolerable ennui of this panorama should drive a citizen of San Marino into out-lands, the same view would haunt him whithersoever he went—the swallows of his native eyrie would shrill through his sleep—he would yearn to breathe its fine keen air in winter, and to watch its iris-hedges deck themselves with blue in spring;—like Virgil's hero, dying, he would think of San Marino: Aspicit, et dulces moriens ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... dancing in a ring Before his palace gates do make The water with their echoes quake, Like the great thunder sounding: The sea-nymphs chant their accents shrill, And the sirens, taught to kill With their sweet voice, Make ev'ry echoing rock reply Unto their gentle murmuring noise The praise of Neptune's ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... setting forth of the benefits and dangers attendant upon passing the bill, there was an unusual and solemn silence. Dr. Gillett says if the bill had been promptly put to vote it would probably have been passed, but the churchlike silence was broken by a shrill voice piping forth, "Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, what shall we sing?" The laughter which followed broke the orator's charm and sealed ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... dark woods with ever-shifting gold sparks, and the broad, pale flashes of heat lightning which from time to time illumined the horizon. There was no motion in the heavy black foliage, but it was filled with the shrill droning of the summer insects, and high in the branches a screech-owl pierced the air with its ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... Maurice and Alwood Chester, of the American Red Cross. They gave little shrill screams of admiration ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... income from her crops on powder and shot for the purpose of making a stand in the contemplated destruction of the new tobacco crops, and thereby plunged herself and her family in a danger which were hard to estimate were it discovered, I heard a shrill duet of girlish laughs and merry tongues before the house. Then, on looking forth, whom should I see but Mary Cavendish and Cicely Hyde, her great gossip, and a young coloured wench, all washing their faces in the May dew, which lay in a great flood as of diamonds and pearls over ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... inches from tip to tip when expanded, enable it to fly with the rapidity necessary for the pursuit and capture of such powerful prey. When thus engaged, the Noctule haunts the neighborhood of trees, and generally flies at a considerable elevation, from which, however, his shrill cry easily reaches the ear of the passer-by. His addiction to large prey gives rise to a curious movement, thus noticed by Professor Bell in his valuable book on "British Quadrupeds." "An observer will not watch his ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... the hunt still remained fruitless; and Don Luis was the victim of an increasing and irritating restlessness. But, shortly after midnight, a shrill whistle drew all the men to the eastern extremity of the island, at the end of the ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... the Berlin, or the London basket. The ladies are beautiful, exquisitely dressed, vivacious, and, early in the evening, well-mannered. At the outset you might think yourself at your embassy; at the close you catch yourself hoping you will get away safely. Shrill voices pipe in corners of the room. "On sautera!" People are jumping with a vengeance. The paint is disturbed upon your partner's face. Pretty lips speak ugly words. Honi soit qui mal y pense; but then the gentleman is between two and three wines, and the lady is rallying him because ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... hear the light cicala's ceaseless din, That vibrates shrill; or the near-weeping brook That feebly winds along, And mourns ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... their voices, shouted as loud as they could, Alice's shrill note reaching almost as far ...
— The South Sea Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... the cave, as we have said just as the day was breaking. A shrill whistle along the ridges of wood and rock as he passed them, denoted the various stations of the sentinels, as studiously strewed along the paths by which their place of refuge might be assailed, as if they were already beleaguered by an assailing army. ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... people of the North. It gave eloquent expression to the strong but undefined feeling in the popular mind. It found its way into every house and was read everywhere; it took its place in the school books, to be repeated by shrill boy voices, and became part of the literature and of the intellectual life of the country. In those solemn sentences men read the description of what the United States had come to be under the Constitution, and what American nationality meant in 1830. The leaders of the young war party in ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... for a little, leaning on a pine, the shrill joy of the woodlands mocking her. The shelter of the night, the thrilling and joyous changes of the dawn, were over; and now, in the hot eye of the day, she turned uneasily and looked sighingly about her. Some way off among the lower woods a pillar of smoke was mounting ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... be given, to that complicated assemblage of carts, cabs, and clothes-lines; of manure heaps and disorganised pumps; of caged thrushes, blackbirds, and magpies; of dead dogs and cats, and colonies of thriving rats; of imprisoned terriers and goats let out on parole; of shrill and angry maternity and mud-loving infancy; and of hissing, curry-combing grooms and haltered horses, to which Londoners have given the designation of a Mews. Mr Peter Bowley, the landlord of the 'Mother Bunch,' was the late butler ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 427 - Volume 17, New Series, March 6, 1852 • Various
... courtesy, with which her skirts puffed out all around like a cheese. She always courtesied to Parson Meeker when she met him, and said: "I hope to see you well, sir." Once she courtesied in a prayer-meeting to a man who offered her a chair, and told him, in a shrill voice, to "keep his setting," though she was "ever so much obleeged" to him. This was when she was under conviction, and Parson Meeker said he thought she had met with a change of heart. Father Lathem's wife hoped so too, for then ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... Sir Andrew," answered a shrill voice. "A posset must have time to boil. It is meet now that you wear a tonsure that you who are no longer a centurion should forget these 'Come, and he cometh,' ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... for Eustace to come back to the office. He heard Mrs. Burke's voice sounding shrill outside, but not clear enough for him to distinguish what she was saying. Then the buggy started and ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... grim and grave to me always about Florence," said Tito, as they paused in the front of the house, where they could see over the opposite roofs to the other side of the river, "and even in its merriment there is something shrill and hard—biting rather than gay. I wish we lived in Southern Italy, where thought is broken, not by weariness, but by delicious languors such as never seem to come over the 'ingenia acerrima Florentina.' ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... old man looked at the boy, with keen gray eyes which seemed to light up the pinched look of his face, and answered in a shrill voice:— ...
— Tiger and Tom and Other Stories for Boys • Various
... poet. How should he behold That journey home, the long connubial years? He does not tell you how white Helen bears Child on legitimate child, becomes a scold, Haggard with virtue. Menelaus bold Waxed garrulous, and sacked a hundred Troys 'Twixt noon and supper. And her golden voice Got shrill as he grew deafer. And ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... had caroll'd till peep of the dawn, The Lark gently hinted 'twas time to be gone; And his clarion, so shrill, gave the company warning, That Chanticleer scented the gales of the morning, So they chirp'd in full chorus, a friendly adieu; And, with hearts beating light as the plumage that grew On their merry-thought ...
— The Peacock 'At Home' AND The Butterfly's Ball AND The Fancy Fair • Catherine Ann Dorset
... attend to the game!"—His attention was so tense that he even forgot to expectorate, which produced at times a wheezing in his chest like the sounds of an organ. His whistling lungs gave out every note of the asthmatic scale from the deep and hollow tones up to the shrill crowing of young roosters trying ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... out through the heat and dusty haze, away from bungalows and the watered Mall, through a village alive with shrill women, naked babies, and officious pariahs, who kept Terry furiously occupied: on past the city, over the bridge of boats that spans the Ravi, till they came to the green secluded garden where the Emperor Jehangir sleeps, heedless ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... stood within the shelter of the storm door waiting to be let in, the voices of the young Sheltons reached him, all talking at once in voluble excitement, and then a hand was laid on the inside knob and advice offered in a shrill treble. ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... a little alley which was like a fiord of peace running in from the shrill storm of the Brown Borough. Here little cottages shrank together, passive resisters of the twentieth century. Low crooked windows blinked through a mask of dirty creepers. Each little front garden contained ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... the sea of Aphrodite, and bathed everyone at the supper-tables in a mysterious aphrodisiacal fluid. The waiters alone were insensible to its influence. They moved to and fro with the impassivity and disdain of eunuchs separated for ever from the world's temptations. Loud laughs or shrill little shrieks exploded at intervals from the sinister melancholy of ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... duties lying in our path— Useless to others, filled with grief and pain? Not so my father's god teaches to live. Rising each morning most exact in time, He bathes the earth and sky with rosy light And fills all nature with new life and joy; The cock's shrill clarion calls us to awake And breathe this life and hear the bursts of song That fill each grove, inhale the rich perfume Of opening flowers, and work while day shall last. Then rising higher, he warms ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... our woes and fears, And the shrill noise of drums oppresse our ears; Now peace and safety from our shores are fled To holes and cavernes to secure their head; Now all the graces from the land are sent, And the nine Muses suffer banishment; Whence spring these raptures? ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... ease to hear the merry tune Of mating warblers in the boughs above And shrill cicadas whom the hottest noon Keeps not from drowsy song; the mourning dove Pours down the murmuring grove his plaintive croon That like the voice of visionary love Oft have I risen to seek through this green maze (Even as my feet thread now ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... the "loud shrill clarion" of war aroused Europe to arms. Ten short months after his abdication, Napoleon, escaped from Elba, was again in Paris, resolved to incur all risks in order to gain the greatest prize in Europe—the crown he had so lately relinquished. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... prayer he spake:—lo, with shrill scream Swiftly to left an eagle darted by And in his talons bare a gasping dove. Then round the heart of Priam all the blood Was chilled with fear. Low to his soul he said: "Ne'er shall I see return alive from ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... that you hear the shrill startling notes of the screech-owl, denotes that you will be shocked with news of the desperate illness, or ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... to serve as a shelter for these holy women, and as a sort of hospital for the sick. For close on a hundred years, generation after generation of those living near its walls have heard the convent clock sound the hours in solemn tones; so, too, the convent chapel's shrill-voiced bells have never failed to remind the faithful that the daily offices of their church are being said and sung by the holy ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... absorbed in a problem as to Electricity (that thing which to us is only a name and of which we know nothing), forgets home, wife, child, supper; and midnight finds him in his laboratory, where he has been since sunrise—just imagine, if you please, the shrill greeting that is in cold storage for him when he stumbles home, haggard and worn, at dawn. How can he explain why he did this thing and answer the questions as to who was there, and what ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... enough. Five minutes later number seven was steaming away into the distant desert. Flatray gave a sharp, shrill whistle; and from behind some sand dunes emerged two ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... again on his bed; he had tried to sleep, but his brain was too active. As he lay listening to the roar of the surf and the shrill wail of the wind, his thoughts would revert to Bart and what his return meant; particularly to its effect on the fortunes of the doctor, of Jane and ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... communication with the outer world; "the doors are shut in the streets"; the ears are dulled to all sounds. Even the grinding of the mill,[1] which in an eastern house rarely ceases, reaches him but as a low murmur, though it be really as loud as the shrill piping of a bird, and all the sweet melodies of song are ...
— Old Groans and New Songs - Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes • F. C. Jennings
... mouth, he gave a shrill imitation of the call to cease firing, and then lost his balance and fell over ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... corn-poppies laughed at the homely looking bird, and cried to one another and to the surrounding blades of corn in a shrill voice, "Now, indeed, you may see what comes of flying so high, and striving and straining after mere air; people only lose their time, and bring back nothing but weary wings and an empty stomach. That vulgar-looking ill-dressed little creature would fain raise herself above us all, and ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... and beside, the bush-folk know that when a man has clean hands and heart he has little to fear from even his "bad fellow black fellows." But the Red Lilies were beyond our boundaries, and Monkey was a notorious exception, and shrill cries approaching the camp at dawn brought us all to our elbows, to find only the flying foxes returning to the pine forest, fanning inwards ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... always sits in the same position, always displays the same long, vacant face, and never opens his lips, surrounded as he is by most enthusiastic conversation, except to puff forth a volume of tobacco smoke, or give vent to a very snappy, loud, and shrill hem! The conversation sometimes turns upon literature, Mr. Bolton being a literary character, and always upon such news of the day as is exclusively possessed by that talented individual. I found myself (of course, accidentally) in the Green Dragon the other ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... poor fellow. "Speak out, and let thy talk be clear," quoth the king. "Bizz! bizz! bizz!" cried the other again. "What's the matter with the little stupid?" exclaimed the king, in a rage. Here the Swallow intervened in a sweet and shrill tone: "Sire, it is not his fault. Yesterday we were flying side by side, when suddenly he became mute. But, by good luck, down there about the sacred springs, before he met with this misfortune, he told me the result of his investigations. May I depone ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... towards Mawls - no feeling whatever, indeed - we infer that neither he nor we can have loved Miss Frost. Our first impression of Death and Burial is associated with this formless pair. We all three nestled awfully in a corner one wintry day, when the wind was blowing shrill, with Miss Frost's pinafore over our heads; and Miss Frost told us in a whisper about somebody being 'screwed down.' It is the only distinct recollection we preserve of these impalpable creatures, except a suspicion that the manners of Master Mawls were ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... excited voice rang out mingled with the shrill whistle of the boatswain's pipe, and then to be half-drowned by his hoarse roar as the men's feet pattered over the deck, now rapidly growing level as the pressure was ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... Is there, nor yet great storm nor any rain, But always ocean sendeth forth the breeze Of the shrill West, ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... concierge to the Secret Council. Ay, I found out who you were long ago—followed you home from the last meeting you broke up. But I did not betray you, or you would have been murdered long since. Beware of the old set—beware of—of—" Here his voice broke off into shrill exclamations of pain. Curbing his last agonies with a powerful effort, he faltered forth, "You owe me a service—see to the little one at home—she is starving." The death-rale came on; in a few moments ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... tallowy skin, and big, sweaty hands, who used to be spouting Carlyle on the 'reading evenings' at Shelldrake's? Yes, to be sure; and there was Hollins, with his clerical face and infidel talk,—and Pauline Ringtop, who used to say, 'The Beautiful is the Good.' I can still hear her shrill voice singing, 'Would that I were beautiful, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... fifty girls arrived, and a more maddening cargo I can't imagine. I gave orders to keep them forward, but their shrill presence nevertheless ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... of it!" exclaimed Mr. Crewe. "You say, eighty-two ounces of gold? You say it came from within fifty miles of Timber Town? Why, sir, the matter must be looked into." The old gentleman's voice rose to a shrill treble. ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... broken-hearted widow at the desolate hearthstone. Absorbed in her melancholy task, she heard neither the sound of strange voices in the passage, nor the faint creak of the door as it swung back on its rusty hinges; but a shrill scream, a wild, despairing shriek terrified her, and her heart seemed to stand still as she bounded away from the side of the coffin. The light of the setting sun streamed through the window, and over the white, convulsed face of a feeble but beautiful woman, who was supported on ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... sentence passed upon him, of penal servitude for twenty years, Mr. O'Leary accepted with a calm dignity, which I am glad, for the sake of Irish manhood, to find that his friends here now recall with pride, when their ears are vexed by the shrill and clamorous complaints of more recent "patriots," under the comparatively trivial punishments ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... muttered. Any mother sensations were lost in wonder at her father's actually having intervened. The incredible thing had happened. For a moment she felt a wave of pity for him, left alone to face the shrill voice. Then she shrugged ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... groundless. The new king spoke Latin, and "peppered the Puritans soundly." The walls of Hampton Court resounded with his shrill determination to tolerate none of their nonsense; and he declared to the assembled prelates, who were dissolving in tears of joy, that bishops were the most trustworthy legs a monarch could walk on. The dissenters, who had hoped much, were disappointed in proportion; ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... singing a certain weird and exalted part which in ancient days used to be called counter, and which wailed and gyrated in unimaginable heights of the scale, much as you may hear a shrill, fine-voiced wind over a chimney-top; but altogether, the deep and earnest gravity with which the three filled up the pauses in the storm with their quaint minor key, had something singularly impressive. When the singing was over, Zephaniah read ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... or in the parks of the city, during the breeding season, one's attention is repeatedly attracted by the pitiful shrill call of a sparrow fallen on the pavement upon its first attempt at flight, or by the stronger note of a mother sparrow, sharply bewailing the fate of a little one, killed by the fall, or dispatched alive by ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various
... to me on the instant a wild song that my father had taught me when the liquor held him in dominance. Exhilarated, I sprang from Terence's arms to the sodden, bared space, and methinks I yet hear my shrill, piping note, and see my legs kicking in the fling of it. There was an uproar, a deeper voice chimed in, and here was McAndrew ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the tuneful cries Of clustering pea-fowls shrill and frequent rise, Teach tender feelings to each human breast, And please ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... reality intruding upon the beauty of a dream. He couldn't understand whence the sound came. He could see, foreshortened, the tear-stained, dolorous face of the woman stretched out, and with her head thrown over the back of the seat. He thought the piercing noise was a delusion. But another shrill peal followed by a deep sob and succeeded by another shriek of mirth positively seemed to tear him out from where he stood. He bounded to the door. It was closed. He turned the key and thought: that's no good. . . . "Stop this!" he cried, and perceived with alarm ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... high, and hermetically sealed by green board-shutters. It sat but one step above the ground, and a dim light which came through the low basement-windows, showed that even its cellar was occupied. My little guide rang the bell, and in a moment a panel of the door opened, and a shrill voice asked: ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... moments all seemed to be well; then came a sudden shrill cry from Betty, followed by a hoarser one from Bob, which could mean nothing else than fright ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... sometimes ride him, but most of my outings are on the electric cars. I might as well be on them, since I have to hear their buzz and clang both day and night from our rooms here in the hotel. The other morning, as I was returning from a ride across the river to Council Bluffs, I heard the shrill notes of a calliope that reminded me that Forepaugh's circus was to be in town that day, and that I had promised to go to the afternoon performance with a party of friends. But soon there were other sounds and other thoughts. Above the noise of the car I heard a brass band—and ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... had the hill on his side as he rushed on with a short-sword in his hand. Axe and sword clashed together for a moment of time, and then both the men rolled over on the grass together, and Face-of-god as he fell deemed that he heard the shrill cry of a woman. Now Face-of-god found that he was the nethermost, for if he was strong, yet was his foe stronger; the axe had flown out of his hand also, while the strange man still kept a hold of his short-sword; and presently, though he still ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... Transcendentalism. It may prove as Jouffroy says it was with the successive French ministries: "The public wants something positive, and, seeing that such and such persons are excellent at fault-finding, it raises them to be rulers, when, lo! they have no noble and full Yea, to match their shrill and bold Nay, and so are pulled down again." Mr. Emerson knows best what he wants; but he has already said it in various ways. Yet, this experiment is well worth trying; hearts beat so high, they must be full of ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... a light broke in upon her understanding; a thought whirled into her brain and a moment later a shrill, angry, hysterical laugh came ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... like a river of molten tin; while on the other side was a black mass of trees, profiled on a stormy sky, invaded by large coppery clouds which created a sort of twilight amid the night. On the left was an old abandoned mill, with its motionless wings, from the ruins of which an owl threw out its shrill, periodical, and monotonous cry. On the right and on the left of the road, which the dismal procession pursued, appeared a few low, stunted trees, which looked like deformed dwarfs crouching down to watch men traveling at this ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... 'but—' Just at that moment, a long shrill whistle sounded below, as from the water. Houseman paused abruptly—"That signal is from my comrades; I must away. Hark, again! ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... or falls on your decision! This is a public charge! The people rely upon you! If you won't, for some reason of your own, come to the rescue now, when you are publicly called upon, you'll be a ruined man!" The voice of the Boss ascended in a shrill falsetto ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... which the cunning breath could draw bright music, seemed to him soulless too in a sort, but shrill and enlivening. These clarions and trumpets spoke to him of brisk morning winds, or the cold sharp plunge of green waves that leap in triumph upon rocks. To such sounds he fancied warriors marching ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... repeat?— Who o'er mine ashes dar'st to press thy feet, And, uncontented with a fall so dread, Draw'st bloodstained weapons on my darkened head, Beware! for nature, pitying, guards the tomb, And ghosts avenge th' invaders of their gloom, Hear, Envy, hear the gods proclaim a truth, Which my shrill ghost repeats to move thy ruth, WRETCHES ARE SACRED THINGS,—thy hands refrain: E'en ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... this fumigation he used many uncouth and horrible words, hard names, and so forth, which probably had no existence save in the teeming issue of his own brain. During this operation groans were heard, at first low and indistinct, then loud and vehement; soon they broke into a yell, so shrill and piercing that several of the hearers absolutely tried, through horror and desperation, to burst the door; but this was secure, and ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... hear the row. But Olivier and Antoinette were distracted and appalled by the noise, and had to keep their windows shut, so that their rooms were stifling, and stop their ears, trying vainly to escape the shrill, insistent, idiotic tunes which were ground out from morning till night and stabbed through their brains like daggers, so that they were reduced to a ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... waiting—a vision of heat simmering in little pale red flames. On the thick reeds some large, slow, dusky flies were still feeding, and now and then a moorhen a few yards away splashed a little, or uttered a sharp, shrill note. When she came—if she did come!—they would not stay here, in this dark earthy backwater; he would take her over to the other side, away to the woods! But the minutes passed, and his heart sank. Then it leaped up. Someone was coming—in white, with bare head, and something blue ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... and women, bare, Plunged in the briny bay. Who knows them? Whence they were? Where passed they yesterday? Shrill sounds were hovering o'er, Mixed with the ocean's roar, Of cymbals from the shore, And whinnying ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... was always an object of friendly amusement with the children, who could not get used to having the trains started by a small Christmas-horn. They had not entirely respected the English engine, with the shrill falsetto of its whistle, after the burly roar of our locomotives; and the boatswain's pipe of the French conductor had considerably diminished the dignity of a sister republic in their minds; but this Christmas-horn was ...
