"Chirrup" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... disappeared into the entry amidst peals of happy laughter from both old and young, calling, when the door opened again to ask me whom I wanted, for the pretty lisping flirt who had proposed the game. After giving me a coquettish little chirrup of a kiss and telling me my beard scratched, she bade me on my return, send out to her "Mithter Billy Lovegrove." I obeyed her; my youngest nephew retired; and after a couple of seconds, during which Tilly undoubtedly got what she proposed the ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... ford of the creek raise a clear half tone,—sign that the snow water has come down from the heated high ridges,—it is time to light the evening fire. When it drops off a note—but you will not know it except the Douglas squirrel tells you with his high, fluty chirrup from the pines' aerial gloom—sign that some star watcher has caught the first far glint of the nearing sun. Whitney cries it from his vantage tower; it flashes from Oppapago to the front of Williamson; ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... dotted about the flower-sprinkled meadows; a brook runs diagonally across the path, and some freshly-laid planks show that inhabitants are not far off; but there is not a living creature in sight. The grasshoppers keep up their perpetual chirrup, and if one looks among the flowers one can see the gleam of their scarlet wings as they jump; for the rest, the flowers and the birds have it all to themselves, and they sing their hymns and offer their ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... drive thickest and coldest, is the snow bunting, the real snowbird, with plumage copied from the fields where the drifts hide all but the tops of the tallest weeds,—large spaces of pure white touched here and there with black and gray and brown. Its twittering call and chirrup coming out of the white obscurity is the sweetest and happiest of all winter bird sounds. It is like the laughter of children. The fox-hunter hears it on the snowy hills, the farmer hears it when he goes to fodder his cattle from the distant stack, the country ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... a butt of quiet worth. Therefore she took her remonstrance in silence. She stood quietly near the window, looking at the grand cedar on her lawn watching a bird on one of its lower boughs. Presently she began to chirrup to the bird; soon her chirrup grew clearer; ere long she was whistling; the whistle struck into a tune, and very sweetly and deftly it ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... landed to-day at one place, and went into a wood to try and get flowers. I only got one good one, but it was very lovely! Two crows were making wild cries for the loss of one of their young ones which some boys had taken, and as I went on I heard the queer chirrup (like a bird's note) of Adjidaumo the squirrel! and he ran across my path and into a hollow tree. It is a much smaller squirrel than ours, about the size of a ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... He would begin running, and at the last, just as he should have done his finest stalking, he would go bounding and barking toward the Ground-squirrel, which would sit like a peg of wood till the proper moment, then dive below with a derisive chirrup, throwing with its hind feet a lot of sand right into Chink's ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... ran. "Winter is gone, winter-is-gone, winterisgone!" And, on the principle that a good thing cannot be said too often, it went on with this all through the summer, till the next winter came and stopped its mouth with icicles. As the stream chattered, so the birds in the wood sang—Tweet! tweet! chirrup! throstle! Spring! Spring! Spring!—and they twittered from tree to tree, and shook the bare twigs with melody; whilst a single blackbird sitting still upon a bough below, sang "Life!" "Life!" "Life!" with the loudest pipe of his throat, because on ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... sorry. But do not, I entreat, distract me with petitions of any sort, though I will perform anything earthly to satisfy you. Be a good little boat in the wake of the big ship. I will look over at you, and chirrup now and then to you, my dearest, when I am not engaged in piloting extraordinary.'—Very well; I do not mean to sneer at the unhappy boy, Merthyr; I love him; he was my husband's brother in arms; the sweetest lad ever seen. He is in the season ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... wooded headland, came a sleepy twitter, from some little pink and yellow bill barely withdrawn from its enfolding wing—to be followed by another, and another, and another, till both shores were aquiver with that plaintive chirrup, half threnody for the flying darkness, half welcome to the sun, like the praise of a choir of children roused to sing midnight matins, but still dreaming. Ford's dip was softer now, as though he feared to disturb that vibrant drowsiness; but when, later, ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... like, the Cricket DID chime in! with a Chirrup, Chirrup, Chirrup of such magnitude, by way of chorus; with a voice so astoundingly disproportionate to its size, as compared with the kettle; (size! you couldn't see it!) that if it had then and there burst itself like an overcharged gun, if it had fallen a victim on the spot, and chirruped ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... that there was such a superstitious, idolatrous, bloody people in the world. Wherefore the people that shall be born, that shall live to serve God in these happy days, they shall see Antichrist only in its ruins; they shall, like the sparrows, the little robins, and the wren, sit and sing, and chirrup one to another, while their eyes behold this dead hawk. 'Here [shall they say] did once the lion dwell; and there was once a dragon inhabited: here did they live that were the murderers of the saints; and there another, that did used to set his throat against the heavens; but now in the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... find your confidence. I am a poor creature, and do not know how. It is you who must encourage the faith I feel starting somewhere in this room, like a chimney swallow that would fain fly out. Chirrup, chirrup to it, and ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... himself in the hole, he looked around without manifesting any surprise at the grand scene that lay spread out before him. He was taking his bearings and determining how far he could trust the power of his untried wings to take him out of harm's way. After a moment's pause, with a loud chirrup, he launched out, and made tolerable headway. The others rapidly followed. Each one, as it started upward, from a sudden impulse, contemptuously saluted the abandoned nest ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... and there the startled chirrup Of strange creatures, as we go, Standing sometimes in the stirrup, Just to get a bigger show; Till we gain our point, the entry— There the pass, no sign of sentry, Not a sound above, below! Clear the coast, the savage gave Never hint to south or norward; Was ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... honourable tribe and family and living in the midst of our fellow-citizens, we have fled from our country as hard as ever we could go. 'Tis not that we hate it; we recognize it to be great and rich, likewise that everyone has the right to ruin himself; but the crickets only chirrup among the fig-trees for a month or two, whereas the Athenians spend their whole lives in chanting forth judgments from their law courts.