— A Little Swiss Sojourn • W. D. Howells
... sounds at the pavilion entrance, where a litter was set down on marble pavement and a eunuch's shrill voice criticized the slow unrolling of ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... and the streets shrill with the careless cries of children playing games controlled by mysterious rhythms and phrases. Their elders held the doorways and steps with leisurely pipe and gossip. Paradoxically, the fire-escapes supported lovers in couples who made ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... the worst. With our three heavy guns we crouched in the trail, waiting for the huge bulk of an elephant to loom up before us. Then came another thunderous crash to our right—and it seemed scarcely fifty yards away. Then a shrill squeal of a startled elephant off to our left and still another to the rear. Some elephants had evidently just caught our scent, and if the rest of the elephants became alarmed and started a stampede through the bush the situation would become extremely irksome for ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... With a shrill squeal, a blot shadow detached from the slope immediately below them. A vile, musky scent, now mingled with the stench of burning flesh, ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... set off after them to see the end of the matter, and suddenly, as the roadway dipped between high banks and became a hollow way, the white beast gave a shrill squeal, flung up his heels, jerked himself free, and vanished like a streak of light into the darkness of ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... his gold canoe, The spirits [18] walk in the realms of air With their glowing faces and flaming hair, And the shrill, chill winds o'er the prairies blow. In the Tee [19] of the Council the Virgins light The Virgin-fire [20] for the feast to-night; For the Sons of Heyka will celebrate The sacred dance to the ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... His shrill voice carried above the terrifying noise. "It's the plates bucklin' between ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... of voices just then, as I wrote, many voices, coming nearer, shrill women's voices, cutting through one's thoughts, and I went out to ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... entered by a narrow inlet the tiniest bit of a harbor, just large enough to shelter a small sloop. The seagulls had also discovered its beauty, for thousands hovered about it, and the small harbor was alive with them. The island was a favorite nesting-place for them as well, and their shrill cries at being disturbed almost obliterated the ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... moment when he was never more thankful for it. The shrill treble of the boy reached them across the stretch ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... resembled the extinct ones that had lain in it so long before, when I became aware of a peculiar sound that it yielded to the tread, as my companions paced over it. I struck it obliquely with my foot, where the surface lay dry and incoherent in the sun, and the sound elicited was a shrill, sonorous note, somewhat resembling that produced by a waxed thread, when tightened between the teeth and the hand, and tipped by the nail of the forefinger. I walked over it, striking it obliquely at each step, and with every blow the shrill note was repeated. My companions joined me; ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... directly from the floor before her, ascending slowly upward, as if driven aloft by some invisible force. A sharp shock of the sense of the supernatural deprives her of ordered reason. Throwing forward her arms, and uttering a shrill scream, she rushes towards the door. But she never reaches it: midway she falls prostrate over some object, and knows no more; and when, an hour later, she is borne out of the room in the arms of Randolph himself, the blood ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... a low chant, an invitation to the people assembled to dance. The chorus accompany him lightly on their drums. Then at the proper place, he strikes a crashing double beat; the drums boom out in answer; the song arises high and shrill; the dancers leap into their places, and the ...
— The Dance Festivals of the Alaskan Eskimo • Ernest William Hawkes
... two other officers were in the midst of a game of cards, while a kettle, swinging on a crane in the ample fire-place, sang a shrill promise of hot ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... yards, where they dressed ship very prettily. A brass band in the waist hailed his approach with the strains of "Rule, Britannia!" At the head of the accommodation-ladder a guard of honour welcomed him with a hastily rehearsed "Present Arms!" and the boys aloft accompanied it with three shrill British cheers. The dear old gentleman gazed up and ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... who was reputed the son of a slave, had read several letters in the senate with a very shrill, and loud voice, "Wonder not," said Cicero, "he comes of the criers." When Faustus Sylla, the son of Sylla the dictator, who had, during his dictatorship, by public bills proscribed and condemned so many citizens, had so far wasted ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... Flora McFlimsey!" said Mrs. Saunders, with her nervous, shrill little laugh, adding eagerly to the now thoroughly aroused Ella. "You know Baby doesn't really go about much, Totty; she hasn't as many ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... drum is resounding, And shrill the fife plays; My love, for the battle, His brave troop arrays; He lifts his lance high, And the people he sways. My blood it is boiling! My heart throbs pit-pat! Oh, had I a jacket, With hose and with hat! How ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... the shepherd drew a knife which he carried in his girdle, and struck at the opening of the descending beak. The bird uttered a shrill cry of pain as the knife pierced its tongue, and in a few moments it had disappeared in the air. So swift was its flight that almost instantly it was a mere speck in the ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... magazine; but paying no heed to her, he sprang toward her laughing ally with fierce oaths upon his lips, and by a single blow sent him reeling to the floor. The machinery was stopped sharply, as far as possible, by the miscellaneous workpeople, to whom a fight was a boon above price, and with shrill and clamorous outcries they gathered round the young man where he stood, panting, like ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... for its existence were not such a momentous one, rest assured I should let the thing drop. I hope, however, to force it through in time. Ah, yes! if it were a large clock-work with a sound like an organ I'd be glad to do it; but as it is the thing is made up of tiny pipes only, which sound too shrill and ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... the flames behind them glaring, The deadly wall before them, in close array they come; Still onward, upward toiling, like a dragon's fold uncoiling— Like the rattlesnake's shrill warning the reverberating drum! ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... a little longer with Gilbert, helping him to find Carl's clothes, when suddenly a shrill voice was heard calling ...
— Driven From Home - Carl Crawford's Experience • Horatio Alger
... be a thunderous cloud of dust, from the midst of which came strange, shrill sounds, punctuated with sharp cries, that did not appear to ...
— Cowboy Dave • Frank V. Webster
... thick foliage. Anthony leaned out again, and an excited murmur broke out once more, as all faces turned westwards. A moment more, and Anthony caught a flash of colour from the corner near St. Paul's Churchyard; then the shrill trumpets sounded nearer, and the cheering broke out at the end, and ran down the street like a wave of noise. From every window faces leaned out; even on the roofs and between the high ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... breath is quick and irregular. Occasionally the color dashes to the cheek, and then dies out. The hands tremble as though a guardian spirit were trying to shake the deadly book out of the grasp. Hot tears fall. She laughs with a shrill voice that drops dead at its own sound. The sweat on her brow is the spray dashed up from the river of Death. The clock strikes four, and the rosy dawn soon after begins to look through the lattice upon the pale form, that looks like a detained specter of the ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... its peculiar habits and traits, for the benefit of inquiring minds. The Brop is a winged quadruped, with a human face of a youthful and merry aspect. When it walks the earth it grunts, when it soars it gives a shrill hoot, occasionally it goes erect, and talks good English. Its body is usually covered with a substance much resembling a shawl, sometimes red, sometimes blue, often plaid, and, strange to say, they frequently change skins with one another. ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... rats had hardly swallowed the first wheat-grains, before the sound of a little shrill pipe was heard from the yard. The gray rats raised their heads, listened anxiously, ran a few steps as if they intended to leave the bin, then they turned back and ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... tangled head between them; at the dark form of Perrin, near the ashes of the fire; and at the fair child in Seraminta's arms, sleeping quietly at last. Before the cock in the farmyard near had answered a shrill friend in the distance more than twice, the whole party, except the baby, was awake, the donkey harnessed, ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton
... detectives to be sent down immediately. Just as they were passing out of the dining-room, midnight began to boom from the clock tower, and when the last stroke sounded they heard a crash and a sudden shrill cry; a dreadful peal of thunder shook the house, a strain of unearthly music floated through the air, a panel at the top of the staircase flew back with a loud noise, and out on the landing, looking very pale ...
— The Canterville Ghost • Oscar Wilde
... vegetarians, but the Mohammedans are great meat eaters. So are the English. Meat can be had almost every place. The kind of meat differs much in locality. Chickens can be obtained anywhere. The Indian cock is small of head and long of leg, shrill of voice and bold in spirit. The Indian hen is shy and wild, but gives plenty of small, delicately-flavored eggs. On the whole, aside from a few idiosyncrasies, the ...
— The Khaki Kook Book - A Collection of a Hundred Cheap and Practical Recipes - Mostly from Hindustan • Mary Kennedy Core
... Sir Arthur and John Law clasped hands, there came a sudden interruption. A half-score yards deeper in the wood there arose a sudden, half-choked cry, followed by a shrill whoop. There was a crashing as of one running, and immediately there pressed into the open space the figure of an Indian, an old man from the village of the Illini. Even as his staggering footsteps brought ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... strength of united love? In the sudden emotion common to humanity which we all experience at the sight of suffering, and which brought tears from the Holy One on the death of Lazarus, in the strange shivering which we feel pervade our souls at the shrill cry of anguish, do we not recognize more than a simple resemblance of nature—do we not feel that the race is really One, that a common grief again unites it, that in this oneness we are all justly partakers in the sin of Adam, that in this oneness we may partake of the glory of the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... half-mad disconsolateness which men's faces show when they are unsuccessfully engaged in a matter which does not amount to much even after it is successfully achieved,—when suddenly my elephant flourished his trunk, uttered a shrill trumpeting sound, and dashed violently to one side, just as I saw a grand tiger, whose coat seemed to be all alive with throbbing spots, flying through the air past me to the haunches of the less wary elephant beside which mine had been walking. Instantly the whole party was in commotion. "Bagh! ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... have come about, and none of us need care. There they are. As a matter of fact, both England and America are mottled with varying accents literate and illiterate; equally true it is that each nation has its notion of the other's way of speaking—we're known by our shrill nasal twang, they by their broad vowels and hesitation; and quite as true is it that not all Americans and not all English do in their enunciation conform ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... relic of Jackson's time. But the cavalry was superb. Never had he seen such splendid ranks, such noble horses. At sight of the tall, elegant figure of the President, the troops broke into the peculiar shrill cheer that afterward became a sound of wonder, almost terror, to unaccustomed Northern ears. It was a mingling of the boyish treble of college cries and the menacing shriek of the wild-cat. Jack was secretly very much delighted with the review. More than ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... gradual progress of decay after death, which he followed through every process up to the loathsome stage of decomposition. Suddenly changing his tone, which had been that of sober, accurate description, into the shrill voice of horror, he bent forward his head, as if to gaze on some object beneath the pulpit, and made known to us what he saw in the pit that seemed to open before him. The device was certainly a happy one for giving effect to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 540, Saturday, March 31, 1832 • Various
... differ in volume. Some are organs that fill the air with glorious and continuous music; some are trumpets blowing a ringing peal, then sinking into silence; some are harps of melancholy but faint vibration; still others are flutes and pipes, whose sweet or shrill note has a dying fall. Some are heard as the wind or sea is heard; some like the rustle of leaves; some like the chirp of birds. Some are heard long and far away; others across the field; others hardly ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... big enough to understand the calamity wept aloud, and the littler ones cried from sympathy. Pierre's father for a moment appeared bowed down beneath the stroke, but the mother, a stout, dark, gentle-faced woman, suddenly stopped her sobs and cried out in a shrill voice, with her queer ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Indians, Captain Clark was surprised, about ten o'clock, by a loud, shrill outcry from the opposite village, on hearing which all the Indians immediately started up to cross the creek, and the guide informed him that someone had been killed. On examination one of the men (M'Neal) was discovered to be absent, ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... writhing mist whirled past, I received so direct a stroke of wind that it was palpably a blow in the face. Something swept by with a shrill cry into the darkness. It was impossible to prevent jumping to one side and raising an arm by way of protection, and I was only just quick enough to catch a glimpse of the sea-gull as it raced past, with suddenly altered ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... the girl he had driven from the door. She had a short black skirt, an orange shawl, a dark complexion—and the escaped single hairs from the mass, sombre and thick like a forest and held up by a comb, made a black mist about her low forehead. A shrill lamentable howl of: "Misericordia!" came in two voices from the further end of the long room, where the fire-light of an open hearth played between heavy shadows. The girl recovering herself drew a hissing ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... hurriedly. "I got one word to say to you, sah." And she stood up before him as erect as she could, fixing her great spectacles directly upon him. "You look out, sah, fur ole miss," she said, in a voice, naturally shrill, but now heavily handicapped by age and emotion, "ole Miss Keswick, I means. She boun' to do you harm, sah. She tole me so wid her ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... heard a constant shrill, complaining voice. At times, it rose into an angry growl. Mary looked ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... ravenous. Food I must have, or I should perish. I felt conscious that I was much weaker. I again tried to make myself heard, shouting and shrieking as loud as I could, but my voice was faint though shrill, more like that of a puny infant than a stout boy. I was becoming desperate. I first crept in one direction, then in another, trying to force my way between the bales and other packages, but to no avail. ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... too rarefied for us, and Cavor sat with a cylinder of compressed oxygen at hand to restore our pressure. We looked at one another in silence, and then at the fantastic vegetation that swayed and grew visibly and noiselessly without. And ever that shrill piping continued. ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... on down the field. They found the second trap thrown, and the marks of little teeth on the ear of corn that was tied to the trigger showed that a ground squirrel had been at work. The third trap was also sprung, and the shrill, piping notes of alarm which came to their ears when Bert stopped the wagon, told them that they had made their first capture. Jumping quickly out of the wagon the boys made their way into the bushes, and when ...
— The Boy Trapper • Harry Castlemon
... this meeting was still at its height when two shrill cries were heard. These were instantly followed by the bursting of Pussi and Tumbler on the scene, the former of whom rushed into the ready arms of Pussimek, while the latter plunged into the bosom of Nuna. Ippegoo, unable to contain himself for joy, began an impromptu and original ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... Well, I'll thhow you whether I am afraid of the water. I dare you to follow me." Tommy fairly flew down the pier; then, leaping up into the air, jumped far out, taking a clean feet-first dive into the pond, uttering a shrill little yell just before disappearing under the surface. But all at once she stood up, and, by raising her chin a little, was able to keep ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls by the Sea - Or The Loss of The Lonesome Bar • Janet Aldridge
... lights began to glance and twinkle on board the two Haunted Ships from every hole and seam, and presently the sound as of a hatchet employed in squaring timber echoed far and wide. But if the toil of these unearthly workmen amazed the Laird, how much more was his amazement increased when a sharp shrill voice called out, 'Ho! brother, what are you doing now?' A voice still shriller responded from the other haunted ship, 'I'm making a wife to Sandie Macharg!' and a loud quavering laugh running from ship to ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... imperfectly over the nautical blue flannel of his shirt, got up from where he had been sitting, on one side of the stove, and stood infirmly on his feet, in token of receiving the visitor. The woman who sat on the other side did not rise, but began a shrill, defiant apology. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... also seemed delighted to see "His Excellency General Colonel Gordon, the Governor-General of the Equator," as his title went. "They make a shrill noise when they see you, as a salutation; it is like a jingle of bells, very shrill, and somewhat ...
— The Story of General Gordon • Jeanie Lang
... see everywhere about us. When I recall how often I have seen Socialists and ardent non-Socialists working side by side for some specific measure of social or industrial reform, and how I have found opposed to them on the side of privilege many shrill reactionaries who insist on calling all reformers Socialists, I refuse to be panic-stricken by having this title mistakenly ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... Suddenly, the shrill blast of a tin trumpet resounded through the woods, that covered the hill in front of the house, to the great disturbance of the geese, who had settled themselves quietly for the night in their usual bivouac around the ruins ...
— My First Cruise - and Other stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... cries for help could interest him sufficiently to induce him to leave his bed. He knew that walking in his present state would be painful, and he declined to submit to any more pain just because some party unknown was apparently being murdered in his library. It was not until the shrill barking of the dog Aida penetrated right in among his nerve-centres and began to tie them into knots that he found himself compelled to descend. Even when he did so, it was in no spirit of kindness. He did ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... break your arm," he warned his captive as the latter made an ineffectual effort against him. "Call the others," he ordered, and Tignol blew a shrill summons. "Rip off this glove. I want to see his hand. Come, come, none of that. Open it up. No? I'll make you open it. There, I thought so," as an excruciating wrench forced the stubborn fist to yield. "Now then, off with that glove! Ah!" he cried as the bare hand ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... a commotion in the room below. Voices were raised, feminine voices, shrill with excitement. Then came a bustle on the stairs, and the sound of feet; then one voice, ...
— Geoffrey Strong • Laura E. Richards
... red streak came into the sky, and perfume burst from the bushes, and the woods rang, not only with songs some shrill, some as sweet as honey, but with a grotesque yet beautiful electric merriment of birds that can only be heard in this land of wonders. The pen can give but a shadow of the drollery and devilry of the sweet, merry rogues that hailed the smiling morn. Ten thousand of them, each with ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... behind the trees of the park. The voices of many busy laborers sounded shrill around it. The first crop of beet was brought in and heaped up ready for the mill. On the following day the regular factory was to begin, and yet the coppersmith was still hammering there, mechanics ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... which we tramped was desolate and bleak, the mournful aspect seemed to add to the silence; only the shrill whistling of the north wind was heard. Snowflakes, like tiny butterflies, fluttered around us, whirling incessantly without touching ...
— Nobody's Boy - Sans Famille • Hector Malot
... group flourish, and so shrill-voiced are its members in self-advertisement, that it is useless for other poets to present their case, till the claims of the ostentatiously wicked are heard. One is inclined, perhaps, to dismiss ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... ducks swimming about in it from the neighbouring farm-houses, you watch the rising of the fine trout for which it is celebrated—every object tends to convince you that you are wandering by the shores of an inland lake—when suddenly at a turn in the hill slope, you are startled by the shrill cry of the gull, and the fierce roar of breakers thunders on your ear—you look over the light grey waters of the lake, and behold, stretching immediately above and beyond them, the expanse of the deep blue ocean, from which they are only separated by a strip ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... anything to do with the 'wild men,' as he called them. Now he stood listening to Hector's shouts to the baboons, and as he listened a look of the most abject terror came into his face, and he stood livid and trembling, staring in the direction of the beasts. Again Hector called; and then a shrill scream burst from the Hottentot's lips: 'No! no!' he shrieked. 'He is calling them back!' he gibbered, turning to us; 'they will tear us ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... watch-fires blazing up shed their ruddy glow over the dark forest, and lighted up the picturesque figures of the men employed around them. Suddenly the roll of a drum was heard, then a discharge of musketry, and then shrill wind instruments, and shrieks and cries resounded wildly through the forest. The fires burned up brighter than ever, and an entire line of flame extended round the whole opposite to where we sat ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... the sun-sifted dusk of the green lane. Here the desert silence was like a benediction of peace, broken now and then by the faint, shrill note of an insect, or the occasional soft, mournful ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... they walked slowly across the roofs toward the north edge of the city. Wieroos flapped above them and several times they passed others walking or sitting upon the roofs. From the temple still rose the sounds of commotion, now pierced by occasional shrill screams. ...
— Out of Time's Abyss • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... they would not leave. As calmly as in his own abbey the venerable abbot read the holy service, and administered the rites of religion to all who sought. It was in the deep silence of individual prayer which preceded the chanting of the conclusion of the service that a shrill, peculiar blast of a trumpet was heard. On the instant it was recognized as the bugle of the warder stationed on the centre turret of the keep, as the blast which told the foe was at length in sight. Once, twice, thrice it sounded, at irregular intervals, even as Nigel had ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... up the mossy glen Turned and trooped the goblin men, With their shrill repeated cry, "Come buy, come buy." When they reached where Laura was They stood stock still upon the moss, Leering at each other, Brother with queer brother; Signalling each other, Brother with sly brother. One set his basket down, One reared ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... the long darkness, By the stream rolling, Hour after hour went on Tolling and tolling. Long was the darkness, Lonely and stilly. Shrill came the night wind, ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... many more thoughts passed through the young officer's mind. His meditations were interrupted by the shrill whistling of the wind in the trees. Dark clouds gathering to the northward had begun to course rapidly across the sky, soon obscuring the stars overhead, warning him that he must hasten back to the camp, and urge the men to hurry on with ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... rubbish lolls in petticoats, and idle stupidity struts in trousers. But, class for class, woman does her share of the world's work. Among the poor, of the two it is she who labours the longer. There is a many- versed ballad popular in country districts. Often I have heard it sung in shrill, piping voice at harvest supper or barn ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome
... evenings' at Shelldrake's? Yes, to be sure; and there was Hollins, with his clerical face and infidel talk,—and Pauline Ringtop, who used to say, 'The Beautiful is the Good.' I can still hear her shrill voice, singing, 'Would that I were beautiful, would that ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... the twisted, concave surface of a giant stem of some kind. To my left, I could hear the shrill whine of Correy's disintegrator ray generator, already in action, and protesting against a maximum load. To the right, Hendricks and his men were scrambling into position. Before me was ...
— The Terror from the Depths • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... was checked by a fresh speaker, for Will suddenly threw up his cap high in the air with as loud a hurrah as he could utter, acting as fugleman to the group around, who joined in heartily, helped by Josh, in a cheer, strangely mingled, the gruff with the shrill of the ...
— Will of the Mill • George Manville Fenn
... upon the brow overlooking the town, and buried in reflection, I was startled by the loud shrill cry of the native we had met on the road, and who still kept with us: clearly and powerfully that voice rang through the recesses of the settlement beneath, whilst the blended name of Wylie told me of the information it conveyed. For an ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... silvery flute, The melancholy lute, Were night owl's hoot To my low-whispered coo— Were I thy bride! The skylark's trill Were but discordance shrill To the soft thrill Of wooing as I'd woo— Were ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... face was with reviving essence Sprinkled, and she awakened from her swoon. Anger and grief convulsed her still; she cast A lightning glance upon the guilty menial, And thrice with languid voice she called her pet, Who rushed to her embrace and seemed to invoke Vengeance with her shrill tenor. And revenge Thou hadst, fair poodle, darling of the Graces. The guilty menial trembled, and with eyes Downcast received his doom. Naught him availed His twenty years' desert; naught him availed His zeal in secret services; for him In vain were prayer and promise; forth he went, ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... could not scold him out of that feeling, which was all mixed up in her retrospect with the sense of the weather and the season, the leaves just beginning to show the autumn, the wild asters coming to crowd the goldenrod, the crickets shrill in the grass, and the birds silent in the trees, the smell of the rowan in the meadows, and the odor of the old logs and fresh chips in the woods. She was not a woman to notice such things much, but he talked of them all and made her notice them. His nature took hold upon what we ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... silent; desolately silent, as only a suburban square can be. I walked up and down the glaring pavement, resolved to find out her name before I quitted the place. While still undecided how to act, a shrill whistling—sounding doubly shrill in the silence around—made me ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... had taken a violent dislike to her taciturn neighbor, and she did not care who knew it. Her shrill voice seemed to her husband painfully loud, and, indeed, it was beginning to attract the attention of the group of children who had ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson
... little boy. 'Right; go up top,' said the teacher. But there was a small pedant who, while never paying much attention to the lessons, and being usually at the bottom of the form in consequence, knew the regulations by heart. He interrupted with a shrill voice (for the clock had passed the hour), 'No, sir, please, sir; past ten o'clock, sir . . . Solon.' Thus it is, I fear, with critics of every generation, though they try very hard to make the time pass ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... roof, he could see that they were women; and by and by he saw that two of them were the saucy girls who had driven him from his seat in the Common that day, and laughed so at him. They knew him too, and one of them set up a shrill laugh. "Hello, Johnny! That you? You don't say so? What you up for this time? Going down to the Island? Well, give us a call there! Do be sociable! Ward 11's the address." The other one laughed, and then swore at the first ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... trying to throw herself from a window. From this she was pulled back, whereupon she calmed down and secretly urged Maitland to write to Lord Keith to prevent Bertrand accompanying his master. The captain did so, but of course the Admiral declined to interfere. Her shrill complaints against Napoleon had, however, been heard on the other side of the thin partition, and fanned the dislike which Montholon and Gourgaud had conceived for her, and in part for her husband. These were the officers whom he selected as companions ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... in any mischief, and which meant, "I know I have done wrong, but don't punish me; in fact, I did not mean to do it—it was accidental." Whenever, however, he saw he was going to be punished, he would change his tone to a shrill, threatening note, showing his teeth, and trying to intimidate. He had quite an extensive vocabulary of sounds, varying from a gruff bark to a shrill whistle; and we could tell by them, without ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... woodlands will my pulses stir and thrill; I'll run below the wet young moon where myriad frogs pipe shrill; I'll forget the world of strife, Where fame is more than life; And I'll mate with youth and beauty when the sun ...
— England over Seas • Lloyd Roberts
... is enough to be accused, to be sure of a flogging. The very presence of this man Gore was{95} painful, and I shunned him as I would have shunned a rattlesnake. His piercing, black eyes, and sharp, shrill voice, ever awakened sensations of terror among the slaves. For so young a man (I describe him as he was, twenty-five or thirty years ago) Mr. Gore was singularly reserved and grave in the presence of slaves. He indulged in no jokes, said no funny things, and kept his own counsels. ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... rather shrill but not unmusical voice from Wingate's side. "Introduce us, please, Mr. Kendrick. We have been making furtive conversation for ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of a Dutch china figure. On her left nostril was a little mole, another on the right side of her chin, where curled a few hairs so much like the color of the skin that they could hardly be seen. She was tall, with a well-developed chest and supple waist. Her clear voice sometimes sounded too shrill, but her merry laugh made everyone around her feel happy. She had a way of frequently putting both hands to her forehead, as though ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... listening with an inattentive ear to the old lady's rigmaroles and her interminable anecdotes of the emigration, he gazed upon Claire, as a fanatic upon his idol. Often in his ecstasy he forgot where he was for the moment and became absolutely oblivious of the old lady's presence, although her shrill voice was piercing the tympanum of his ear like a needle. Then he would answer her at cross-purposes, committing the most singular blunders, which he labored afterwards to explain. But he need not have taken the trouble. Madame d'Arlange did not perceive her courtier's ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... Jimmy placed two fingers between his lips and produced a shrill whistle that made both Zoie and Aggie glance ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... an irregular metallic sound, as of blows struck on iron, and now and then a shrill, high-pitched cry. The effect of these strange sounds, rendered vague and unreal by the density of the walls, and faintly penetrating the dreadful darkness, surpassed all ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... dear," he began, "I have had the greatest luck! I call it nothing short of a fairy tale." He pointed at his neckscarf. Coming near, Trudy bent over and gave way to a shrill scream. A handsome diamond pin ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... told them that other guests had already arrived. Then as they drew nearer and the tones of the instrument grew louder, they could hear the rhythmic swing and beat of heavily shod feet upon the rough board floors, with the shrill cries of the caller, and the half savage, half pathetic sing-song of the backwoods dancers, singing, ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... for the poet lyre? What can touch his soul with fire, When from ev'ry passing cloud The storm-king whistles shrill and loud, And nature shrieks her requiem wild, O'er summer, her departed child. When through the shortened winter day The languid sun sheds sickly ray, And struggling moonbeams seem at most, Dim meteor forms of Ossian's ghost. Then shall not I, a feeble maid, Of the Muses be afraid? ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... the well broiled venison. Oncle Jazon's puckered lips and chin were dripping with the fragrant grease and juice, which also flowed down his sinewy, claw-like fingers. Overhead in the bare tops of the scrub oaks that covered the prairie oasis, the February wind sang a shrill and doleful song. ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... irreverence and self-protective wariness of the London urchin the possibilities and swaying fortunes of the fight. Emmy, so much slower, so much less self-reliant, had no refuge but in scolding that grew shriller and more shrill until it ended in violent weeping, a withdrawal from the field entirely abject. She was not a born fighter. She was harder on the surface, but weaker in powers below the surface. Her long solitudes had made her build up grievances, and devastating thoughts, ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... up a silver bowl to him, with a little mocking laugh on her lips. "Sail on, sail on, my guid Scots lords," she cried, and her sweet, false voice rose clear and shrill above the tumult of the waves, "for I warrant ye'll soon touch ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... And immediately after a shrill whistle sounded several times, and was again taken up and repeated farther off. The whistle, it appeared, was John Amend-All's battle trumpet, by which he published ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... replied Dennis, making himself heard with some difficulty through the flannel folds of his mask; and while he was speaking there came the shrill signal for "ten ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... parts, I preached after Mr. Lloyd had read the service. I was exceedingly shocked at (what I had only heard of before) the Irish howl which followed. It was not a song, as I supposed, but a dismal, inarticulate yell, set up at the grave by four shrill-voiced women, hired for the purpose. But I saw not one that shed a tear; for that, it seems, was not ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... in the hotel, with the French windows open to the verandah, she heard the church clock chime the hour and the distant sound of the African hautboy in the street of the dancers, she heard again the two voices. The hautboy was barbarous and provocative, but she thought that it was no more shrill with a persistent triumph. Presently the church bell ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... the square, around the corner of the ranch-house, and up on a long porch, where the arrangement of chairs and blankets attested to the hand of a woman. The first door was open, and from it issued voices; first a shrill, petulant boy's complaint, and then a man's deep, slow, ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... saw the eye in the wall. Throwing down thread and web she moved angrily to the door, gave a shrill scream and flew out under the sky. Like a white speck against the blue hills, she appeared for a little while and then ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... discovery, with hunger allayed, I stretched myself under a tree, upon the foliage which had partially filled a space between contiguous trunks, and fell asleep. How long I slept I know not; but suddenly I was roused by a loud, shrill scream, like that of a human being in distress, poured, seemingly, into the very portals of my ear. There was no mistaking that fearful voice. I had been deceived by and answered it a dozen times while threading the forest, with the belief that it was a friendly signal. It ...