[180] That is why we started off with a basket, a stew-pot and ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... sufficient game. But, somehow or other, of late years there has been a sort of panic among the poets. The gentler sort have either been scared by the improvisatore warblings of Mr Wakley, or terrified into silence by undue and undeserved apprehensions of the Knout. Seldom now are they heard to chirrup except under cover of the leaves of a sheltering magazine; and although we do occasionally detect a thin and ricketty octavo taking flight from the counter of some publisher, it is of so meek and inoffensive a kind that we should as soon think of making prize of a thrush ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... began to chirrup drowsily, and she hastily collected herself, forcing back her tears and assuming the expressionless mask which life so often makes women wear. She was only just in time. A moment later, Isabel van Cannan came into the room with a packet of ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... and needle-books, mending her father's clothes, and laying them out in her drawers; lastly, she had Barney brought in from the country, and every day would creep to the window to see him fed and chirrup to him, whereat the poor old beast would look up with his dim eye, and try to neigh a feeble answer. Kitts used to come every day to see her, though he never said much when he was there: he lugged his great copy ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... an hour, and once a footstep grated on the cement floor, and coals rattled down as if they were disturbed. Once too a soft chirrup from up above like the call of a wood bird, only strangely human and the sounds in the cellar ceased altogether, till another weird note sounded and ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... Tree-Frogs are active and utter various sounds, some a pleasing chirrup (like mine), ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 17, 1914 • Various
... Cerambyx beetle into a box, which he placed on a table; he then put a male Cerambyx on the table, some four inches from the box. When he touched the female she began to chirrup, whereupon the male turned his antennae toward the box, "as if to determine from which direction the sound came, and then marched straight toward the female." Will concluded from this that the ears of the beetle were located in ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... along before the square-topped chaise, upon some highway that leads into the town, with the parson seated within, with slackened rein, and in thoughtful mood, from which he rouses himself from time to time with a testy twitch and noisy chirrup that urge the poor beast into a faster gait. All the while the little wife sits beside him, as if a twittering sparrow had nestled itself upon the same perch with some grave owl, and sat with him side by side, watching for the big eyes to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... know; for one thing, he'd miss me sadly, and chirrup for me all day long, he'd be so lonely. I could not be half so happy a-thinking on him, left alone here by himself. Then, Libbie, he's just like a Christian, so fond of flowers and green leaves, and them sort of things. He chirrups to me so when mother ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... holiday-making instinct of the spring, and that instinct has not been affected by the lapse of the centuries. It stirs us even in London, when the impetuous lilacs are bursting into bud, and the sooty sparrows chirrup love-songs, and "a livelier iris changes on the burnished dove"—or, to be more accurate, pigeon—which swells and straddles as if Piccadilly were all his own. The very wallflowers and daffodils which crown the costers' barrows help ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... else, Mr. Fitzgerald," she said, going to the door, "you knows your way to the bell as easily as I do to the kitching," and, with a final chirrup, she crackled out of ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... from the garden as soon as the light comes, following the scent of blood. No, not there, a little to the right, he heard her crying, and, finding a piece of linen and a hammer and some nails, he went out into the greyness still undisturbed by the chirrup of ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... had thawed the surface slightly, and then it had frozen in a glittering smooth crust. It was still outside as only leafless winter can be, when there are no wings to flutter, or streams to trickle, or chirrup of insects to break the calm. Not a footfall, not a sleigh bell; not another light in sight, but only the moon. Anybody in the road might have seen another light,—that which came from Dolly's windows. She had been hard to suit about her arrangements; ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... the spring-time and hope like a blossoming rose, When the wine-blood of youth ran tingling and throbbing in every vein; Chirrup of robin and blue-bird in the white-blossomed apple and pear; Carpets of green on the meadows spangled with dandelions; Lowing of kine in the valleys, bleating of lambs on the hills; Babble of brooks and the prattle of fountains ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... familiar faces of comrades who had grown up with him from infancy; he saw his busy wife, bustling in her preparations for his evening meals; he heard the merry laugh of his boys at their play, and the chirrup of the baby at his knee; and then, with a start, all faded, and he saw again the canebrakes and cypresses and gliding plantations, and heard again the creaking and groaning of the machinery, ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... their voices be gladly blent With a watery jingle of pans and spoons, And a motherly chirrup of sweet content, And neighborly gossip ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley
... weeping, wringing her hands, and sometimes adding a fourth hand or foot to make the appeal more touching. Grass or leaves she draws around her to make a nest, and resents anyone meddling with her property. She is a most friendly little beast, and came up to me at once, making her chirrup of welcome, smelled my clothing, and held out her hand to be shaken. I slapped her palm without offence, though she winced. She began to untie the cord with which she was afterwards bound, with fingers and thumbs, ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... and hoarse, issuing from a thousand throats in ceaseless continuity of croak. The tree-frog adds her chirping and almost human voice; the kattiedid repeats her own name through the livelong night; the whole tribe of locusts chirp, chirrup, squeak, whiz, and whistle, without allowing one instant of interval to the weary ear; and when to this the mosquito adds her threatening hum, it is wonderful that any degree of fatigue can obtain for the listener the relief of sleep. In fact, it is only in ceasing to listen that this blessing can ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... his eyes, and I led him forth into the silent morning. The chirrup of the birds, the freshness of the rosy air, and a penn'orth of coffee that I got for him at a stall in the Regent Circus, revived him somewhat. When I quitted him, he was not angry but sad. He was desirous, it is true, of avenging the wrongs of Erin in battle line; he wished also to share ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the highest pitch of enthusiasm by the recital of the great deeds done in battle, or gallant sacrifices dared in love, the voices of one or more of the listeners will be sure to break into the strain; the whole audience will join in the cheerful chirrup of hai-hai-cha! or the dirge-like wail of wai-wai-wai! and at the finale some deli-kan, inspired perhaps by the sight of maiden faces cautiously peering in at door or window, will scarcely be able to