— Thirty-Seven Days of Peril - from Scribner's Monthly Vol III Nov. 1871 • Truman Everts
... with herself, still straining on the reins. She would not admit that there was any danger, though her heart was beating in a way that it had never done before. Then as she hauled ineffectually at the bridle with all her strength there came from behind her the sound of a long, shrill whistle. Her horse pricked up his ears and she was conscious that his pace sensibly lessened. Instinctively she looked behind. A solitary Arab was riding after her and as she looked she realised that his horse was gaining on hers. The thought drove every idea of stopping her runaway from ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... whistled, long and shrill, "that's it, is it? Look here, Sir Everard, don't you get so tearin' mad all for nothing. I didn't write no disrespect to her ladyship—I didn't, by Jupiter! I jest had a little request to make, and if I could have seen her ladyship I wouldn't have writ at all, ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... Jamie saw the approaching guests he gave a shrill whistle, which was answered by echoes from meadow, house and barn, as the cousins came running from all directions, shouting, "Hooray for Uncle Alec!" They went at the carriage like highwaymen, robbed it of every parcel, ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... answered by the sudden clanging of a gong inside the fire house, followed by the sound of running footsteps and, an instant later, the wild alarm of the shrill-tongued ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... engine, the big red one," she heard a shrill voice pipe; and she looked down to see that it was the boy's blue lips that ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
... Didn't I always tell you so?" cried a shrill voice; and Tom looked round, to dimly make out Mother Warboys bending over her grandson, who was now sitting on the grass close under the wall, where he had been placed. "I always said it. His punishment's come at last for all his ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... restraint and gave all her pent-up nerves play. They faced each other like furies, he red and grim, she shaken and shrill. ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... from the lips of Stephen Strong, a shrill hoarse cry, more like the cry of a beast than that of a man, and the words, "By God! we've won. The A.V.'s have ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... he was enabled to fire on one of them who had sought protection behind a sapling too small to screen his body. The ball fractured his thigh, and produced death. The other, instead of pressing upon Wetsel, uttered a shrill yell, and exclaiming, "no catch him, gun always ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... three minutes, and must have been very hot while it lasted, for all through the hubbub the cries and groans of the freshly-wounded were continuous. I could hear the dull crunching sound of the sharp cutlasses shearing through bone and muscle, the shrill scream of agony, the heavy thud of bodies falling to the deck, oaths and execrations both in Spanish and in English, shouts of mutual encouragement, yells of deadly hatred, the ceaseless trampling of ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... just beyond that last steep rise, was the sea. She could hear its roar now, like a deep voice drowning the clearer pipe of the winging birds and the shrill of the little grass creatures. Often she went down to its edge, but at this hour she liked best to lie in the grass and dream her dreams ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... was mild, and the streets shrill with the careless cries of children playing games controlled by mysterious rhythms and phrases. Their elders held the doorways and steps with leisurely pipe and gossip. Paradoxically, the fire-escapes supported lovers in couples who made no attempt to fly ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... long to wait. He heard her shrill, warning whistle, then the big chuck trotted and waddled into sight, stopping occasionally to nibble or look around. Close behind her were the two fat cubs. Arrived near the den their confidence was restored, and again they began to feed, ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... and 72 and 91," cried the old gentleman, in a voice equally shrill—"why, that must mean the number of steps the pirate was counting ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... everything happened together. Mr. Jellybrand, who had been afraid of dogs ever since, as an infant, he had been mistaken for a bone by a large retriever, stepped back upon Aunt Amy, who uttered a shrill cry. Mrs. Cole, although she did not forsake her accustomed placidity, said: "Nurse... Nurse..." Jeremy cried: "It's all right, he wouldn't touch anything, he's only friendly." Mary and Helen together moved forward as though to protect Jeremy, and the Jampot could be ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... stands on yon high, high hill, Blaw, blaw, ye cauld winds blaw! He blaws a blast baith loud and shrill, The cauld wind 's blawn my ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... said a young prisoner, in a shrill and reedy voice, lisping in an affected manner, "I was betrayed by Jobert, a man who proposed an affair in the ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... bothers vexing her life. When you sit and watch the sun set in a bed of pastel glory, and let the level bars of thick gold light steal across the soft slick grass to reach to your very soul, and smell the heavenly sweetness of dew-damp roses, and listen to the shrill yet mournful even-song of the locusts—when you sit very still, just letting it all seep into you and through and through you, such a beatific sense of peace surges over you that, gradually, trivial things like athletic shortcomings ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... bloodless lips as she now dropped her knitting upon her lap, and, with her body bent forward, commenced watching the merry play of the cat on the cushion. Suddenly the silence was interrupted by a loud and shrill scream, and a very strange-sounding voice uttered a few incoherent words in English. At the same time a door was opened hastily, and another woman appeared—just as old, just as kind- looking, and with as mild and serene features as the one we have just described. Her more ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... he was riding. Wound around his riding-doublet Was a sash, to which was tied the Richly-gilded shining trumpet, Which he often with his mantle Sheltered from the falling snow-flakes; But, whene'er the wind pierced through it, Bringing forth tones shrill and wailing; Then around his mouth there played a Sweet ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... his walk was heavy and unmajestic; his person greatly neglected; his hair, whatever might be the skill of his hairdresser, was soon in disorder. His voice, without being harsh, was not agreeable; if he grew animated in speaking he often got above his natural pitch, and became shrill. The Abbe de Radonvilliers, his preceptor, one of the Forty of the French Academy, a learned and amiable man, had given him and Monsieur a taste for study. The King had continued to instruct himself; he ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... you to hear," piped the shrill, cracked voice, "that there are dozens of policemen walking about London who would arrest you on suspicion had you treated them as you have ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... did not wait to parley with his enemy, but skulked away through the long grass, every now and then raising his head to glare behind him. But the peccary tracked him by the smell, and on coming up to him, uttered a shrill grunt. 'The snake, finding that he was overtaken, threw himself into a coil, and prepared to give battle; while his antagonist, now looking more like a great porcupine than a pig, drew back, as if to ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... put his fingers to his lips, and blew a shrill whistle that penetrated far in the forest. In a few instants, the answer, another whistle, came back from a point a few hundred yards ahead, ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... attention of the audience; and a goodly number of spectators, among them Robin Poussepain, and all the clerks at their head, gayly applauded this eccentric duet, which the scholar, with his shrill voice, and the mendicant had just improvised in ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... in the heaven and changed, as if into silvery feathers, the mimosa and acacia twigs. In the dense jungles resounded here and there the shrill and, at the same time, mockingly mirthful laugh of the hyenas, which in that gory region found far too many corpses. From time to time the detachment conducting the caravan encountered other patrols and exchanged with ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... to each other in various keys. The toads are with them, and the pretty tree-frogs that change their color to suit their emotions. And all are rapturously screaming. Their voices are not musical, according to man's standard, but seem to afford great satisfaction to the performers in the shrill orchestra of the swamps, who thus give vent to the flood of life that sweeps through them ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... on the seventeenth and eighteenth of May. The next day we made a short drive, and camped within hearing of the shrill steamboat whistle that resounded far ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... lake, curving up from the horizon, had turned from blue to lead, save where the swift waves were crested with white. The hail beat on the trees and bushes like myriads of bullets, and the wind came with a high, shrill scream. The mainland was lost in the mist and clouds, and he was not only alone on his island, but alone in his world, and separated from his foes by tumbling ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... more than an hour, and he threw himself on to his bed quite worn out, and slept at once, in spite of the nightingales, who filled the starlit, breezy, balmy night with their shrill, sweet clamor. ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... Indian who remembered the death of the two officers, stopped; the detachment also halted. He then looked around in quest of some object which might recall, distinctly, his recollection of the ground, and suddenly darted into the wood. The soldiers rested their arms without speaking. A shrill cry was soon after heard; and the other guides made signs for the troops to follow them towards the spot from which it came. In the course of a short time they reached the Indian warrior, who, by his cry, had announced to his companions that he had found the place where he was posted on the day of ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... cried the little girl; "you would, too, if your arm was all on fire, and shooting needles into you and not set right and has to be broken over again and all twisted up and hanging by a thread, anyway! Ow!—ow!—OW!!" Her voice rose in a shrill screech and she rocked back and forth in ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells
... necessity which so exasperated his naturally fiery temper that, on such occasions, he became utterly regardless of his life, and rushing upon any odds with a terrific roar of his deep bass voice, so different from the shrill yell of the Indians—would cleave his way right through their ranks with his long double-edged sword; then, returning to the charge with increased fury, would so appal and horrify them that the usual result was ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... deep-toned bark proclaimed a newcomer, or newcomers, seeing that it was answered immediately by a medley of shrill barks, in the midst of which a girl's voice sounded authoritively—"Quiet, Phil! Pat, I'm ashamed of you! Pudgey, if you're not good instantly, you shall stay ...
— The S. W. F. Club • Caroline E. Jacobs
... much incensed to enter, even when the hum of united voices ceased, the rushing sound of rising was over, and measured footsteps pattered to the classes, where the manly interrogations sounded alternately with the shrill ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the river the voyagers seemed completely landlocked and allowed the current to carry them safely through the quagmires and sand bars. They floated among a number of white swans and the whole flock flew upward with shrill cries, startling the cranes that stalked in the shadows and sending clouds of cackling geese and ducks whirling up from ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... "Oh! oh!" a shrill scream was heard; and Viola Vincent pushed her way through the crowd of girls, and threw ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards
... Tarrant go to bed at unnatural hours, just to deprive him of his evenings. He walked some distance without encountering a creature or discerning an habitation; but he enjoyed the splendid starlight, the stillness, the shrill melancholy of the crickets, which seemed to make all the vague forms of the country pulsate around him; the whole impression was a bath of freshness after the long strain of the preceding two years and his recent sweltering ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... a faint and melancholy strain of music—melancholy enough to make one shiver—and shrill, shrill as the song of the grasshoppers, it began to make itself heard, very softly at first, then growing louder and rising in the silence of the noonday like the diminutive wail of some poor Japanese soul ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... platform had increased momently, until now, when, from the snorting of the engine, it seemed likely that the train might start at any minute, the crowd's excitement was extreme. Shrill cries echoed down the platform. Lost sheep, singly and in companies, rushed to and fro, peering eagerly into carriages in the search for seats. Piercing cries ordered unknown "Tommies" and "Ernies" to "keep by aunty, now." Just as Ukridge ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... up in the west again, swept back toward the east, and went out of sight in the Big Sioux. If a herd chanced to be grazing too near its path as it approached, they were scattered right and left in wild confusion by a shrill toot! toot! that could be heard at the farm-house. But when the way was clear the cloud traveled swiftly and silently, stringing itself, on sunny days, to a low white ribbon, or, if the air was damp and the heavens were gray, separating itself, from river to ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... Governor's canoe, had on its high prow, conspicuous the French guide, who for the time gave commands. The Governor always took his Highland piper with him, and now there pealed forth from the canoe the strident strains of the bagpipes, while from the second canoe sounded the shrill call of the chief factor's bugle. As the party approached the Fort they saw the Union Jack with its magic letters H.B.C. floating from the tall flag-staff of Norway pine erected on Signal Hill. Bands of Indians from all directions were assembled to meet ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... And then it started, like a guilty thing Vpon a fearfull Summons. I haue heard, The Cocke that is the Trumpet to the day, Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding Throate Awake the God of Day: and at his warning, Whether in Sea, or Fire, in Earth, or Ayre, Th' extrauagant, and erring Spirit, hyes To his Confine. And of the truth heerein, This present ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... side of the car in the darkness as despair seized him. He had always coveted adventure but this was too much and he felt himself to be utterly helpless in this dreadful predicament. Even as he stood there in a state of pitiable consternation, a shrill whistle sounded in the distance, which was echoed back from the ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... had the last of its solo performances. It persevered with undiminished ardor; but the cricket took first fiddle, and kept it. Good heaven, how it chirped! Its shrill, sharp, piercing voice resounded through the house, and seemed to twinkle in the outer darkness ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... drawing-room were partly closed to exclude the rays of the sun; the smell of the flowers in the jardiniere was almost oppressive, and the very cries in the street seemed uttered languidly, and without their usual shrill spirit. After breakfast I sat down at my drawing-table, and tried to finish a sketch of the inside of Westminster Abbey, which I had begun the day before. As I was preparing my colours and arranging my brushes, the door opened and Henry ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... one more glance through the window, for the wild agony on her master's face rather alarmed her. But Clorinda called out in a voice so shrill that it was not to be disregarded, and she was constrained to undertake the task assigned her without ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... approach the Indians' camp, on nearing which we were to fire a volley on them from our rifles, and, wheeling round, drive our horses off and retreat. We were within two hundred paces of the camp-fires when we were startled by the report of a rifle. A shrill whistle followed; but we still advanced, and in a few moments came up with Malcolm and Bradshaw, the sailor being supported in the arms of his companion, who called out that the man was shot, and begged me to look to him. The remainder of the party, hearing this, moved a few ...
— California • J. Tyrwhitt Brooks
... Garvin, bonny Garvin, What is the booming sound Of canvas, and the piping shrill, As ...
— Ballads of Lost Haven - A Book of the Sea • Bliss Carman
... whistle from his pocket, and at the shrill summons an old sergeant and half a dozen soldiers came ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... moment the loud, shrill crowing of a cock startled Peter; and at the same time he saw Jesus, who was being dragged through the hall from Annas to the council-room of Caiphas, the other high-priest. And the Lord turned as he was ...
— The Wonder Book of Bible Stories • Compiled by Logan Marshall
... lad, believe it, For they shall yet belie thy happy years That say thou art a man: Diana's lip Is not more smooth and rubious; thy small pipe Is as the maiden's organ, shrill and sound, And all is semblative a woman's part. I know thy constellation is right apt For this affair:—some four or five attend him: All, if you will; for I myself am best When least in company:—prosper well in this, And thou shalt live as freely ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... Tiffton's household effects. Even fair ladies, too, came in their carriages, holding high their aristocratic skirts as they threaded their way through the rooms where piles of carpeting and furniture of various kinds lay awaiting the shrill voice and hammer of the auctioneer, a portly little man, who felt more for the family ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... housewife had loosed a vicious-looking bulldog, and the tramp wisely passed by without stopping. The next house was deserted, the door of the third place was slammed in his face before he could even make known his wants, and he was beginning to wonder if he must go breakfastless when a shrill, childish treble rang out clearly on the still ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... objected, and collected a number of men who linked themselves together with ropes and surrounded the field. The horse took no notice but continued browsing. The ring gradually contracted on him. Kynaston saw the proceeding from his eyrie, and uttered a shrill whistle. At once the gallant steed pricked up his ears, snorted, ran, leaped clean over the head of a man, and scrambled up the stair in the cliff, to his master's shelter. On another occasion a thief, thinking it no harm to rob a felon, succeeded in leaping ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... stone floor of the passage to see what imperative summons this was. Then, as the front door was opened, the bell ceased as suddenly as it had begun, and the moment afterward he heard Morris's voice shrill and commanding. ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... the male is first seen he gives a terrific yell, that resounds far and wide through the forest, something like kh-ah! kh-ah! prolonged and shrill. His enormous jaws are widely opened at each expiration, his under lip hangs over the chin, and the hairy ridge and scalp are contracted upon the brow, presenting an ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... hiding from herself, and hiding also from everyone else. One girl, in particular, I remember, a lank figure, brightly dressed and her head adorned by a wreathed Union Jack, whirling lean arms in an ecstasy of irritability, her shrill voice mounting from scream note to scream note. A sickness of soul cried from her restless over-taxed body. She was but one unit of a whole rowdy company. Even this night was used by them to grab at something to fool men—to smother ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... more horrible from being vague, and terror more terrible from ambiguity. It was a fearful page in the record my existence, written all over with dim, and hideous, and unintelligible recollections. I strived to decypher them, but in vain; while ever and anon, like the spirit of a departed sound, the shrill and piercing shriek of a female voice seemed to be ringing in my ears. I had done a deed—what was it? I asked myself the question aloud, and the whispering echoes of the chamber answered ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... full of diffident gratitude. Stopping before one of the doors, the child rapped timidly—so timidly, in fact, that it could scarcely be heard. No answer coming, she rapped again, this time a little louder, and a woman's shrill ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... Arabic? Well, he asks me to give him money to pay for his dinner and his night's lodging. You must forgive him, for he is but a simple peasant, and cannot believe that anyone may be lodged and fed without payment. I will explain to him, the pig!" And explain he did in shrill, high notes, of which no one else could understand ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... sell. O what joy will fill a Bishop's heart oft a far far distant shore, When he sees our Stroke; reviving the memories of yore! Then old Cam will he revisit in fancy's fairy dream, And rouse once more with sounding oar the slow and sluggish stream: But who is this with voice so shrill, so resolute and ready? Who cries so oft "too late!" "too soon!" "quicker forward!" "Steady, steady!" Why 'tis our young toxophilite, our ARCHER bold and true, The lightest and the tightest who has ever steered light-blue. O when he pulls the yielding ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... Fred Starratt, making his way from the outlying districts toward the center of the town, came out of a mental turmoil that had flung him about all day in a series of blind impulses. The air was raucous with the shrill cry of newsboys announcing the details of the morning's sensation. He knew how the journalistic tale would run without bothering to glimpse the headlines. At this time it would be made up for the most part of vague speculations as to ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... said Joseph in dreamy undertones, "the midnight mass—incense and lights and the figures of saints, and wonderful painted windows, and a great multitude of weeping worshippers and music that wept with them, now shrill like the passionate cry of martyrs, now breathing the peace of the ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... overflows from the adjacent Spanish provinces and swarms in the crooked streets. It lounges all day in the public places, sprawls upon the curbstones, clings to the face of the cliffs, and vociferates continually in a shrill, strange tongue, which has no discoverable affinity with any other. The Basques look like the hardier and thriftier Neapolitan lazzaroni; if the superficial resemblance is striking, the difference is very much in their favor. Although those specimens ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... the soft, moss-covered ground and lain there hour after hour, listening to the wood-bird's song. Sometimes he would even find a reed and try to pipe a tune as sweet as did the birds, but that was all in vain, as the lad soon found. No tiny songster would linger to hearken to the shrill piping of his grassy reed, and the Prince himself was soon ready to ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... was there. Stooping forward, Abraham Lincoln began to speak, and Stephen Brice hung his head and shuddered. Could this shrill falsetto be the same voice to which he had listened only that morning? Could this awkward, yellow man with his hands behind his back be he whom he had worshipped? Ripples of derisive laughter rose here and there, on the stand and from the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... you quickly. As I late was angling In the great Lake that lies behind the Pallace, From the far shore, thicke set with reedes and Sedges, As patiently I was attending sport, I heard a voyce, a shrill one, and attentive I gave my eare, when I might well perceive T'was one that sung, and by the smallnesse of it A boy or woman. I then left my angle To his owne skill, came neere, but yet perceivd not Who made the sound, the rushes and the Reeds Had so ...
— The Two Noble Kinsmen • William Shakespeare and John Fletcher [Apocrypha]
... been groundless. The new king spoke Latin, and "peppered the Puritans soundly." The walls of Hampton Court resounded with his shrill determination to tolerate none of their nonsense; and he declared to the assembled prelates, who were dissolving in tears of joy, that bishops were the most trustworthy legs a monarch could walk on. The dissenters, who had hoped much, were disappointed in proportion; ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... along it. There was only room for one on the sand, and the other two, for they walked abreast, waded ankle-deep in the water. From the little city below them they could hear the hum of a myriad of tiny voices—thin, shrill and faint. Suddenly the Big Business Man laughed. There was no hysteria in his voice now—just amusement ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... rang out three times, clear and shrill. The cuckoo flapped his wings, made a bow to the mandarins, and retired ...
— The Cuckoo Clock • Mrs. Molesworth
... received, cannot refrain from turning his head to ascertain whether he is baffled, and has spent all his labour in vain. He sees her; but no sooner he sees her, than she becomes evanescent and impalpable; farther and farther she retreats before him; she utters a shrill cry, and endeavours to articulate; but she grows more and more imperceptible; and in the conclusion he is left with the scene around him in all respects the same as it had been before his incantations. The result of the whole that is known of Orpheus, is, that he was an eminently great and ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... it was the farmer of Portmark who had done this thing once too often. At least it is sure that it was to his house that the Death first came in the parish of Dour. At the sound of the shrill crying, of which they every one knew the meaning, men dropped their tools in the field and fled to the hills. It was like the Day of Judgment. The household servants disappeared. Hired men and field-workers dispersed like the wave from a stone in a pool, carrying infection with them. Men ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... I will thank you to remember you are in my house!" cries Miss Majendie, in a shrill tone that ...
— A Little Rebel - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... dainty novels—merely showing The old familiar faces of a few, The question to renew, How thou canst leave such deeds without a name, Forego the unclaim'd Dividends of fame, Forego the smiles of literary houris— Mid-Lothian's trump, and Fife's shrill note of praise, And all the Carse of Gowrie's, When thou might'st have thy statue in Cromarty— Or see thy image on Italian trays, Betwixt Queen Caroline and Buonaparte, Be painted by the Titian of R.A's, Or vie in signboards with the Royal Guelph! P'rhaps have thy bust set cheek by jowl with ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... heavily for the transplanted household, more especially for Andy and his wife, who had outgrown a love of paddling in bogholes, and had acquired a habit of wondering "what at all 'ud become of the childer, the crathurs." One shrill-blasted March morning Andy trudged off to the fair down below at Duffclane—not that he had any business to transact there, unless we reckon as such a desire to gain a respite from regretful boredom. He but partially succeeded in doing this, and returned ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... character of the whole affair fascinated me in spite of myself, and leaving the now fully aroused woman in the hall, I was half-way across the parlor floor when the latter stopped me with a shrill cry: ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... Philip opened the door, and jumped to the ground; the brother and his son followed. A moment more, and Philip was locked in Catherine's arms, her tears falling fast upon his breast; his children plucking at his coat; and the younger one crying in his shrill, impatient treble, "Papa! papa! you don't see ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... rustling of leaves beneath the window drew the attention of Florence. Thinking it her favorite Carlo, and being in no mood for a frolic, without lifting her eyes she bid him "begone;" but she was soon undeceived by a shrill voice pronouncing her name, at the same time finding her arm tightly grasped by the thin, bony fingers of Crazy Nell, the terror of all the truant children in the village. The terrified child vainly tried to disengage herself from the maniac's hold; ...