refrain ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... again that z—st overhead, and a cold chill ran down his back. He shut his teeth, and, with a careless air, strode off for a fresh load. He had not gone twenty yards when another shot ricochetted off a stone, and flew up into the air with a shrill chirrup. Jack winced and shivered. It was no good, however well he might conceal the fact from others—the fear of death was on him; it was impossible to deceive his own heart. A fresh terror now seized him, coupled with a sense ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... dim room with books all the way up to the ceiling and a comfortable leather lounge upon which he sinks, picks up a magazine from a little table beside it and starts ruffling the pages idly. The chirrup of a telephone bell that seems to come out of the wall ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... yonder, too, below in the water, the exact image of ourselves—them also I should like to kiss, and the nice little birds below in their nest. There are some above, too; they stretch out their heads and chirrup quite loud: they have no feathers at all, as their fathers and mothers have. They are good neighbors, those below as well as those above. How ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... straight to the top of her head, and knotted there in front of a comb like a chair-back, and she was crying into a handkerchief and had a dead bird laying on its back in her other hand with its heels up, and underneath the picture it said "I Shall Never Hear Thy Sweet Chirrup More Alas." There was one where a young lady was at a window looking up at the moon, and tears running down her cheeks; and she had an open letter in one hand with black sealing wax showing on one edge ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... chirrup on the roof, The slow clock ticking, and the sound, Which to the wooing wind aloof The poplar made, did all confound Her sense; but most she loathed the hour When the thick-moted sunbeam lay Athwart the chambers, and the day Was sloping [9] toward his western bower. Then, said ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... they appear at first sight very few indeed. On the plains one sees a little lark with two white feathers in the tail, and in other respects exactly like the English skylark, save that he does not soar, and has only a little chirrup instead of song. There are also paradise ducks, hawks, terns, red-bills, and sand-pipers, seagulls, and occasionally, though very rarely, ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... mother-bird sat in her nest, With four sleepy birdlings tucked under her breast, And her querulous chirrup fell ceaseless and low, While the wind rocked the lilac-tree nest ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... before, and I had fallen asleep with the thought that maybe at last I had caught the rainbow, and that without any imaginings or make-believes she was learning to love plain, rough Jock Calder of West Inch. It was this thought, still at my heart, which had given me that little morning chirrup of joy. And then I remembered that if I hastened I might be in time for her, for it was her custom to ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... sewing, bending over her work. Quenu had not listened. He had been cutting some little rounds of onion over a pot placed on the fire; and almost at once the onions began to crackle, raising a clear shrill chirrup like that of grasshoppers basking in the heat. They gave out a pleasant odour too, and when Quenu plunged his great wooden spoon into the pot the chirruping became yet louder, and the whole kitchen was filled with the ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... sounds his continual challenge and alarm. That this mysterious hummingbird of ocean—which, had it but brilliancy of hue, might, from its evanescent liveliness, be almost called its butterfly, yet whose chirrup under the stern is ominous to mariners as to the peasant the death-tick sounding from behind the chimney jamb—should have its special haunt at the Encantadas, contributes, in the seaman's mind, not a little ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... the blessed dawn which was behind and above it, shooting long rays of primrose and crimson half-way up the zenith; hearing the sleepy ceaseless crawling of the river over the shingle bars; hearing the booming of the cattle-herds far over the plain; hearing the chirrup of the grasshopper among the raspberries, the chirr of the cicada among the wattles—what happy morning is this? Is it ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... with the soapsuds still about her skinny red elbows, catching up Zoe from the cradle as she passed, at sight of whom Gray, in spite of the pain and the deadly faintness that was dimming his eyes and clutching his breath, made an effort to chirrup and snap his fingers at ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... for only the wings of poor Scamp were visible when I opened the lid, and they lay broken on the floor of the prison-box. Even with Pluto it had gone hard, for he lay on his back stark and stiff, never to chirrup again. ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... troat^, croak, peep [frog]; coo [dove, pigeon]; gobble [turkeys]; quack [duck]; honk, gaggle, guggle [goose]; crow, caw, squawk, screech, [crow]; cackle, cluck, clack [hen, rooster, poultry]; chuck, chuckle; hoot, hoo [owl]; chirp, cheep, chirrup, twitter, cuckoo, warble, trill, tweet, pipe, whistle [small birds]; hum [insects, hummingbird]; buzz [flying insects, bugs]; hiss [snakes, geese]; blatter^; ratatat [woodpecker]. Adj. crying &c v.; blatant, latrant^, remugient^, mugient^; deep-mouthed, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... their pictures? We must revert to the proper channels, Workings in tapestry, paintings on panels, And gather up woodcraft's authentic traditions: Here was food for our various ambitions, As on each case, exactly stated— To encourage your dog, now, the properest chirrup, Or best prayer to St. Hubert on mounting your stirrup— We of the household took thought and debated. Blessed was he whose back ached with the jerkin {240} His sire was wont to do forest-work in; Blesseder ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... wondering saw The stars through the window, and listened with awe To the sigh of the winds as they tremblingly crept Through the trees where the robin so restlessly slept: Where I heard the low, murmurous chirp of the wren, And the katydid listlessly chirrup again, Till my fancies grew faint and were drowsily led Through the maze of the dreams of the old ...
— Riley Songs of Home • James Whitcomb Riley
... tree close by, his gorgeous plumage glistening like a mimic rainbow in the sun. A flight of green parrots sweep screaming above your head, the golden oriole or mango bird, the koel, with here and there a red-tufted bulbul, make a faint attempt at a chirrup; but as a rule the deep silence is unbroken, save by the melancholy hoot of some blinking owl, and the soft monotonous coo of the ringdove or the green pigeon. The exquisite honey-sucker, as delicately formed as the petal of a fairy ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... floated by, and Chee scrambled on. If, however, the leaf had not come at just that moment Chee would have drowned. When the leaf floated in shore they all went home and told Mother Cricky. She stopped chirruping for quite a long time and didn't say anything at all. When Mrs. Cricky began to chirrup again she said it served them just right, and she hoped it had taught them all a lesson. Then they all chirruped together, because Chee was safe, and Mrs. Cricky said: "Now let us all sing a little song to show that we are happy." And this is ...
— The Cheerful Cricket and Others • Jeannette Marks
... he neared the summit of the hill, he leant slightly forward and gathered up the lines which he had allowed to lie slack upon his horses' backs. A resounding "chirrup" and the weary beasts strained at their neck-yoke. Something moving in amongst the trees attracted their attention. Their snorting nostrils were suddenly thrown up in startled attention. The off-side horse jumped ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... shine through the thinning boughs, and feel that all nature was becoming idealized. The birds were then mostly silent. They had left their best notes on the hawthorns and among the roses; but the crickets made a cheerful chirrup, and the great brown butterflies displayed their richest velvets, and the gossamer-like insects in the dreamy atmosphere performed dances and undulations full of grace and mystery. And all these marvelous changes imparted to love that sweet sadness which is beyond ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... noise startled him—an amazing little chirrupy sound which corresponded to none of the familiar forewarnings of engine trouble. With his eyes to the front he listened for a repetition of the sound. It rose again—it was like a perplexing cheep and chirrup, changing to a chortle ...
— A Reversible Santa Claus • Meredith Nicholson
... something more than the toss; for while they talked, the long twilight had faded away, the little ripples of the lake by whose side they were sitting had gone to sleep on its quiet bosom. The air was full of the chirrup of innumerable insects; two frogs, creeping up from the water, adding a sonorous bass, and the long, slender pine-leaves chimed into this evening lullaby with their ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... necks and shoulders of all flesh. The small enchanter nothing can withstand, no seniority of age, no gravity of character; uncles, aunts, grandsires, grandams, fall an easy prey: he conforms to nobody, all conform to him; all caper and make mouths, and babble, and chirrup to him. On the strongest shoulders he rides, and pulls ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... remained at the mouth—poised upon its whirring wings—while with its long prehensile tongue it drew out the honey. It had scarcely been a moment in this position, when the tarantula sprang forward and clutched it round the body with his antennae. The bird, with a wild chirrup, like that of a distressed cricket, flew outward and upwards. Its wings were still free, and all expected it would carry off the spider that was now seen clinging around it. Not so, however. On getting a few feet from the flower its flight appeared to be suddenly ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... all, the grasses grow green over the dead, and poppies fringe the parapets where the bayonets glisten, the skylarks sing their songs at dawn between the lines, the frogs chuckle in the ponds at dusk, the grasshoppers chirrup in the dells where the wild iris, jewel-starred, bends mournfully to the breezes of night. In it all, the watching, the waiting, and the warring, is the mystery, the enchantment, and the glamour of romance; and romance is dear to the heart ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... caps, are waiting in the old corner of the Rue Neuve, heaped together like eggs. These people are loaded with provisions. At the farther end, square-paved, one picks out swarthy outlines of the Epinal type, and faces as brightly colored as apples. Groups of children flutter and chirrup; little girls with their dolls play at being mothers, and little boys play at brigands. Respectable people take their stand more ceremoniously than the common crowd, and ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... lighted lunchrooms, oyster saloons, and pawnshops, Miss Chapman resumed her sway. With the delightful velocity of thought his mind whirled in a narrowing spiral round the experience of the evening. The small book-crammed sitting room of the Mifflins, the sparkling fire, the lively chirrup of the bookseller reading aloud—and there, in the old easy chair whose horsehair stuffing was bulging out, that blue-eyed vision of careless girlhood! Happily he had been so seated that he could study her without seeming to do so. The line of her ankle where the firelight danced ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... no objections," the Doctor would chirrup at the ample, good-natured Rhoda Kollander who would haunt him during John's periods of political molting, pretending to advise with the Doctor on her husband's political status, "to your society from May until November every ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... man of undoubted piety, and it may well excuse a little communicativeness when we remember that of the generation he had served so well, few survived to speak his praise. At all events, there was one benefactor whom he never forgot; and the chirrup of the old Cicada softened into something very soft and tender every time he mentioned ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... in the very bosom of the Apennines, midway between Lucca and Modena. In winter the road is clogged with snow; nothing can pass. Now, there is no sound but the singing of water-falls, and the trickle of water-courses, the chirrup of the cicala, not yet gone to its rest—and the murmur of the hot breezes rustling in ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... "that sempiternal twitter, that intolerable chirrup that destroys the best and latest hours of sleep! Do you call ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... you're so sharp you'll cut yourself!—Young lady, do you happen to come from Warrenega?" he asked Laura, when Thumbkin's excited chirrup of: "I'll cut YOU, pa, into ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... roll, and put his mouth to one of the griffins' months. He gave a low, just audible whistle, directing it towards the foliage of the tree. Presently there was a slight rustling among the leaves, then one solitary chirrup, and in three minutes a whole chorus of melody burst ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... and there, He never sought to cleave the air, He chirrup'd oft, and, free from care, [iii] Tun'd to her ear his grateful strain. Now having pass'd the gloomy bourn, [iv] From whence he never can return, His death, and Lesbia's grief I mourn, Who sighs, alas! but ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... dad's pipe," and applying the little silver whistle to his lips he made it give forth one little shrill chirrup, and then waited, while the stillness seemed to Fitz more awful than before, and his heart sank lower with the dread lest the men were dead, the boat gone, and his project ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... partly at each other, partly no doubt at the leaping spray from the broken waves on the reef. There was only the delicious sound of the splash and gurgle of waters—the scream of a gull—the breath of the air—the chirrup of a few insects; all was wild stillness and freshness and pureness, except only that little group of four human beings. And then, the puzzled vexation and perplexity in Tom's face, and the impatient disgust in the face of his sister, were too much for Mr. ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... chirrup to the dog while he's there, don't you think?" suggested Sam. He felt that a resolute man with legs as long as Bream's might well deposit a cloak on a berth and ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... across the aching field, Does one lone cricket chirrup on; Why one surviving butterfly, With all ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... fifty times in the course of that dreadful lingering night. Nobody came; the silence closed in deeper and deeper around the two silent women. All the world—everything round about them, to the veriest atom—seemed asleep. The cricket had stopped his chirrup in the kitchen, and no mouse stirred in the slumbering house. By times Susan dozed on the sofa, shivering, notwithstanding her shawl, and Nettie took up her needlework for the moment to distract ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... work with the stone at night, for in the stillness the sound might be heard; but for some hours he hacked away with the dagger at the rivets on his manacles. The next morning he was at work as soon as the chirrup of the cicadas began, as these, he knew, would completely deaden any sound he might make. By nighttime the rivet ends on the irons round his ankles were worn so thin, that he felt sure that another hour's work would bring them level with the iron, and before he went ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... long, melancholy note of a bird, complaining above of some wrong or sorrow that man, or her own kind, or the immitigable doom of mortal affairs, has inflicted upon her, the complaining, but unresisting sufferer. And now, all of a sudden, we hear the sharp, shrill chirrup of a red squirrel, angry, it seems, with somebody—perhaps with ourselves—for having intruded into what he is pleased to consider his own domain. And hark! terrible to the ear, here is the minute but intense hum of a mosquito. Instinct prevails over all sentiment; we crush him ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... gave a chirrup at the birds, and, to the skipper's utter astonishment, both Port and Starboard chirruped back sociably. Port then remarked: "Pretty Polly!" Starboard chirruped a few cheery bars from "A Sailor's Wife a Sailor's Star Should Be." Then both parrots ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... the pink-white eggs are laid there, Safe from harm, till baby-birds Chirrup forth to take their places, 'Mongst the ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller
... branches, and all along its ditch border the starry stitchwort lifted its childish faces and chorused in lines and masses. Never had I seen such a symphony of note-like flowers and tendrils and leaves. And suddenly, in its depths, I heard a chirrup and ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford
... There was no moon, but in the sky, which the slowly-moving boughs of over-hanging trees seemed to keep in motion, there was a blizzard of stars. From the dust-covered thickets along the road arose the chirrup of insects, the strange noises that make night lonesome; and a small stream, which in the light has flowed without noise over the slick, blue rocks, was rushing now with a loud gurgle, as if to hurry out ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... chirrup, a chirrup, A chirrup, a chirrup, a chirrup, A chirrup, a chirrup, a chirrup, a chirrup, A chirrup, a chirrup, ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... named—a transparent, subtle, vaporous tint of golden pink or purple, which is the gift of this warm and wonderful light. A cricket that has climbed up one of the tender shoots strikes a low note, which is like the drowsy chirrup of a roosting bird. It is the first touch of a fiddler in the night's orchestra, and will soon be taken up by thousands of other crickets, bell-tinkling toads, croaking frogs in the valley, and the solitary owl that hoots from the hills. ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... he tries to catch it; failing that, he puts a charge of shot into it. Some keepers think nothing of shooting their own ferrets if they will not come when called by the chirrup with the lips, or displease them in other ways. They do not care, because they can have as many as they like. Little John made pets of his: they obeyed him very well ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... shadows which rested on the fields, on the dark woods, and on the broken and uncertain line in the southern horizon which indicated the summits of the Pyrenees. The air was full of the perfume of newly-cut hay; the leaves sent forth a trembling murmur; the cricket uttered his sharp chirrup in the meadows; the quail's short, flute-like cry was heard, and all in nature harmonized with the beauty of the ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... "Don't chirrup so loud, Donald," Janet said. "When you come to cheer an ill person up you don't cheer him up at the top of your voice. Perhaps cheering up is too loud, Mr. Carrisford?" turning ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... awoke next morning to the cheerful chirrup of robins and the pleasant far-off sound of church bells. He liked the bells. They sounded different in the country he thought. You couldn't hear them in the city anyway. There were too many noises to distract you. There was no Sabbath ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... they?" Ask no more, or ask The sun that visits their grave so lightly; Ask of the whispering reeds, or task The mourning crickets that chirrup nightly. All of their life but its love forgot, Everything tender and soft and mystic, These are our Babes in the Woods,—you've got, ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... dove, may be heard among other sounds—the latter suggestive of earth's noblest passion, as its utterer is the emblem of devotion itself. At night other sounds are heard, less agreeable to the ear: the shrill "chirrup" of cicadas and tree-toads ringing so incessantly, that only when they cease do you become conscious of their existence; the dull "gluck-gluck" of the great bullfrog; the sharp cries of the heron and qua-bird; and the sepulchral screech of the great horned owl. Still less agreeable ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... trunks of trees, that it is impossible to take a step without breaking one's shins. Not a bird or animal of any kind is to be seen, and a deathlike silence reigns through the forest, which is only now and then interrupted by the rattle of the rattlesnake (like a clock going down), and the chirrup of the chitnunck, or squirrel. The sombre colour of the foliage, the absence of all sun even at mid-day, and the vault-like chilliness one feels when entering a cypress swamp, is far from cheering; and I don't ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 460 - Volume 18, New Series, October 23, 1852 • Various
... forth a few leaves late in autumn when other trees shed theirs, and, drooping in the effort, lingers on, all crackled and smoke-dried, till the following season, when it repeats the same process, and perhaps, if the weather be particularly genial, even tempts some rheumatic sparrow to chirrup in its branches. People sometimes call these dark yards 'gardens'; it is not supposed that they were ever planted, but rather that they are pieces of unreclaimed land, with the withered vegetation of the original brick-field. No man thinks of walking in this desolate ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... neatness. He made a charming picture, with the arched portico over his head, the green grass and low church wall behind him, and then a lovely landscape of wood and pasture and valleys and hillside. Every now and then he would come and chirrup about Joachim, for he was pained and shocked at my having said that his Joachim was someone else and not Joachim at all. I said I was very sorry, but I was afraid the figure was a woman. He asked me what he was to do. He had known it, man and boy, this sixty years, ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... New York ear, which ought to be fairly unbiased since the New York accent is a composite of all accents, English women chirrup and twitter. But the beautifully modulated, clear-clipped enunciation of a cultivated Englishman, one who can move his jaws and not swallow his words whole, comes as near to perfection in English as the diction of the Comedie Francaise comes to ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... from that? Nothing. He is well and has a right to chirrup and ruffle his wings; but I am ill and must die—that's all. It's not worth while to say more about it. And tearful invocations to nature are mortally absurd. Let us ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... nearly to lose my hold, and came down with a run and hands well scored on the rough bark. There I stood, knee-high in rank undergrowth, staring all about in a surprise that must have been not a little ludicrous, for the voice uttered a short cicada-chirrup of laughter, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... dwellings go— [Walls of earth, that stoutly stand, Neatly smoothed with wetted hand— Straw roofs, yellow once and gay, Turned by time and tempest gray—] Where the merry minahs crowd Unbrageous haunts, and chirrup loud— And shrilly talk the parrots green 'Midst the thick leaves dimly seen— And through the quivering foliage play, Light as buds, the squirrels gay, Quickly as the noontide beams Dance upon the rippled streams— Where the pariah[113] howls with fear, If the white man passeth near— Where ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... tokens of vitality, are rare indeed in my City churchyards. A few sparrows