— Small Means and Great Ends • Edited by Mrs. M. H. Adams
... roadway. There are some places where it is not healthy to walk at night on shadowed pavements. They moved without haste and without loitering, as men who know exactly what they have to do. From one of the darkened houses a woman's shrill scream issued full of rage and terror. It was followed by a man's loud, angry tones, the thud of blows, shrieks, curses, and brutal laughter. Then the silence dropped over everything again. The two men had apparently paid no heed. Even had they been inclined to play the part ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... a pitch-pipe from his pocket and making a slight sound, furnished the starting note. The singing proceeded principally from a certain part of the room, as if by some understanding the singers had been collected together, although scattered sounds also, of either rumbling bass or shrill treble whose trembling modulations betrayed the advanced age of the performers, were here and there heard. Some of these guerrilla passages were sadly out of time and tune, and according to the humor of the hearer ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... army of contractors, a vaster host of persons interested in the private bills submitted to Congress, and of candidates for the numerous places of preferment which are being vacated and created daily. Before the smallest of these has lain open for an hour, there will be scores of shrill claimants wrangling over it, summoned from the four winds of heaven by the ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... screams, till they came to the tomb and stood round about it while the four men laid their master in his great coffin of black marble beneath the pines and the rhododendrons. And the pipers followed after, making shrill and dreadful music that sounded as though some supernatural beings added their voices to the universal wail of woe. And on either side of the body walked the women, the prophet's kinsfolk; but Nehushta walked by Zoroaster, and ever and anon, as the funeral procession wound through ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... moment, a little shrill voice broke out in remonstrance among the laurels—"But you know, Daisy, you are the captain of the ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... and made a stiff and feeble stir about their doorways, and the school children gave the street a little life and color, as they went to and from the Academy in their red and blue woollens. Four times a day the mill, the shrill wheeze of whose saws had become part of the habitual silence, blew its whistle for the hands to begin and leave off work, in blasts that seemed to shatter themselves against the thin air. But otherwise an ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... from comment on this remark, falling into reflection, leaning back, with one hand outstretched, on the grass. The game went on vociferously, the shrill lithe voices piercing the silence of the summer afternoon. Mr. Bentley's eyes ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... of musketry was heard. Monte-Cristo hastened in the direction of the sound, followed by Coucou and about fifty men. The camp appeared to be surrounded, yet, at a shrill cry, which seemed to be a signal, the horsemen suddenly wheeled about and ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... of the Oneidas had subtly changed their timbre so that ever amid the shrill yelling I marked the guttural snarls of baffled rage. The Mohican lay on his belly behind a tree, silent, but his eyes were like coals ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... get our hosses!" sang out Tom Dillon, and started forward on the run. Then he let out a shrill whistle, one he knew was used for calling the ...
— Dave Porter in the Gold Fields - The Search for the Landslide Mine • Edward Stratemeyer
... every minute great birds of clumsy flight, which flew in all directions. Others, more active, rose in flocks and passed in clouds over their heads. The sailor thought he recognized gulls and cormorants, whose shrill cries rose above the roaring ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... million copies weekly from Kansas City. It is a Socialism reeking with class feeling and class hatred and altogether anarchistic in spirit; a new and highly indigestible contribution to the American moral and intellectual synthesis. It is remarkable chiefly as the one shrill exception in a world ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... the eye in this description? Only the sound of the bagpipes is described, though it may suggest a picture of the Highland regiments. What words describe the music? "Wild and high", "war-note", "thrills savage and shrill". Why does the poet mention proper names—"Lochiel", "Evan", "Donald"? The bagpipes recall stirring memories of these men, which inspire the clansmen to prove worthy of their ancestors. What is the "Cameron's gathering"? ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... on a maze of shoals without a channel; the driving rain mingled with the falling dusk of a winter's evening; and the booming of a big clock on a tower, striking the hour, rolled past in voluminous, austere bursts of sound, with a shrill vibrating cry at the core. ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... to the lips of the Prince, but before he could give vent to it a terrible little shrill sound from the box struck his ears. In sudden dismay he unslung the baby-house, and opened it to discover what was the matter ...
— Prince Vance - The Story of a Prince with a Court in His Box • Eleanor Putnam
... chief! how we dash o'er the sand, Hissing behind us like storm-driven snow! Flash the long guns of your wild Arab band, Brandish the spears, and the light jereeds throw, As, half-winged, through the shrill singing breezes we go! ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... the hills the muscadine was growing purple. The mules, so over-worked during plow-time, now stumbled down the lane, biting at one another. The stiffening wind, fore-whistle of the season's change of tune, was shrill amid the rushes at the ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... terrible crash and grinding, shrill screams, with the sharp, taunting laughter of Dan ringing clear, as his vessel swept clear of the wreckage, flashing by the crowded small boats which had been lowered a few seconds before the crash came. Hardly knowing what she was doing, utterly beside herself, ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... fishing boat that had dropped anchor close in to the shore; it was a Honfleur craft, come to buy mussels for the Paris market. The women trudged through the water, up to their waists; they clustered about the boats like so many laden beasts. But their shrill bargaining proved ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... nearly closing time, and several friends of Garstin's, models and others, who had been scattered about in the cafe, and who were on their way out, stopped to hear what was going on. Some adherents of Jennings also came up. The discussion became animated. Voices waxed roaringly loud or piercingly shrill. The little Bolshevik, suddenly losing her round faced calm and the shepherdess look in her eyes, burst forth in a voluble outcry in praise of the beauty of anarchy, expressing herself in broken English, spoken with a cockney accent, in broken French and liquid Russian. Enid Blunt, increasingly ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... sexual longing in music is identical with that of religious longing. It is quite true, again, that a soft and gentle voice seems to every normal man as to Lear "an excellent thing in woman," and that a harsh or shrill voice may seem to deaden or even destroy altogether the attraction of a beautiful face. But the voice is not usually in itself an adequate or powerful method of evoking sexual emotion in a man. Even in its supreme vocal manifestations the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... ship's officers had kept out of the way, glad of a little breathing-time. Soon after dark the few liberty-men and the new hands began to arrive in shore-boats rowed by white-clad Asiatics, who clamoured fiercely for payment before coming alongside the gangway-ladder. The feverish and shrill babble of Eastern language struggled against the masterful tones of tipsy seamen, who argued against brazen claims and dishonest hopes by profane shouts. The resplendent and bestarred peace of the East was torn into squalid tatters ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... every hole and seam, and presently the sound as of a hatchet employed in squaring timber echoed far and wide. But if the toil of these unearthly workmen amazed the Laird, how much more was his amazement increased when a sharp shrill voice called out, 'Ho! brother, what are you doing now?' A voice still shriller responded from the other haunted ship, 'I'm making a wife to Sandie Macharg!' and a loud quavering laugh running from ship to ship, and from ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... the night is far spent, that thou shouldst temper thy wine with water." Thus derided, Tofano came back to the door, and finding his ingress barred, began adjuring her to let him in. Whereupon, changing the low tone she had hitherto used for one so shrill that 'twas well-nigh a shriek, she broke out with:—"By the Holy Rood, tedious drunken sot that thou art, thou gettest no admittance here to-night; thy ways are more than I can endure: 'tis time I let all the world know what manner of man thou art, and at what hour ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... was immediately evident that she had carried out her program for there was a shrill cry, "Oh, for God's sake! Get her up! Get her up! Get her up! ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... was beginning to fall over the vast battlefield; and under the trees with their dense foliage, but little could be seen. Deck listened attentively, but the only sounds which reached his ears were the shrill cries of the birds, who were terrorized by the long-continued booming of cannons and sharp cracking of musketry. Occasionally the roar of a battery could be heard, or a shot from the creek; but these were gradually dying away altogether, for both armies were worn out through fighting ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic
... Inchbare, calling for the head-waiter, rose shrill and imperative from the regions of the bar. Mr. Bishopriggs disappeared. Anne remained, standing helpless by the window. It was plain by this time that the place of her retreat had been discovered at Windygates. The one doubt to decide, now, was whether it would be ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... their ears, and once more heard the yells of the man borne along by the rushing wind. Then came that other shrill ...
— The Rover Boys in the Land of Luck - Stirring Adventures in the Oil Fields • Edward Stratemeyer
... anxiety possessed almost every one present, there came from the staircase without a sudden cry of woe—a woman's shriek, long and shrill, ominous as the wail of the banshee. There was a rush to the door, and the women crowded, out in a distracted way. Lady Laura was fainting in her husband's arms, and George Fairfax was standing near her ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... safety's sake, two men were to keep a constant watch, while the others slept; and in this duty of watching, they were to take turns. About midnight, while Boone and Holden were keeping the watch, a sharp shrill cry was heard in the woods. They sprang to their feet. "What noise is that?" said Holden. The sound was familiar to Boone. "Be still," said he; "it is only a panther; come along with me." Moving cautiously from the camp, they listened ...
— The Adventures of Daniel Boone: the Kentucky rifleman • Uncle Philip
... to slant towards the west, and the pastures took on a golden look. The lambs gambolled together with shrill bleatings. But Dot Burton slept on in her chair, a faint smile on her face of innocence. Though she could not have been dreaming in so deep a repose, her last thought ere she slept must have held happiness. Her serenity lay like a tender ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... in safety; and there were my fellow-creatures, battling, now hopelessly, with annihilation. Methought I saw them struggling—too truly did I hear their shrieks, conquering the barking surges in their shrill agony. The dark breakers threw hither and thither the fragments of the wreck; soon it disappeared. I had been fascinated to gaze till the end: at last I sank on my knees—I covered my face with my hands: I again looked up; something was floating on the billows towards the shore. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... of the North the wild news came, Far flashing on its wings of flame, Swift as the boreal light which flies At midnight through the startled skies. And there was tumult in the air, The fife's shrill note, the drum's loud beat, And through the wide land everywhere The answering tread of hurrying feet; While the first oath of Freedom's gun, Came on the blast from Lexington; And Concord, roused, no longer tame, Forgot her old baptismal name, Made bare her patriot arm of ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... back towards the gloom of the stables. For, in that moment, above the sudden harsh jangling of chains from within, above the pattering footsteps of the fugitives without, was an appalling sound rising high and ever higher—shrill, unearthly, and full of horror and torment unspeakable. And now, sudden as it had come, it was gone, but in its place was another sound,—a sound dull and muffled, but continuous, and pierced, all at once, by the loud, hideous whinnying of a horse. Then Barnabas sprang back to the doors, beating ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... of sight, and fled towards the staircase. All thought that an end had come to the harrowing scene, and minister and people faced each other once more; when, loud and sharp from above, there rang down the shrill cry of delirium, this time in articulate words which ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... a fine bed of hay and blankets for our sick man. Nevertheless, he was a source of much anxiety and trouble. At last, to the intense relief of all, we heard far away the shrill whistle of a locomotive. It was sweet music to my ears, for I realized the peril of the delay. We had now arrived at the base of the southern slope of the Pyrenees and the plain stretched out before us. We had just passed through an intrenched camp that guarded the entrance ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... all the taverns, cabarets, and other places of amusement his small, fat, roundish little figure, his rosy cheeks, puffed out like those of a painted cupid, and the shining, humid kindly eyes were well known, his hurried, spluttering speech and shrill laughter remembered. ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... at the Bush Terminal at Brooklyn," explained Tom. "Look out there; don't get in the way of the ropes," and he pushed the crowd back from the imaginary ropes, and whistled a shrill call on ...
— Ethel Morton's Holidays • Mabell S. C. Smith
... the novelist's practice to rehearse in a grove at the bottom of a big field behind the house. Nobody knew of this practice until one day the younger Charles heard sounds of violent threatening in a gruff, manly voice, and shrill calls of appeal rising in answer, and thinking that murder was being done, he unfastened a great household mastiff and raced along the field to find the tragedy of Sykes and ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... cold that paper stuck to the fingers like feathers, and the nails tingled with frost. The white earth creaked under foot, and when a sled went by the snow cried out in shrill long resistance, a spirit complaining of being trampled. Explosions came from the river, and elm limbs and timbers of the house startled us. White fur clothed the inner key holes. Tree trunks were black ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... pipe out shrill and childish, and then indulged in a maniac giggle that would get Mrs. ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... the summit, she climbed a rock as if she were a goat, and looked all round her. Then she uttered a shrill, peculiar cry, and listened. No answer came. Getting down as easily as she had got up, she walked along the side of the hill, making her way nearly parallel with their late racecourse, passing considerably above the spot where her defeated ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... also by the rose-red light of the sunset streaming in through the curve of the oriel-window. This confused and dazzled Richard slightly, entering upon it from the silence and sober clearness of the stair-head. A shrill note of laughter.—Mr. Cathcart's voice saying, "I felt it incumbent upon me to object, Lady Calmady. I spoke very plainly to Fallowfeild."—Julius March's delicately refined tones, "I am afraid spirituality is somewhat deficient in that case."—Then the high flute-like ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... upon the human wedge and drove it, helter-skelter, down the steps; and simultaneously there arose, loud and clear, not from Cameron's Crossing, some miles distant, but just from the ravine bridge, scarcely a quarter of a mile away, the shrill whistle of ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... Ferval heard rapturous and mocking remarks. "Baki, Baki, the human orchestra!" cried one gossip to another. And the reverberating music swelled, multifarious and amazing as if a military band from piccolo to drum were about to descend the highway. A clatter and bang, a sweet droning and shrill scraping, and then an old man proudly limped through the gateway of the Great Clock. This was the conjurer, this white-haired fellow, who, with fife, cymbals, bells, concertinas,—he wore two strapped ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... Swiss landscape, possessing in an extraordinary degree the pure, keen atmosphere, as well as the grand mountain forms, of the Alpine spaces. To look on this piece exhilarates as does the sight of the Alps themselves; and it strikes the eye as a shrill trumpet sound the ear. This landscape, a grand antithesis to the last described, marks a great range of power in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... an old friend of my mother’s murmur. ‘Her voice used to be so nice, and now it’s all gone!’ Taking in the situation at a glance, I threw my voice well up into my nose and started off on a well-known provincial song, in the shrill falsetto of our peasant women. The effect was instantaneous! Long before the end the performance was drowned in thunders of applause. Which proves that to be popular a singer must adapt herself to ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... and supreme contempt for, his fellows. He stood for a moment or two, in the grey, miserable street discordant with the wailings of babies and the clamour of futile little girls, who, after the manner of women, had no idea of political crisis, and the shrill objurgations of slattern mothers and the raucous cries of an idealist vendor of hyacinths, and, cocked hat on head and wooden sword in hand, he looked at his fawning army. Then came the touch of genius that was often to characterize ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... table. And in its light Byrne saw, staggering yet, the girl he had driven from the door. She had a short black skirt, an orange shawl, a dark complexion—and the escaped single hairs from the mass, sombre and thick like a forest and held up by a comb, made a black mist about her low forehead. A shrill lamentable howl of: "Misericordia!" came in two voices from the further end of the long room, where the fire-light of an open hearth played between heavy shadows. The girl recovering herself drew a hissing ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... carriages approaching, I thought it wise to retire. In the hall I encountered the Princess Kornakoff, her son, and an incredible number of daughters. They had all of them the same face as their mother, and were very ugly. None of them arrested my attention. They talked in shrill tones as they took off their cloaks and boas, and laughed as they bustled about—probably at the fact that there were so ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... discovered bluffing in another—so he resolved to investigate. Accordingly at an hour when he knew Terence should be in the engine room he took up the speaking-tube at the head of his bed and blew into it. But no shrill whistle signalled his desire in the engine room, and though Michael blew until he was red in the face and his lips hurt him cruelly, reluctantly he came to the conclusion that Herr August Carl von Staden had the situation very well in hand and Terence Reardon ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... profiled on a stormy sky, invaded by large coppery clouds which created a sort of twilight amid the night. On the left was an old abandoned mill, with its motionless wings, from the ruins of which an owl threw out its shrill, periodical, and monotonous cry. On the right and on the left of the road, which the dismal procession pursued, appeared a few low, stunted trees, which looked like deformed dwarfs crouching down to watch men traveling ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... broken tin whistle. Of him Lecky writes:—"Richard Lalor Shiel forms one of the many examples history presents of splendid oratorical powers clogged by insuperable natural defects. His person was diminutive and wholly devoid of dignity. His voice shrill, harsh, and often rising to a positive shriek. His action, when most natural, violent, without gracefulness, and ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... like of it!" exclaimed Mr. Crewe. "You say, eighty-two ounces of gold? You say it came from within fifty miles of Timber Town? Why, sir, the matter must be looked into." The old gentleman's voice rose to a shrill treble. "Yes, ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... von Bismarck, the country squire, straight from his cow-sheds and his hunting dogs; a young blond German giant, 32 years old, in the very prime of his massive strength and endurance; plentiful hair cropped short, ruddy face, blond beard, bright blue eyes, big fists; high, shrill voice, strangely out of keeping with his physical bulk. For years afterward, this peculiar voice became the stock in trade of newspaper writers. However, it was what the ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... apologetic grunting chuckle he often used when found out in any mischief, and which meant, "I know I have done wrong, but don't punish me; in fact, I did not mean to do it—it was accidental." Whenever, however, he saw he was going to be punished, he would change his tone to a shrill, threatening note, showing his teeth, and trying to intimidate. He had quite an extensive vocabulary of sounds, varying from a gruff bark to a shrill whistle; and we could tell by them, without seeing him, when it was he was hungry, eating, ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... Level, where he would receive hypnotic indoctrination and, while unconscious, have an operation performed on his ears which would enable him to hear sounds well above the normal audible range. He would be able to hear the shrill sonar-cries of bats, for instance, and, more important, he would be able to hear voices when the speaker used a First Level audio-frequency step-up phone. He would also receive a memory-obliteration from the moment of his abduction, and a set of pseudo-memories ...
— Temple Trouble • Henry Beam Piper
... during the Civil War," she exclaimed, as a shrill voice smote her ear. "I suppose we have ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... penetrate the darkness that once more enveloped No Man's Land, and then as Captain Bob came hurrying up, blowing his whistle for all he was worth to recall the retiring platoon, Dennis drew his own, and the shrill signal brought the men tumbling back again into the ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... a cry which sounded like a moan and above it the shrill fearful yell of a man who feels himself dropping out of the world's hearing. Lessingham raised the lantern which stood on the beach by Jimmy's side. The line had broken. The body of its suspended traveller had disappeared! And just then, strangely enough, for the first ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... unwary moth, or moskitoe, that float so joyously upon the evening air. One after another, sweeping in wider circles, come forth these birds of prey, till the whole air seems alive with them; darting hither and thither, and uttering wild shrill screams, as they rise higher and higher in the upper air, till some are almost lost to sight. Sometimes one of them will descend with a sudden swoop, to the lower regions of the air, just above the highest tree-tops, with a hollow ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... acrid, cutting; sagacious, clever, perspicacious, ingenious, bright, discerning, resourceful, astute, shrewd, apt, smart, long-headed, acuminous; fierce, fiery, unquenchable, eager; exacting, close; steep, abrupt, precipitous; pungent, piquant peppery, high-seasoned: shrill, piercing; peaked, ridged. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... through the timber and disappeared. The cowboy rode slowly, peering through the timber. Presently came the trample of frightened sheep—a shrill bleating, and then silence. Fadeaway loped out into the open. The sheep were running in all directions. He whistled the dog to him. Chance's muzzle dripped red. The dog slunk round behind the horse, knowing that ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... my lords—to your places! to your places!" cried the jester, in a shrill angry voice. "See ye not we are close upon Datchet Bridge? Ye can converse with these fair dames at a more fitting season; but it is the king's pleasure that the cavalcade should make a goodly show. To your ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the night's dead heaped about her feet? Is not death swollen, and slaughter full of meat? What, is their feast a bride-feast, where men sing and dance? A bitter, a bitter bride-song and a shrill Should the house raise that such bride-followers fill, Wherein defeat weds ruin, and takes ...
— Two Nations • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... yards up the hillside when a large party of Norsemen suddenly sprang upon him. Two Saxon arrows flew true to their marks, then the Danes rushed upon them. So far no words had been spoken, but Edmund placed to his lips the whistle with which he gave orders on board the ship and blew a long shrill note, and then shouted at the top of ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... Killam, his voice sort of shrill and quivery. "I have one of the logs loose. Now pry here with your picks, everybody. Together, now! It's coming! Once more! There! Now the next one above. Oh, put your weight on it, Mr. Ellins. Get a fresh hold. Try her now. ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... shadowy congregation rested still, As musing on that message we had heard, And brooding on that 'End it when you will,' Perchance awaiting yet some other word; When keen as lightning through a muffled sky Sprang forth a shrill and ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... the portentous mutterings of this rising storm could be heard deep and significant execrations and menaces, coupled with the names of leading members of the Girondist party. "Down with the aristocrats, the traitors, the Rolandists!" shouted incessantly hoarse voices and shrill voices, of drunken men, of ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... beams passed away gradually that divine musician grew dimmer to his sight. Now only the stars threw their faint light about her, but still she played on, and on, and on. The music swelled, it told of dead and ancient wars, "where all day long the noise of battle rolled"; it rose shrill and high, and in it rang the scream of the Valkyries preparing the feast of Odin. It was low, and sad, and tender, the voice of women mourning for their dead. It changed; it grew unearthly, spiritualised, such music as those might use ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... the Phrygian woods of the Goddess, where sounds the cymbal's voice, where the tambour resounds, where the Phrygian flautist pipes deep notes on the curved reed, where the ivy-clad Maenades furiously toss their heads, where they enact their sacred orgies with shrill-sounding ululations, where that wandering band of the Goddess is wont to flit about: thither 'tis meet to hasten ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... to a shrill scream. He took a furious step nearer Eric as if he would attack him. Eric looked steadily in his eyes with a calm defiance, before which his wild passion broke like foam on ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... head included, with a shawl and an old quilt. Both were silent: at intervals the girl would start up out of her wrappings and stare towards the door with a startled look on her face, apparently listening. From the street sounded the shrill animal-like cries of children playing and quarrelling, and, further away, the low, dull, continuous roar of traffic in the Edgware Road. Then she would drop back again, to crouch against the wall, drawing ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... Excellent! . . ." He looked into the schoolmaster's eyes as though he wanted to share his bliss with him. At last he could restrain himself no longer; he leapt up, and, overpowering all the other voices with his shrill little tenor, shouted: ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... same question to another gentleman present, but he happened to have none of those distinguishing marks; the chief then said, that he himself was a Toa, and shewed the scars of some wounds he had received in battle. Those who were on duty at the observatories were disturbed, during the night, with shrill and melancholy sounds, issuing from the adjacent villages, which they took to be the lamentations of the women. Perhaps the quarrel between us might have filled their minds with apprehensions for the safety of their husbands; but, be that as it may, their mournful cries struck the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... paper, but little or nothing stays with me. History is my particular game as to matter of reading, or else poetry, for which I have particular kindness and esteem: for, as Cleanthes said, as the voice, forced through the narrow passage of a trumpet, comes out more forcible and shrill: so, methinks, a sentence pressed within the harmony of verse darts out more briskly upon the understanding, and strikes my ear and apprehension with a smarter and more pleasing effect. As to the natural parts I have, of which this is the essay, I find ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... is a respectable house." This from a shrill feminine voice. "We've never had the law ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... William's bosom inside his coat, it could be partly supported by his arm outside. He descended the stairs cautiously. He tip-toed lightly past the dining-room door (which was slightly ajar), from which came the shrill, noisy, meaningless, conversation of the grown-ups. He was just about to open the front door when there came the sound of a key turning ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... cry of Nature, all suffering, thoughtless familiarity, and every frank sign of love shock this delicate medium like a bombshell; they shatter this collective fabric, this palace of clouds, this enchanted architecture, just as shrill cockcrow scatters the fairies into hiding. These fine receptions are unconsciously a work of art, a kind of poetry, by which cultivated society reconstructs an idyll that is age-long dead. They are confused memories of the golden age, or aspirations after a harmony which mundane reality ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... came rattling toward the ferry, brought a fine specimen of the juvenile vagrant and dare-devil, seated on the step. Bog looked out of the boiler yard, and hailed him with a shrill whistle, formed by thrusting two fingers in the mouth, and blowing fiercely. The boy recognized the signal of his ragged tribe, slid off the seat, and came running to where Bog was standing. As he drew near, Bog recognized him as a trusty lad whom he had employed as file leader in a walking advertisement ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... to move rapidly about the kitchen and pantry, doing the morning's work and scolding the children in a shrill voice. ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various
... "And ere three shrill notes the pipe uttered, You heard as if an army muttered; And the muttering grew to a grumbling; And the grumbling grew to a mighty rumbling; And out of the houses the rats came tumbling. Great rats, small rats, lean rats, brawny rats, Brown ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... a little way up the creek," he answered, "or at least he should be." Putting his fingers to his lips he blew a shrill whistle, which echoed and re-echoed from shore to shore along the river, and was answered by a loud neigh from somewhere in the ravine through which Fall Creek reaches the larger stream. Again the boy whistled, and a black pony came trotting out of the brush, the bridle hanging from the saddle ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... jeopardy in which I believed myself withstood all the attacks of sleep till towards the morning watch, when, in spite of my fears, I was overpowered with slumber, though I did not long enjoy this comfortable situation, being aroused with a noise so loud and shrill, that I thought the drums of my ears were burst by it; this was followed by a dreadful summons pronounced by a hoarse voice, which I could not understand. While I was debating with myself, whether ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... remonstrance he somewhat indignantly remarked that he was only "taking a spell." A really magnificent and grandiloquent appeal to the boy's sense of honour and a homily on the dignity of labour were abruptly terminated by shrill cries resounding from the house. Rushing in, I was informed that Noah was "bawling" (which fact was perfectly evident), having jammed his fingers in trying to "hist" the window. In this country children never cry; they ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... Horribly afraid that the quarry would break out in his absence, he seized the white pony's bridle, and in spite of Kharrak Singh's vehement opposition, led him back to his guardians and bade him stay with them. As he cantered back to his post, the child's shrill voice made him look round, and he saw him striking furiously with his sheathed dagger at the hands of the two servants, who held the pony on either side. Satisfied that the boy was in safety, Gerrard waited, spear ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... invisible, yet lightened the darkness below. The sandy lane stretched behind us like a ribbon of twilight,—nothing to be seen but it and the ebony mass of bush and tree lining it on either side. We hastened on. A minute later and we heard behind us a sound like the winding of a small horn, clear, shrill, and sweet. Sparrow and I wheeled—and saw nothing. The trees ran down to the very edge of the wharf, upon whose rotten, loosened, and noisy boards we now trod. Suddenly the clouds above us broke, and the ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... had called in low comedy and rant to please the foolish, only to find herself infected and degraded by their company. Moreover, the bustle of incident, the abrupt changes from grave to gay and to grave again, jangled her sad majestic harmonies with shrill interrupting discords. It had not been so in Greece. It had not been so even in Italy, where Roman Seneca, fearing the least decline to a lower plane of dignity and impressiveness, had disciplined tragedy by an imposition of artificial but not unskilful restraints. In place of the strong unbroken ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... in the corner, with Mossoo's tangled head between them; at the dark form of Perrin, near the ashes of the fire; and at the fair child in Seraminta's arms, sleeping quietly at last. Before the cock in the farmyard near had answered a shrill friend in the distance more than twice, the whole party, except the baby, was awake, the donkey ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton
... make it the object of their art more often than any other species. [PLATE XXVIII., Fig. 2.] After extracting the fangs or burning out the poison-bag with a red-hot iron, the charmer trains the animal by the shrill sounds of a small flute, and ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... Mr Meldrum," she exclaimed, elbowing herself forwards in front of the group, her shrill high-pitched voice sounding almost like another scream, as she waved her arms wildly about and addressed Mr Meldrum and Captain Dinks alternately. "Speak for yourself, please, for I don't agree with you at all! I say it is the captain's fault; ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... sat listening, George gripped me suddenly by the arm, declaring in a shrill whisper that something had come among the clump of trees upon the left-hand bank. Of the truth of this, I had immediately a proof; for I caught the sound of a continuous rustling among them, and then a nearer note of growling, as though a wild beast purred at my elbow. ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... with her knees drawn up to enable her to cover herself, head included, with a shawl and an old quilt. Both were silent: at intervals the girl would start up out of her wrappings and stare towards the door with a startled look on her face, apparently listening. From the street sounded the shrill animal-like cries of children playing and quarrelling, and, further away, the low, dull, continuous roar of traffic in the Edgware Road. Then she would drop back again, to crouch against the wall, drawing the quilt about her, and remain motionless until ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... day earlier than he had planned, and drove in a borrowed cart from the station, furious when an old cottage blazed in the rainy night, just below the white posts marking his heritage, and shrill women screamed invitation at the horse's hoof-beats. He felt the valley smirched, and his father's worn face angered ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... For a kiss or two, confess, What doth cause this pensiveness, Thou most lovely neat-herdess? Why so lonely on the hill? Why thy pipe by thee so still, That erewhile was heard so shrill? Tell me, do thy kine now fail To full fill the milking-pail? Say, what is't that thou ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... self-sufficing house, an epitome of humanity. Grandmamma, bald under her cap, was seated by the stove dandling grandchild, bald under its cap. Each was highly entertained with the other. Grandpapa was sandy with grandboy's gingerbread-crumbs. The intervening ages were well represented by wiry men and shrill women. The house, also, without being tavern or shop, was an amateur bazaar of vivers and goods. Anything one was likely to want could be had there,—even a melodeon and those inevitable Patent-Office Reports. Here we descended, lunched, and providently bought a general ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... Attracted by the shrill screams of the mare, a pair of hyenas slunk presently into view. They trotted to a point a few yards from the gorging ape-man, and halted. Tarzan looked up, bared his fighting fangs and growled. The hyenas returned the compliment, and withdrew a couple of paces. They made ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... delicate plumes swayed lightly over the water. They formed tremulous islands about which the water-lilies spread their great heart-shaped leaves and snow-white flowers. Over these blossoming islands dragon-flies, all emerald or azure, with wings of flame, sped their shrill ...
— Honey-Bee - 1911 • Anatole France
... his hat, and Eugenia leaned over the stream, her bare arms and vivid face mirrored against the silvery minnows, when a shrill call came from ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... in ever diminishing circles above their quarry—drifted imperceptibly but steadily aft, toward the smoking-room. The two indispensable adjuncts to a successful voyage had already put in their appearance: item, the Pest, an overdressed, overgrown, shrill-voiced female-child, blundering into everybody's way and shrieking impertinences; item, a short, stout, sedulously hilarious gentleman who oozed public-spirited geniality at every pore and insisted on buttonholing inoffensive ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... array of fresh performers taking the place of those who are exhausted, and then the regular beating of their feet on the floor can be heard at a considerable distance, with a dull, monotonous sound, varied only by the hum of voices or noise of laughter or the shrill notes of the musical instruments. These are the banjo and accordion, the former being the favorite, perhaps because it is more intimately associated with the social traditions of the negroes. Their best performers play very skilfully on both, and indulge ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... who had speedily followed us from Ellan, and a Mr. Vivian, who, though the brother of a Cabinet Minister, seemed to me a very vain and vapid person, with the eyes of a mole, a vacant smile, a stupid expression, an abrupt way of speaking through his teeth, and a shrill voice which gave the impression of screeching ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... one sits, the piazzas on which no one lounges, are timid advances made to a climate whose churlishness we are trying to temper by an ostentation of confidence. Ridiculous as this spectacle is at all seasons, it is never more so than in that bleak interval between sunset and dark, when the shrill scream of the factory whistle seems to have concentrated all the hard, unsympathetic quality of the climate into one vocal expression. Add to this the appearance of one or two pedestrians, manifestly too late ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... she caught his nervous eagerness. Even Father Claude had risen, and was watching him with kindling eyes. She took the roll and the mirror, and ran out the door. In a moment, Menard, pacing the floor, could hear her merry laugh, and the shrill-voiced delight of the children over their new toy. He caught ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... cannon were brought lumbering up at the gallop and rolled into the places of those dismantled, shot and shell and canister and powder were rushed forward from the reserve, and the grim, silent infantry, the great lumbermen of Maine and Vermont, the shrill-voiced regiments from New York, the shrewd farmers of Ohio and Massachusetts, the deliberate Pennsylvanians, and the rest, lay closely, wherever there was shelter, and moistened their lips, and gripped their ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... troubled him, and because of it he might never arrive on the beach. A new inexplicable madness that urged him to shrill ironically the story of his coat—to take it off and fling it at the feet of any stranger who chanced to ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... was seen to wear, and in so doing, before she was brought to the wind on the other tack, she was so close to them that they could distinguish the men on board: they could see the foaming water as it was hurled from her bows; hear the shrill whistle of the boatswain's pipes, the creaking of the ship's timbers, and the complaining of her masts; and then the gloom gradually rose, and in a few ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... wild minutes she talked, pouring out admonitions to flee the wrath to come, and her face flushed, her dead voice recaptured something of the shrill energy of the old Zilla. She wound up with ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... the railroad station he narrowly escaped being run over by a swiftly moving engine. Its shrill whistle and the objurgations of the fireman as it passed, startled ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... pologs near the door, leading a good-looking young Korak and the dark-faced bride. Upon their appearance the excitement increased to the pitch of frenzy, the music redoubled its rapidity, the men in the centre of the tent joined in the uncouth chant, and uttered at short intervals peculiar shrill cries of wild excitement. At a given signal from the native who had led out the couple, the bride darted suddenly into the first polog, and began a rapid flight around the tent, raising the curtains between the pologs successively, and passing under. The bridegroom instantly followed ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... heat and silence Grew the afternoon of Summer; With a drowsy sound the forest Whispered round the sultry wigwam, With a sound of sleep the water Rippled on the beach below it; From the cornfields shrill and ceaseless Sang the grasshopper, Pah-puk-keena; And the guests of Hiawatha, Weary with the heat of Summer, ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... in a shrill whisper from the foot of the stairs. Peggy was out of the chamber and at the head of the stairs in an instant. Sally stood below, and though the stairway was so dimly lighted that Peggy could scarcely distinguish ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... volume was dying. Louder rose the fierce, whining yell, and its note was full of ferocity and triumph, while the hoarser cries of the white men became fewer and lower. Now Dick really saw dusky figures leaping about between him and the train. Something uttering a shrill, unearthly cry of pain crashed heavily through the bushes near him and quickly passed on. It was a wounded ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... was gentle Mrs. Wynn beside the Yankee woman's portly presence! How trifling her low voice in answer to the shrill questioning! Linda cast herself into the breach (metaphorically), and directed the catechism upon herself. As for the young lady Almeria, she was quite satisfied to sit and stare with unwinking black eyes, occasionally hitching up her blue silk cape ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... him. He had smiled and said in a shrill voice that he thought Jack was a very nice boy. He wore a light grey-green Palm Beach suit and carried a big brown leather briefcase that looked too heavy for his soda straw-thin legs and arms. He was queer-looking ...