occasionally try to raise a lively chirrup in their solitary tree—perhaps, as taking a different view of worms from that entertained by humanity—but they are flat and hoarse of voice, like the clerk, the organ, the bell, the clergyman, and all the rest of the Church-works when they are ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... these human tornados were as violent and brief as those which scourge tropical lands as well as tropical characters. In a quarter of an hour there was a dead calm. The silence of the night, on those still and star-lit waters, was only broken by a sort of chirrup, that might have been mistaken for a cricket, but which I think was a kiss. Indeed, I was rapidly going off again to sleep, when I was called to give the key of the spirit-locker,—a glorious resource that never failed as a solemn seal of ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... moment it seemed to Edith as if all the world were blotted out, and then again the hum of bees, the chirrup of birds, the fall of a fir-cone, the call of the cock-pheasant in the wood sounded obtrusively, making the girl's voice as she continued speaking appear ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... long-absent friend. The whistling wings of wild-fowl, as they ever and anon desert the pools of water now open in the lake and hurry over the forest-trees, accord well with the shrill cry of the yellow-leg and curlew, and with the general wildness of the scene; while the reviving frogs chirrup gladly in the swamps to see the breaking up of winter and welcome back the spring. This is the spring I write of; and to have a correct idea of the beauties and the sweetness of this spring, you must first spend a winter ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... white ashes,' he said, as he dropped his letters into the box; and he was glad to get away from the shadowy houses into the country road. The daisies and the dandelions were still tightly shut, and in the hedgerow a half-awakened chaffinch hopped from twig to twig, too sleepy to chirrup. A streak of green appeared in the east, and the death-like stillness was broken by cock-crows. He could hear them far away in the country and close by, and when he entered his village a little bantam ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... up a spare rib of a horse before a box-wagon without springs, which he brought before the door with great complacency. The traveller and I were soon on the ground-floor of the vehicle, seated upon a log of wood by way of cushion; and with a chirrup from McGibbet, off we went. At the foot of the first hill, our horse stopped; in vain Picton jerked at the rein, and shouted at him: not a step further would he go, until Robbut himself came down to the rescue. "Get along, Boab!" said his master; and Bob, with a mute, pitiful appeal in his ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... The chirrup of the cricket on the hearth is not more familiar to the inhabitants of an old country house in England, than is the roar of the lion to the ears of the traveller in Africa. Our friends had become so accustomed ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston
... good qualities in his habitation. On a little knoll ahead of the stage he saw what seemed to be a heap of earth. There must have been some inspiration in this mound, for, as soon as it came in sight, Whisky Jim began to chirrup and swear at his horses, and to crack his long whip threateningly until he had sent them off up the hill at a splendid pace. Just by this mound of earth he reined up with an air that said the forenoon ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... to round, He drops the silver chain of sound, Of many links without a break, In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake, All intervolved and spreading wide, Like water-dimples down a tide Where ripple ripple overcurls And eddy into eddy whirls; A press of hurried notes that run So fleet they scarce are more than one, Yet changeingly ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... you, sir, it's nothing to fifty others along St. George's Channel. 'Twould do your heart good to see those our captain has among the Cornish rocks; such comfortable dwellings, where you could stow away twenty people, never to chirrup to the sun again; such hiding-holes, with neat little trains of gunpowder, winding like snakes in summer, so that, to prevent discovery, one crack of a good flint would send the caverns and the cliffs high into the air, to tell stories to the stars of the power ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... should have been quite pleased to go if Richard had been willing, but I think he still fancies that Maria (Lady Stisted) would rather not see me, and I am quite for each one doing as he or she likes... The Bird sends his fond love and a chirrup." ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... another little chirrup of mirth. "Keep your brains whittled up, don't you? Any advice you'd like ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... an open window where they could see the blue sky and feel the kisses of the sunbeams. But the poor little violets drooped for a time, they were so homesick, and whispered to each other, "Let us give up and die!" A beautiful canary in a cage over their heads sang "cheer up! chirrup!" but they would not listen to him ...
— Buttercup Gold and Other Stories • Ellen Robena Field
... a little old woman that lives in a cottage alone and spins," and then she sang in a lightsome little chirrup of a voice:— ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... the male parent of the young canary be removed from the nest before the young ones are hatched, or it will be sure to acquire the note of its parent. The male birds of all the feathered creation are the only ones who sing; the females merely utter a sweet chirrup or chirp, so that from the hen canary the bird will run no risk ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... parrot walked over to Pat at his first chirrup and climbed up on the hand he held out and on ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... soft chirrup, and with a sudden bound twitched the strap away, sprang up the bank, and landed directly on Ben's back as he lay peeping over. A peal of laughter greeted him, and having got the better of his master in more ways than one, he made the most of the advantage ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... bliss, why are you torture to remember? Let me not think how the night slipped into dawn as we roamed, how pale gold filtered through the darkness and bleached the air, how bird after bird with distant chirrup and breaking time announced the day. She left me, and as well it might be night. I wound a strange way home. I questioned if it were the dream of a fevered brain; I wondered, would she remember when next she saw me? ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... give them exercise, awaken their attention, animate them, and rouse them to action. It is very bad to have a child even carried about by a dull, inanimate, silent servant, who will never talk, sing or chirrup to it; who will but just carry it about, always kept in the same attitude, and seeing and hearing nothing to give it life and spirit. It requires nothing but a dull creature like this, and the washing ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... dread of jail and its accompanying disgrace. By the time the sad tale was finished, she was worn out with sobs, and sat still, looking straight ahead of her into the fireless stove. But the baby's cries roused her, and she took him in her arms, making a pitiful attempt to chirrup to him. The idiot boy, feeling dimly that something was wrong, came and rubbed his head against her like a faithful dog, whining grievously. She stroked his hair lovingly. "Pore Eddie," she said, "it'd be better if you an' me an' the biby, was with ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... they have generally died two or three days after. However, a little while ago we saved one poor little bird from pussy, and placed it in a cage and fed it, as it was too young to look after itself. The cage was placed in my bedroom, with the window open, and we suppose the chirrup of the little prisoner was heard by its parents, and we were pleased to see one of them fly into the room and carry it food. As they seemed so anxious, and we thought they knew better than we how to feed it, we placed the little thing on the window sill, watching near it to prevent ...
— Golden Moments - Bright Stories for Young Folks • Anonymous
... his head kept turning to left and right with two bright little twinkling eyes, like a mouse when he ventures out from his hole. It gave me the chills to think of killing him, but I thought of the treasure, and my heart set as hard as a flint within me. When he saw my white face he gave a little chirrup of joy and came ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... him, for the same reason, to aggravate a slight cough, and declare he felt but poorly. Such were still his thoughts more than a full hour afterwards, when, supper over, he still sat with shining jovial face in the same warm nook, listening to the cricket-like chirrup of little Solomon Daisy, and bearing no unimportant or slightly respected part in the social ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... little Maltby—blond, bland, diminutive Maltby, with his monocle and his gardenia; big black Braxton, with his lanky hair and his square blue jaw and his square sallow forehead. Canary and crow. Maltby had a perpetual chirrup of amusing small-talk. Braxton was usually silent, but very well worth listening to whenever he did croak. He had distinction, I admit it; the distinction of one who steadfastly refuses to adapt himself to surroundings. He stood out. He awed Mr. Hookworth. ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... from the trees, and the heavy lilac-blooms, with their clustering stars, moved to and fro in the languid air. A grasshopper began to chirrup by the wall, and like a blue thread a long thin dragon-fly floated past on its brown gauze wings. Lord Henry felt as if he could hear Basil Hallward's heart beating, and ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... minutes I distinctly heard the chirrup of a rat outside, and almost continually the same scratching and pattering I had ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... Thucydides, we met in the very beginning with the story of how rich Athenians wore Golden Grasshoppers (as the schoolmaster calls them) in their hair. These golden ornaments were, of course, no common grasshoppers, but the little Cicadas, whose sharp chirrup seemed delightful music to the Greeks. It is unpleasant to our ears, as Browning found it; but in a multitude of Greek poets, in Alcaeus and Anacreon and all through the whole Anthology, we hear its praise. We have it, for ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... to laugh, first sleeping, and then shortly waking;" a curious note, but he does not ask wherefore the sense of humour, or the expression of it, comes to children first in their slumber. Of what do babies dream? And what do the nested swallows chirrup to each other in ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... clearly, bound along. No Tithon thou as poets feign (Shame fall 'em they are deaf and blind) But an insect lithe and strong, Bowing the seeded summerflowers. Prove their falsehood and thy quarrel, Vaulting on thine airy feet. Clap thy shielded sides and carol, Carol clearly, chirrup sweet Thou art a mailed warrior in youth and strength complete; Armed cap-a-pie, Full fair to see; Unknowing fear, Undreading loss, A gallant cavalier Sans peur et sans reproche, In sunlight and in shadow, ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... Cheer up! Cheer up! Chirrup! He's our Master Forester—caches the best seed cones ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... rosy morning, with the fresh air from balmy fields blowing into your window, penetrated still with the afflatus of last night's thoughts and reveries, wouldn't you be cheerful? Wouldn't the unity of all things come to you, and wouldn't you chirrup like a bird, and buzz like a bee, and turn imaginary somersaults and dance and sing, and feel like cutting up "didoes," and talk a little high strung, and be chipper with the lowliest and level with the highest? Wouldn't your heart flow over with ever ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... furnace. Along the underside of the great woods, and in the turn of the valleys, shadows lingered, which were less actual shadows than blottings of blue light. The birds, busy feeding wide-mouthed, hungry fledglings, had mostly ceased from song. But the drowsy hum of bees and chirrup of grasshoppers was continuous, and told, very pleasantly, of the sunshine and large ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... seemed to escape the stranger's hearing, for, full of his bottle, he now rubbed his somewhat sallow hands over it, and with a strange kind of cackle, meant to be a chirrup, cried: "Good wine, good wine; is it not the peculiar bond of good feeling?" Then brimming both glasses, pushed one over, saying, with what seemed intended for an air of fine disdain: "Ill betide those gloomy ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... Scaean gates, with Priam, Panthous, Thymoetes, Lampus, Clytius, and Hiketaon of the race of Mars. These were too old to fight, but they were fluent orators, and sat on the tower like cicales that chirrup delicately from the boughs of some high tree in a wood. When they saw Helen coming towards the tower, they said softly to one another, "Small wonder that Trojans and Achaeans should endure so much and so long, for the sake of a woman so marvellously ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... down from the high desk with wonderful agility. "Clear away, my lads, and let's have lots of room here! Hilli-ho, Dick! Chirrup, Ebenezer!" ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... lavender, most densely at the large end. This bird has a peculiar habit in the breeding-season of rising suddenly into the air and soaring about, often for a considerable distance, uttering a loud note resembling the words 'chirrup, chirrup-chirrup,' repeated all the time the bird is in the air, and then suddenly descending slowly into the grass with outspread wings, much in the style of Mirafra erythroptera. This bird is so similar in appearance, when flying and hopping about in the long ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... an aggravation to the troubles of this small fragment of independence, that it had almost overset his courtesy and self-command. There was no contenting him till he had had all traces of the disaster washed from face and hands, and the other foot; and then, over his tea, though his little clear chirrup was weak, he must needs give a lucid description of Leonard's bandaging, in the midst of which came a knock at the door, and a gasping voice—'I'll be quite quiet—indeed I will! Only just let me come in and kiss him, and see that ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that she might take care of him. So he caught Ailbe up in his arms, kicking and squealing and biting like the wild little animal he was, and wrapped him in a corner of his great cloak. Then he jumped on his horse with a chirrup and galloped away out of ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe
... at the grand scene that lay spread out before him. He was taking his bearings, and determining how far he could trust the power of his untried wings to take him out of harm's way. After a moment's pause, with a loud chirrup, he launched out and made tolerable headway. The others rapidly followed. Each one, as it started upward, from a sudden impulse, contemptuously saluted the abandoned nest with ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... The chirrup brought Rick back to his senses. He wasn't in some marvelous bed, he was in space! But natural forces still bound him to earth, and mother earth would reclaim him with crushing, final impact within a ...