— They Twinkled Like Jewels • Philip Jose Farmer
... in this contest of speed with the energies of a young man suddenly restored by the excitement of panic: and, on looking back within half a minute, Bertram perceived that her figure was already obscured by the tumult of snow which raged in the air. Her shrill voice however still at intervals forced its way to his ear, in the very teeth of the wind, and contributed to aggravate the distressing circumstances of his situation at this moment. It was a situation indeed ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... cried, knocking at his door. "What . . . what does this mean?" she repeated in a shrill voice breaking with indignation. "Ah, so this is what you do! Then let me tell you I hate you, I despise you! Everything is ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... tip of the solar disc peeped over the rim of the crater, and a deep low murmur, swelling to a shrill cry, ascended from ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... papa let down the glass and looked out upon the rabble with his droll formidable face, bitter and smiling, as they said he sometimes looked when he gave sentence, Archie was for the moment too much amazed to be alarmed, but he had scarce got his mother by herself before his shrill voice was raised demanding an explanation: why had they ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... lighted up the distorted face. The terrific and vivid force of the feeling that had survived the power of thought made such an impression on the students, that the dying man felt their hot tears falling on him, and gave a shrill ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... little party—speechless at the words of Texas—stood in the twilight, looking down upon the lifeless form, a chorus of wild, snarling, barking yowls, with long-drawn, shrill howls, broke on the still air. It was the coyotes' evening call. To the silent men the weird sound seemed the triumphant cry of the Desert itself and ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... sleepy afternoon. Far away I could hear the sound of the advancing beaters—the cries of the boys, the occasional barking of a dog, and the shrill piping of the headkeeper's whistle. Suddenly three birds swung into view round the face of the hill, and made straight for the line of butts. They were just below me, nearer to Standish's butt than mine, but I put up my gun and picked off the nearest. ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... The melancholy lute, Were night-owl's hoot To my low-whispered coo - Were I thy bride! The skylark's trill Were but discordance shrill To the soft thrill Of wooing as I'd woo - ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... into the nursery, where Lois sat sewing, a canary overhead swinging with shrill velocity in a stream of sunshine. Her look gave no invitation to Dosia. She did not want to talk; she was busy, as ever, with—no matter what she was doing—the self-fulness of her thoughts, which chained her like a slave. She had been longing to move ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... parade ground below them came cheers from the army men and other spectators, the shrill cries of ...
— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis
... observed a pair of stout legs belonging to a respectable elderly woman who was too deep in her devotion to be aware of the intruder, and, being somewhat astonished by their size, she proceeded to test their quality with a pin, the consequence being an appalling shriek from the woman, which started a shrill treble cry from herself. The service was suspended, and Mr. Hamilton-Wells, the most precise of men, hastened down the aisle, and fished his daughter out, an awful spectacle of dust, from under ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... his lips and then stared dully at the stains that covered it when he took it away. Then it all came back to him with a rush. Like a guilty, hunted thing he slunk upstairs to his room, carefully avoiding the room in which Phoebe was being bedecked in her Sunday frock. Her high, shrill voice came to his ears. He was weeping bitterly, sobbing like a ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... silent music up in heaven, And I, and Arthur and the angels hear, And then we skip." "Lo, fool," he said, "ye talk Fool's treason: is the king thy brother fool?" Then little Dagonet clapt his hands and shrill'd, "Ay, ay, my brother fool, the king of fools*! Conceits himself as God that he can make Figs out of thistles, silk from bristles, milk From burning spurge, honey from hornet-combs, And men from beasts.—Long live the king ...
— The Last Tournament • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... along somewhat tardily with satchel on back, and "shining morning face." What a sudden burst of sound was emitted—what harmonious discord—what a commixture of all the tones in the vocal gamut, from the shrill treble to the deep under-hum! A chord was touched which vibrated in unison; boyish days and school recollections crowded upon me; pleasures long vanished; feelings long stifled; and friendships—aye, ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... Red House had been buzzing hives since dawn, Mrs. Carre handling her forces and volunteers and supernumeraries with the skill of a veteran, and with encouragement so shrill and animated that it sounded like scolding, but was in reality ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... manifested by a catarrhal cough, gradually developed. After a while it becomes paroxysmal, generally worse at night. The cough is severe, and long-continued; when a prolonged inspiration occurs, it is accompanied by a peculiar shrill sound, the characteristic whoop, which, when once heard, is never forgotten. The cough is attended by a copious secretion of glairy mucus, which is brought up at the latter part of the paroxysm. During, or at the end of the paroxysm, ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... would have penetrated to the most inattentive ears. A multitude of feet were marching lock-step past the door to a chorus of giggling, stifled squeals and groans, while at intervals a voice choking with emotion rose in shrill accents: "There was an old woman all skin and bones, o-o-oh!" When it faltered and collapsed on the o-o-oh, the other voices joined in and dragged out the syllable to lugubrious and harrowing length. Then some one giggled ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... blew a shrill call on the silver whistle that hung about his neck, and, springing forward, seized the Prince by the arm. Abi drew his sword to cut him down, and at the sight of the blade, all who were with him rushed to the door to escape, sweeping before ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard
... whisked in, paid for at the box, and hurried up-stairs into a brilliantly-lighted hall, the atmosphere of which, however, was reeking with the smoke and the odour of tobacco and cheap cigars. Somebody was singing in a high, shrill, unlovely voice, and when Gladys looked towards the platform behind the footlights, she was horrified at the spectacle of a large, coarse-looking woman, wearing the scantiest possible amount of clothing, her face painted and powdered, her hair adorned with gilt spangles, ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... passed the owner, his horse on a run, he gave a special shrill 'ki yi,' whipped a short carbine out of its scabbard, and shot twice into the rear of the herd. Never for a moment considering consequences, the Texan brought his six-shooter into action. It was a long, purty shot, and Mr. Bull Sheep threw his ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... down, however, Frank stepped to his window, softly raised the screen, and looked out. As he did so he was startled by a shrill cry from the room below him. It was Paul's voice, and the mysterious lad ...
— Frank and Andy Afloat - The Cave on the Island • Vance Barnum
... walked in the centre of the roadway. There are some places where it is not healthy to walk at night on shadowed pavements. They moved without haste and without loitering, as men who know exactly what they have to do. From one of the darkened houses a woman's shrill scream issued full of rage and terror. It was followed by a man's loud, angry tones, the thud of blows, shrieks, curses, and brutal laughter. Then the silence dropped over everything again. The two men had apparently paid no heed. Even had they been inclined to play the ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... country, when shall I cast my eyes upon those beautiful women with thick frontal bones, with blazing circlets of red arsenic on their foreheads, with streaks of jet black collyrium on their eyes, and their beautiful forms attired in blankets and skins and themselves uttering shrill cries! When shall I be happy, in the company of those intoxicated ladies amid the music of drums and kettle-drums and conchs sweet as the cries of asses and camels and mules! When shall I be amongst those ladies eating cakes of flour and meat and balls of pounded barley mixed with skimmed ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... leaping, shouting men. Their shrill cries echoed in a tumult of discord, and above all Garry heard the hoarse screams of ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... assistants. It would have been impossible to drive the horses over the fenceless roads and through the leagues of trackless forest; therefore, they were led. The men would take turns about riding in advance, and the man leading would continually whistle a single shrill note which the horses soon learned to follow. Should the whistling cease for a moment, the horses would stop and perhaps stampede. This might mean forty-eight hours of constant work in gathering the drove, with perhaps the loss of one or more. If you will, for one hour, whistle a shrill ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... listen to members of Parliament! What a picture of senatorial industry! For an Irish speech by STANLEY, have we not the more dulcet music of his stone-cutting saw? Instead of an oration from GOULBURN, have we not the shrill note of his ungreased parliamentary barrow? For the "hear, hear" of PLUMPTRE, the more accordant tapping of the hammer—for the "cheer" from INGLIS, the sweeter chink of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 16, 1841 • Various
... their arrangements for the night. For safety's sake, two men were to keep a constant watch, while the others slept; and in this duty of watching, they were to take turns. About midnight, while Boone and Holden were keeping the watch, a sharp shrill cry was heard in the woods. They sprang to their feet. "What noise is that?" said Holden. The sound was familiar to Boone. "Be still," said he; "it is only a panther; come along with me." Moving cautiously from the camp, they listened again for the cry. Once more ...
— The Adventures of Daniel Boone: the Kentucky rifleman • Uncle Philip
... live in the country besets most of us sooner or later. Spring with grass vividly green, buds bursting and every pond a bedlam of the shrill, rhythmic whistle of frogs, is the most dangerous season. Some take a walk in the park. Others write for Strout's farm catalogues, read them hungrily and are well. But there are the incurables. Their fever is fed for months and years by the discomforts and amenities of city life. Eventually they ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... lover's piteous plight, she deemed that he had swooned by reason of his pain. She kneeled hastily at his side, and put the enchanted brewage to his lips, but he could neither drink nor speak, for he was dead, as I have told you. She bewailed his evil lot, with many shrill cries, and flung the useless flacket far away. The precious potion bestrewed the ground, making a garden of that desolate place. For many saving herbs have been found there since that day by the simple folk of that country, which from the ...
— French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de France • Marie de France
... hushed, save where the weak-eyed bat With short shrill shriek flits by on leathern wing, Or where the beetle winds ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... tell you!" cried a shrill, piercing voice—the voice of an angry woman. "Stand aside, woman! I will see ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... satisfied with having the major's Roman encampment and the curate's Infant Schools on his mind, Pedgift Junior rose erect from time to time in his place, and, respectfully hailing the hindmost vehicle, directed Allan's attention, in a shrill tenor voice, and with an excellent choice of language, to objects of interest on the road. The only way to quiet him was to answer, which Allan invariably did by shouting back, "Yes, beautiful," upon which young Pedgift disappeared again in the recesses of ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... not know where the Singing Mouse lives. No man can tell what journeys it may make such times as it is absent from the room that holds the pine table, and the book, and the candle, and the open fire. But last night when the faint, shrill sweetness of its little voice grew apart from the lonely silence of the room, and I turned and saw the Singing Mouse sitting on the corner of the book, the light of the candle shining pink through its tiny paws, almost ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough
... rose from his chair to look at the money. He peered at it in her hand, then straightened up and faced her. Suddenly he had become hostile, lividly vicious; he laughed a shrill cackle in her face, his nose wrinkled like ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... Shall I become a midnight twitterer like my neighbours? At times I thought the blows were echoes; at times I thought the laughter was from birds. For our birds are strangely human in their calls. Vaea mountain about sundown sometimes rings with shrill cries, like the hails of merry, scattered children. As a matter of fact, I believe stealthy wood-cutters from Tanugamanono were above me in the wood and answerable for the blows; as for the laughter, a woman and two children had come and asked ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of my husband, who stood upon the outskirts of the circle. The recognition was simultaneous, and with a cry of joy I sprang towards him, but was instantly grasped by a savage and thrown violently back among my companions. The Apache chief put a small whistle to his lips, and blowing a shrill blast, soon assembled his party. I struggled to free myself from my tormentors and rush to my husband, but my efforts were of no avail. Half fainting, and wild with the agony of this rude parting, I was taken out on the plain, where the bulk of the party were making their ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... hillocks green, In days agone, have I not seen The brown-clad maidens amorous, Below the long rose-trellised house, Dance to the querulous pipe and shrill, When the gray shadow of the hill Was lengthening at the end of day? Not shadowy or pale were they, But limbed like those who 'twixt the trees Follow the swift of goddesses. Sunburnt they are somewhat, indeed, To where the rough brown woolen ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... not so bitter as to take all the sweetness out of the "red-flannel" hash, and the frown on Daniel Burton's face was quite gone when Susan brought in the dessert. Nor did it return that night, even when Susan's shrill voice caroled through ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... the priests, who sat praying round the grave. They continued their ejaculations over the dog for some time, while two men, at intervals, beat on two drums very loud; and a boy screamed, as before, in a loud, shrill voice, three different times. This, as we were told, was to invite the Eatooa to feast on the banquet that they had prepared for him. As soon as the priests had ended their prayers, the carcass of the dog, with what belonged to it, were laid on a whatta, or scaffold, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... but then it recognized that much repetition has always the air of cant, and that to persuade men to be silent, as well as to do anything else, one must talk a great deal. A prophet has to be diffuse and loud, and often shrill, and his disciples will always forgive any number of mistakes in method or manner as long as they believe that behind the preaching there is perfect simplicity and self-forgetfulness. That this belief has been weakened in many minds with regard to Carlyle by the "Reminiscences" there is no question, ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... melodious, full, strong, natural, mellow, magnetic, expressive, carrying, and responsive. Endeavor to keep your voice free from such undesirable qualities as the harsh, breathy, sharp, rough, rigid, throaty, guttural, thin, shrill, nasal, unmusical, discordant, muffled, explosive, strained, inaudible, hollow, ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... A tenor voice was singing a recitative now, and that exquisite accompaniment, with a sort of joyful solemnity, still continued. Every now and then, shrill, high, and clear, penetrated a chorus of boys' voices. I, outer barbarian that I was, barely knew the name of Bach and his "Matthaus Passion," so in the pauses my companion told me by snatches what it was about. There was not much of it. After a few solos and recitatives, they tried one or two of ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... evening. For a small party, a piano and cornopean make a very pleasant combination. Unless where several instruments are engaged, we do not recommend the introduction of the violin: although in some respects the finest of all solo instruments, it is apt to sound thin and shrill when employed on mere inexpressive dance tunes, and played by a mere ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... on the electric cars. I might as well be on them, since I have to hear their buzz and clang both day and night from our rooms here in the hotel. The other morning, as I was returning from a ride across the river to Council Bluffs, I heard the shrill notes of a calliope that reminded me that Forepaugh's circus was to be in town that day, and that I had promised to go to the afternoon performance with a party of friends. But soon there were other sounds ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... resounding impact of a club upon a bony frame, and a shrill yelp of pain, heralded the breaking forth of pandemonium. The camp was suddenly discovered to be alive with skulking furry forms,—starving huskies, four or five score of them, who had scented the camp from some Indian ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... the old woman, with a shrill laugh. 'What signifies! Well, well; no. No stranger to your worship. But he won't see you. He'd be afraid of you, and wouldn't talk. You'll stand behind that door, and judge him for yourself. We don't ask to be believed on trust What! Your worship doubts the room behind the door? Oh the suspicion ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... ceased to move, and appeared to have expired. In his last struggle, he had wounded the black serpent with his teeth, as it was striving, as it were, to force its head into his mouth, which wound Footnote: seemed to increase its rage. At this instant I heard the shrill sound of a whistle, and looking towards the door saw the other Arab applying a call to his mouth: the serpents listened to the music, their fury seemed to forsake them by degrees, they disengaged themselves leisurely from the apparently lifeless carcase, and creeping towards the cage, they ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... cannot be midnight yet. She walks more quickly—hurrying toward the city, the lights of which begin there by the railroad viaduct—the growing noise tells her how near she is. One lonely stretch of street, and then she is safe. Now she hears a shrill whistle coming rapidly nearer—a wagon flies swiftly past her. She stops and looks after it; it is the ambulance of the Rescue Society. She knows where it is going. "How quickly they have come," she thinks; "it is like magic." For a moment she feels that she must call to them, must ...
— The Dead Are Silent - 1907 • Arthur Schnitzler
... is at present the legate in Palestine. He has a horribly shrill voice—but he looks like a man who will stand no trifling, and will know how to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... instant I heard a shrill whistle and many sudden cries of alarm; and a noise of shouting and galloping across the beach; and was raising my head to look when the mare rose too, upon her hind legs, and with the fling of her neck caught me a blow on the nose that made me see stars. And then long jets of ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... one cataract of rain and spray. A few birds were driving about like spirits of the storm. It was, as Shakspeare calls it, a regular hurly. Add to this the straining of the masts, the creaking of the planks, the shrill whistle of the wind in the ropes and cordage, the occasional crash of a heavy sea as it struck us with a sharp sound, and the rush of water over the decks, down the companion and hatches, that followed, and you have a notion of a gale of wind. ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... suddenly endowed with a ferocious presence of mind, and bristling up and screaming in the front of her brood, and in the face of circumstances, succeeds, by her courage, in putting her enemy to flight; in like manner you will always, I think, find your wife (if that lady be good for twopence) shrill, eager, and ill-humored, before, and during a great family move of this nature. Well, the swindling hackney-coachmen are paid, the mother leading on her regiment of little ones, and supported by her ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... saw the spectral vanguard come, Coasting along, as swallows, beating low Before a hint of rain. In buoyant air, Circling thy poise, and hardly move the wing, And rather float than fly. Then other spirits, Shrill and more fierce, came wailing down the gale; As plaintive plovers came with swoop and scream To lure our footsteps from their furrowy nest, So these, as lapwing guardians, sailed and swung To save the secrets ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... snow. On being overtaken this peasant suddenly faced about and swung his arm. In an instant there was a terrible shock, a detonation muffled in the multitude of snowflakes; both horses lay dead and mangled on the ground and the coachman, with a shrill cry, had fallen off the box mortally wounded. The footman (who survived) had no time to see the face of the man in the sheepskin coat. After throwing the bomb this last got away, but it is supposed that, ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... fainter onward, like wild birds that change Their season in the night and wail their way From cloud to cloud, down the long wind the dream Shrill'd." ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... and wheeling about sent a bullet into the massive body forcing its way through the trees toward him. The shot struck the creature in the belly where there was no protecting armor, eliciting a new note which rose in a shrill whistle and ended in a wail. It was then that Tippet appeared to come out of his trance, for with a cry of terror he turned and fled to the left. Bradley, seeing that he had as good an opportunity as the others to escape, now turned his attention to extricating himself; ...
— Out of Time's Abyss • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... them again, louder, still high-pitched and shrill, but nearer. Away down the trail a figure in black ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... before he could turn the handle, and a shrill voice, exaggerating those of the girls, showered welcomes with such rapidity, that Albinia was seated at the table, and had been helped to cold chicken, before she could look round, or make much answer to reiterations ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... always so many others to drown any such puzzling statement with their shrill clamor that Katy really did do it (whatever it was!) that nobody paid much attention to those few who ...
— The Tale of Kiddie Katydid • Arthur Scott Bailey
... word of remark on any side concerning what had passed, began again and went on as before. People came and went, some more eager and outward, some more staid and inward, but all contented and cheerful. At length a bell somewhere rang sweet and shrill, and after that no one entered the place, and what was in progress began to be led to a decorous conclusion. In three or four minutes the floor was empty, and the people also of the shop had gone, each about his own affairs, without shutting door ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... the pleasant, homely earth. He was sitting idly on the porch step, letting his gaze go adrift over the nearer green-clad hills to the purple deeps of the western mountain, already steeped in shadow. The pike was deserted, and the shrill hum of the house-flies played an insistent tune in which the low-pitched boom of a bumblebee tumbling awkwardly among the clover heads ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... and corresponds to that of our flageolets (see sections, Figs. 240 and 242). Plain tubes were doubtless also used as whistles, and all utensils of small size, such as needlecases and toy vases, can be made to give forth a note more or less shrill, according to the size of the chamber. The simplest form of whistle produces two shrill notes identical in pitch. The shape is double, suggesting a primitive condition of the tibiae pares of the Romans. The ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes
... awoke the echoes of the jungle, and the sounds of the rifles were followed by shrill trumpets of rage. When the smoke blew away three elephants were seen prostrate, or, rather two, and part of another one. The last vas almost blown to pieces by Tom Swift's electric rifle; for the young inventor had used a little too heavy charge, and the big ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle • Victor Appleton
... a bugle to his mouth, And blew so loud and shrill, The trees in greenwood shook thereat, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... strong-minded, and she was religious, and she was also afflicted with a very feminine fear of thunder storms. She was delivering an address at a religious convention when a tempest suddenly broke with din of thunder and flare of lightning. Above the noise of the elements, her voice was heard in shrill supplication: ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... The jingle of their harness-bells is pleasant of a sultry night, recalling the sleigh-bells of bracing winter. And the bells have something suggestive in them, too, of the old Bowery pastures, where the flocks and herds roamed at large, and the cow-bells rang bass to the shrill treble that came from the bell-wethers of the flock. But here we have something that is hardly so pastoral in its associations. Out from the portals of a large theatre issues a crowd of roughs, who elbow and jostle each other in their anxiety to reach the nearest place where bad liquor can ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... to look back upon Time's old track, And dream of the days long past, When Rome leant here on his sentinel spear And loud was the clarion's blast;— As wild and shrill from Martyr's Hill Echoed the patriot shout; Or rush'd pell-mell with a midnight yell The rude ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... feeding, the latter keeps watch over the flock, usually posting himself at some distance, so that he may have a better opportunity of seeing and hearing any danger that may approach. When any is perceived, a shrill whistle from the leader and a quick stroke of his hoof on the turf warn the flock; and all draw closely together, each stretching out its head in the direction of the danger. They then take to flight, at first slowly, but afterwards with the swiftness of the roe; while ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... helplessly on all sides, quite broken-backed and dismembered. Nevertheless, in almost his very worst moods, there lies in him a singular attraction. A wild tone pervades the whole utterance of the man, like its keynote and regulator; now screwing itself aloft as into the Song of Spirits, or else the shrill mockery of Fiends; now sinking in cadences, not without melodious heartiness, though sometimes abrupt enough, into the common pitch, when we hear it only as a monotonous hum; of which hum the true character is extremely difficult to fix. Up to this hour we ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... similar to that of the Summer Yellow-Bird, so common in our gardens among the fruit-trees, but it is more shrill and feeble. The Creeper's song does not differ from it more than the songs of different individuals of the same species may differ. This bird may be seen creeping like a Woodpecker around the branches of trees, feeding upon the grubs and insects that are lodged upon the bark. He often leaves ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... forth to look at the world. With the young reporter at his side, he ventured in the light of day into Main Street or strode up and down on the rickety front porch of his own house, talking excitedly. The voice that had been low and trembling became shrill and loud. The bent figure straightened. With a kind of wriggle, like a fish returned to the brook by the fisherman, Biddlebaum the silent began to talk, striving to put into words the ideas that had been accumulated by his mind during long ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... only may animals in some cases hear better than we do, but sounds which are beyond the reach of our ears, may be audible to theirs. Even among ourselves the power of hearing shrill sounds is greater in some persons than in others. Sound, as we know, is produced by vibration of the air striking on the drum of the ear, and the fewer are the vibrations in a second, the deeper is the sound, which becomes shriller and shriller ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... people lost on these hills?" asked the girl, looking into the blackness ahead of them. Her shrill, slight voice rang out in sharp contrast to the broad gutturals of ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in his brain. Through the silent house, across the placid lake, there rang a wild, shrill cry that froze the blood in his veins, or seemed so to freeze it—a shriek of agony, and in a woman's voice. It rang out from an open window near his own. The sound seemed close to ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... was amazed at the shrill and far-sounding quality of Mrs. Meadowsweet's voice. It distressed him, for anything not ultra refined jarred upon this sensitive young officer's nerves; but he trusted that the result would be satisfactory, and that Beatrice, whose motions he began to ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... warmly asleep some Hours, (more by Token I had read the ninety-first Psalm before getting into Bed), when Anne, clinging to me, woke me up with a shrill Cry. I whispered fearfullie, "What ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... and glided to the tree. There on the topmost bough, close-cover'd sat With foliage broad, eight sparrows, younglings all, Then newly feather'd, with their dam, the ninth. The little ones lamenting shrill he gorged, 380 While, wheeling o'er his head, with screams the dam Bewail'd her darling brood. Her also next, Hovering and clamoring, he by the wing Within his spiry folds drew, and devoured. All eaten thus, the nestlings and the dam, 385 The God who sent ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... the one I was riding, Bubud was a race-horse! Cootes, Strong, and I kept together, the others having ridden on. As the day grew darker and darker, the myriad notes of countless insects melted into one mighty, continuous shrill note high overhead, before us, behind us, in which not one break or intermission could be detected. Anything faster than a walk would now have been unsafe, even if it had been possible, for at times ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... with man as Olympe de Gouges, while for the most part she was Olympe's superior. In 1792, a year after the Declaration des Droits de la Femme, Mary Wollstonecraft—it is possible to some extent inspired by the brief Declaration—published her Vindication of the Rights of Women. It was not a shrill outcry, nor an attack on men—in that indeed resembling the Declaration—but just the book of a woman, a wise and sensible woman, who discusses many women's questions from a woman's point of view, and desires civil and political rights, not as a panacea ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... last words a shrill whistle from the locomotive pierced the air. Then came the sudden gripping of the air brakes on the car wheels, and the express came to a stop with a shock that pitched all the passengers from their seats. Tom and Sam went sprawling in a heap in the aisle and Dick came ...
— The Rover Boys at College • Edward Stratemeyer
... taunted mine host, did the gladiator brave the painful grasp he had undergone. But no sooner was his hand released, than, crouching for one moment as a wild cat crouches, you might see his hair bristle on his head and beard, and with a fierce and shrill yell he sprang on the throat of the giant, with an impetus that threw him, vast and sturdy as he was, from his balance—and down, with the crash of a falling rock, he fell—while over him ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... reach; and, indeed, to keep out of the way of their uncomely claws, Kit was obliged to gather himself up in the smallest possible space and cling to the topmost boughs. The bears now allowed themselves a short respite for breathing, during which they gave vent to their wrath by many shrill screeches. Then they renewed their endeavors to force the hunter from his resting place. Mounted on their hind paws they would reach for him; but, the blows with the stick, applied freely to their noses, would make them desist. In vain did they exhaust every means to force the ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... quiet, till, in the midst of absolute stillness, came the words: "Are you ready?" then the pistol-shot, and the great race had begun. Above the roar of the crowd came the shrill cry of Baptiste, as he struck his broncho with the palm of his hand, and swung himself into the sleigh beside Sandy, as it ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... gained ground that the invader was at hand, some foolish person had caused the massive portcullis of the city gate to be let down, several recruiting parties were parading the streets, two of these she met, and the shrill blasts of a few mounted trumpeters, together with a dense and portentous cloud, which just at the moment spread itself upon the horizon, completed her dismay. She reached home in tears. Her mother, whose solicitude was ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... two rooms, watching alternately the fire-flies, as they instarred the dark woods with ever-shifting gold sparks, and the broad, pale flashes of heat lightning which from time to time illumined the horizon. There was no motion in the heavy black foliage, but it was filled with the shrill droning of the summer insects, and high in the branches a screech-owl pierced the air with its ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... of a sudden, Bumpus was given an electric shock, when Giraffe let out a shrill whoop; for with his mind so filled by visions of armies of wildcats all ready to pounce upon them by and by, Bumpus was in ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... cried madame his wife. "What! We can kill as well as the men when the place is taken!" And to her, with a shrill thirsty cry, trooping women variously armed, but all armed ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... Would that its bitter memories could have perished with it! And then from steeple and steamship, locomotive and factory, a babel of sound burst forth as sirens and bells and whistles welcomed the birth of 1900. Yet, as the shrill greetings died away, one heard the tramp of infantry through the streets. The Capetown Highlanders—a volunteer battalion—were under arms all that night, as a rising of the Dutch had been anticipated ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett
... by Giraldus, whose personal sketches, of the leading invaders form the most valuable part of his book, as less a statesman than a soldier, and more a soldier than a general. His complexion was freckled, his neck slender, his voice feminine and shrill, and his temper equable and uniform. His career in Ireland was limited to seven years in point of time, and his resources were never equal to the task he undertook. Had they been so, or had he not been so jealously counteracted by his suzerain, ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... the shadow of the cloudy night, when I stood before the gate of my mother's cottage. I had hardly rung the bell before the house door was opened violently; my worthy Italian friend, Professor Pesca, appeared in the servant's place; and darted out joyously to receive me, with a shrill foreign parody ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... eye, Up sprang the old dog there, As from afar a child's shrill cry Rung through ...
— Dog of St. Bernard and Other Stories • Anonymous
... to a lever controlling the gas and yanked it toward him. There was a shrill hissing sound, and a second later the Mermaid began to sink. The boys watching the gages on the wall of the tower, saw that the ...
— Five Thousand Miles Underground • Roy Rockwood
... quick efficiency, cut the throttle. Quickly the motor slowed to idling speed; the vibration stopped. A last cough of the engine, and there was no sound save the shrill screaming of the wind in the gloomy twilight of this unknown ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... though' tiny, was shrill and positive. Young John recognised, and yet did not recognise it. He stared up at the wall of the old mine-house from which it had seemed to speak, but he could see no one. Next he thought that the word must have come from ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... gloomy season, when the rain falls in torrents; when suffocating heats oppress by day, and when the night is spent by the terrified travellers in listening to the croaking of frogs (of which the numbers are beyond imagination), the shrill cry of the jackal, and the deep howling of the hyaena, a dismal concert, interrupted only by the roar of such tremendous thunder as no person can form a conception of but those who ...
— Travels in the Interior of Africa - Volume 1 • Mungo Park
... smile grimly at the curious scene within. The playwright had taken refuge among the brass andirons of the big empty fireplace. The matinee heroes were under chairs, and Holloway behind the mahogany buffet. From the direction of the stairway came shrill cries from the speeding merchant, softening in intensity as he ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... Earl, his grave tones coming in contrast to the shrill notes of the angry woman, "I counsel you, in the south at least, to have some respect to these same forms of law. I bid you a fair good-night. The chamberlain will ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... reapers whistled—shrill A whistle may be noted still, The locomotives' ravings. New custom newer want begets— My bank of early violets Is now ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker
... art more unconstant, Than all ill women ever were together. Thy faith is firm as raging over-flowes, That no bank can command; as lasting As boyes gay bubbles, blown i'th' Air and broken: The wind is fixt to thee: and sooner shall The beaten Mariner with his shrill whistle Calm the loud murmur of the troubled main, And strike it smooth again; than thy soul fall To have peace in love with any: Thou art all That all good men must hate; and if thy story Shall tell ...
— A King, and No King • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... Agrenev drove with Bitska over the main road to the station. It was wet. The sombre figures of workmen were dimly seen through the rain and darkness, hastening to the factory. The staff drove round in a motor as the shrill sound of the ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... that encircled his head, it was seen that his ears had been cut off. A murmur of horror ran through the crowd which this scene had assembled. "And shall I not have revenge?" shouted Ignacio (for he it was) in a voice rendered shrill by furious passion. And by a violent effort he again nearly succeeded in shaking off the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... Court, and it was with no cheerful alacrity that Emily went alone into the hall. Phyllis was already at the front door, and the instant Mr. Mohun set foot on the threshold, her hand grasped his coat, and her shrill voice cried in his ear, 'Papa, I am very sorry I blew up ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... corral the men were watering their teams; above them on the edge of a mesa, against the rosy sky, the other ponies, out all night on the range, were trooping, driven by a cowboy who darted here and there on his nimble pony, giving shrill cries. In the clear air every syllable was sharp to the ear, every tint and line sharp to the eye. It was beautiful, very beautiful, and it was near and dear to her, native to her—this loveliness of ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... sorrel, cream, brown, etc. Almost all of them had some bit of red or blue or yellow about their trappings, which added not a little to the brilliancy of their appearance; while the gay tinkle of the leader's bell, mingling with those shrill and peculiar exclamations with which Spanish muleteers are in the habit of urging on their animals, made a not unpleasing medley of sounds. But the creamiest part of the whole affair was—I must confess it, unromantic as it may seem—when the twenty-five or thirty pretty creatures were collected ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... ails you, dear? Tell mother! Is it your feet are so cold? But we'll rub them—we'll get you warm soon. And here's something to make you better." Marcella handed her some brandy. "Drink it, dear; drink it, sweetheart!" Her voice grew shrill. ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... one synagogue, Shearith Israel. The tall pink and white hollyhocks that bordered the prim paths nodded languidly in the warm September breeze. From the trees came the twitter of sparrows, now low and conversational, now high and shrill, "just like people in the synagogue," thought little David Phillips, as he strolled in his grandmother's garden on the other side of the hedge. And if David had pulled aside the white curtains of the Rabbi's study ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger
... comfortably furnished apartment, there sat two people, a husband and wife, middle-aged people, who were engaged in a miserable dispute about some very trivial matter. The wife was shrill and provocative, the husband curt and contemptuous. They were obviously not really concerned about the subject they were discussing—it only formed a ground for disagreeable personalities. Presently the man went out, saying harshly that it was very pleasant to come back from his ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... she remembered. It all seemed like a dream; the telegram, the hurried preparations for departure, the swift journey to the station with Nyoda and the return to Carver House without her. Sahwah was still piecing together the events of the night before when the shrill ring sounded through the house again. It was the front doorbell. Sahwah jumped up and threw on her bathrobe and, ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... the half-mile of railing that enclosed the track, and sat sweltering in the hot September sun, on the benching of the grandstand that flanked a stretch of the course. Boys selling lemonade and peanuts, and other boys with the score of the races, made their way up and down the seats with shrill cries; now and then there was a shriek of girls' laughter from a group of young people calling to some other group, or struggling for a programme caught back and forth; the young fellows shouted to each other jokes that ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... retired precipitately with their dead, uttering a yell of disappointment and rage, to which three of our boys, being ordered so to do, responded with a shrill war-whoop of defiance. This made the Umbiquas quite frantic, but they were now more prudent. The arrows that had killed their comrades were children-arrows; still there could be no doubt but that they had been shot by warriors. They retired behind a projecting rock on the bank of ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... other burning power, Wood with the smart, with shouts and shrieking shrill, He sought his ease in river, field, and bower; But, for the time, his grief went with ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... him, reaching out her hands, and Thomas smiled on her lap. So for a moment the three stayed, and the woods were hushed round them, waiting. Then in the green roof above a riot of shrill, sweet triumph broke the hush, and Peter leaped ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... stirring, not a sound was heard save the rushing of a waterfall, the tinkling of some silver rivulet, or the calm rippling of the tranquil lake; now and then, at intervals, the fisherman's Gaelic ditty chanted, as he lay stretched on the sand in some sunny nook; or the shrill distant sound of childish glee. How delicious to the feeling heart to behold so fair a scene of unsophisticated Nature, and to listen to her voice alone, breathing the accents ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... the death he would serve her, swallowed up every other feeling. As they went over a vise-like grip caught his arm, and amid all the infernal confusion he somehow connected that despairing clutch with a succession of shrill and piercing shrieks which rang in his ear, seeming to be close to him. He remembered that in the chair behind his had been a young girl, and he felt a pity for her that choked him like a hand at his throat. Then as they went down he instinctively but ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... Karmazinov interrupted with shrill familiarity, squeezing his shoulder with exaggerated friendliness. "Make haste and take us to your room, Yulia Mihailovna; there he'll sit down and tell ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... commonplace, matter-of-fact way that may startle you. But these things used to be a part of his daily life; and even to-day you may sometimes hear a dried-up, palsied survivor of the ancient wars cackle out his shrill laugh when he tells as a merry jest, a bloodcurdling story of the torture he inflicted on some enemy ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... Hamish assured them that at the very utmost the sheik could put but twenty men in the field, including several boys and old men, it was finally decided to attack, and headed by the horsemen the dervishes started forward at a run, uttering shrill yells as they did so. Edgar had persuaded the chief that it would be useless to open fire until they were within two or three hundred yards, as but few shots would tell, and the men would be discouraged by finding that their fire did not check the advance. The sheik ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... many times, rubbed his hands, mopped his head, and cursed most things under heaven and some in it, Master Baldassare found himself watching the laundresses on the shore. They were the usual shrill, shrewd, and laughing line—the trade seems to induce high mirth—and as such no bait for the old merchant by ordinary; but just now the sun and breeze together made a bright patch of them, set them at a provoking flutter. ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... monotonous like the sound of an Indian tom-tom. The same phrase was repeated two or three times over, the melody seemed to consist of only a very few notes, and to come over and over again with extraordinary persistence. Then the music rose into a high shrill call and ended abruptly. ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... was well out of their way, it came to me to wonder what I should do with myself until Jerome might please to seek me again, but accident favored me with occupation. Passing through the hall I heard a woman's shrill voice, lifted in anger, berating ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... theatre to-day for the benefit of those people who could not gain admittance yesterday, and, through the open windows, we can hear the rhythmic chant of the chorus. Mellowed by the distance, the wailing cadence of the plaintive songs, mingled with the shrill Haydnistic strains of the orchestra, falls with a mournful ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... here is the court; let us go back to our places." A noise was heard in the hall; the sergeant called his two patrons with an energetic "hem!" and the door-keeper appearing, called out with that shrill voice peculiar to his order, ever since the days ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Winds whistle shrill, Icy and chill, Little care we; Little we fear Weather without, Sheltered about ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... was announced in a shrill piping voice, by a rosy-cheeked little page who made his appearance ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... landing upon the broad beach of the lake. Then they began walking along it. There was only room for one on the sand, and the other two, for they walked abreast, waded ankle-deep in the water. From the little city below them they could hear the hum of a myriad of tiny voices—thin, shrill and faint. Suddenly the Big Business Man laughed. There was no hysteria in his voice now—just ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... that Babie would be convinced that fairies came out on Sunday, then crossed the river and were beginning to ascend the path when a volley of sounds broke on them, a shrill yap giving the alarm, louder notes joining in, and the bass being supplied by a formidable deep-mouthed bark, as out of the farmyard- gate dashed little terrier, curly spaniel, slim greyhounds, surly sheep-dog of the old tailless ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
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