— The Scarlet Lake Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... is not more punctually afield than his unbidden but welcome feathered attendants. They are ahead of him, perched patiently in the trees that dot fence or hedgerow. They see the team afar off, and as the gate rattles in opening for its admission the glad tidings is sent down the line in whistle or chirrup, the most musical of breakfast-bells. The worm that but for the intrusive ploughshare would blush unseen beneath the soil, and but for the feathered detective on the lookout for him would regain his subterranean retreat, might take a less cheery view of the philosophy of the matter; but ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... suddenly it would blow straight in the face and seem to be rising; everything would begin to rustle merrily, to nod, to shake around one; the supple tops of the ferns bow down gracefully, and one rejoices in it, but at once it dies away again, and all is at rest once more. Only the grasshoppers chirrup in chorus with frenzied energy, and wearisome is this unceasing, sharp dry sound. It is in keeping with the persistent heat of mid-day; it seems akin to it, as though evoked by it ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... chirrup May furnish a stave; The ring of a rowel and stirrup, The wash of a wave. The chaunt of the marsh frog in rushes, That chimes through the pauses and hushes Of nightfall, the torrent that gushes, ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... awfu' stock, Tobacco, wreetin' paper, rock, A' kin' o' wersh tongue-twistin' drinks, A' kin' o' Oriental stinks, The best cod liver ile emulsions, Wee poothers that could cure convulsions, Famed Peter Puffer's soothin' syrup, An' stuff to gar canaries chirrup. He'd toothache tinctur's, cures for corns, Pomades to gar hair grow on horns, He'd stuff for healin' beelin' lugs, He'd stuff for suffocatin' bugs, He'd stuff for feshin' up your denners, Against your wull an' a' ...
— The Auld Doctor and other Poems and Songs in Scots • David Rorie
... Bryant's mind as he wielded the ox-goad over the backs of the animals that drew the great plough along the first furrow cut on the farm of the emigrants. The day was bright and fair; the sun shone down on the flower-gemmed sod; no sound broke on the still air but the slow treading of the oxen, the chirrup of the drivers, the ripping of the sod as it was turned in the furrow, and the gay shouts of the ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... and jessamine for supremacy in odour! of lute and nightingale for victory in song! And how the little bright ripples of the docile brooks, the fresher for their races, leap up against one another, to look on! and how they chirrup and applaud, as if they too had a voice of some importance in these parties of pleasure ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... thought, too, of the millions of living things snugly asleep all round; warmth in realising that unanimity of sleep. Insects and flowers, birds, men, beasts, the very leaves on the trees—away in slumber-land. Waiting for the first bird to chirrup, one had, perhaps, even a stronger feeling than in daytime of the unity and communion of all life, of the subtle brotherhood of living things that fall all together into oblivion, and, ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... that evening I listened to his monotonous chirrup about bad money driving out good, the token value of silver, the depreciation of the rupee, and the true standards ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... superb in the uxorious husband whom the demure child-wife bamboozles, in the comedies of Moliere. No man has ever better depicted than he did a sweet nature shocked by calamity and bowed down with grief, or, as in Joe Chirrup, in Elfie, manliness chastened by affliction and ennobled by true love: yet his impersonation of Fagin was only second to that of J.W. Wallack, Jr.; his Moody, in The Country Girl, was almost tragic in its grim and grizzled ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... chirrup," answered the Doctor, still diffidently. Then he added, as one reflecting over an incident in a rather remote past: "It was odd, wasn't it. You would think that two men who stood where we were together—I, who had put my hands in his ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... Lobo and Bruce, he is treated as a myth by Le Vaillant; M. Wiedman makes him cry "Shirt! Shirt! Shirt!" Dr. Sparrman "Tcherr! Tcherr!" Mr. Delegorgue "Chir! Chir! Chir!" His note suggested to me the shrill chirrup of a sparrow, and his appearance that ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... but I don't dare trust you, when you are no more used to him, for he stumbles so. Go on, Job!" she added, with an inviting chirrup, as she leaned forward and rattled the whip up and down in its socket, to remind Job of ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... confusion of the household. It was lucky if the children slept till seven o'clock. Usually, soon after six, a chirp was heard, a voice, an excited chirrup began, announcing the creation of a new day, there was a thudding of quick little feet, and the children were up and about, scampering in their shirts, with pink legs and glistening, flossy hair all clean ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... my pack is heavy, and my pocket full of guineas Chimes like a wedding-peal, but little I enjoy Roads that never echo to the chirrup of their canter,— The gay Golden ...
— The Lord of Misrule - And Other Poems • Alfred Noyes
... way, until, by cocking his eye, he saw that Madame Fox had finished her dinner. And then, houff! Up he flew, with a jolly chirp of laughter, right over the heads of the astonished women. What of his broken wing now? He began to whistle, to sing, to chirrup like a crazy bird up there in the air. The women looked at ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... the house and up the street and through the gate; and the guest sat hearkening to the sound of her footsteps till it died out, and there was nought to be heard save the far-off murmur of the market, and the chirrup of the little one ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris |
