"Chirrup" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... two-seater himself. It is a big 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 beside ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... less querulous. But with all these foibles, Sir James was a 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 name ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... 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 Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... that he would carry the poor little thing home to his kind wife, 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
... were so white. Buskins of shells, all silvered used she, And branched with blushing coral to the knee; Where sparrows perched of hollow pearl and gold, Such as the world would wonder to behold. Those with sweet water oft her handmaid fills, Which, as she went, would chirrup through the bills. Some say for her the fairest Cupid pined And looking in her face was strooken blind. But this is true: so like was one the other, As he imagined Hero was his mother. And oftentimes into ...
— Hero and Leander • Christopher Marlowe
... hear my chirrup clear As, in the woodland straying, They gather flow'rs through summer hours— And then I hear them saying: "Sing, sing away the livelong day, Glad songster of the thicket— With your shrill mirth you gladden earth, You merry ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... with a chirrup clear and strong Dispersing all his dream, I thence withdrew, and followed long ...
— True Stories about Cats and Dogs • Eliza Lee Follen
... 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 ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... 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 to ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... of morning, close to the open window, uttered a feeble chirrup. Into Stephen's mind there leaped without reason recollection of the morning after his first term at school, when, awakened by the birds, he had started up and fished out from under his pillow his catapult and the box of shot he had brought home and taken to sleep with him. He ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... a 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
... to ride on the 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 the hair of ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... multiflora and bignonia. There he seemed to see 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, all telling him too plainly that all that phase of life ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... heard the throstles vamp, Pouring their liquid notes like golden syrup, Out would I go and round the garden tramp, Wearing goloshes if the day were damp, And imitate their chirrup. ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 24, 1920. • Various
... an 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
... being so filled with a rage of joy, dashing up and down the smooth white sides of the quarry, multiplied by their blue shadows. They would nestle in crevices, like bits of thistledown caught in a grass-tuft, and would there sun themselves and chirrup. So many hundreds were there, and their shadows so multiplied them, that they seemed less like birds than like some dream of a bird heaven—essential birdhood. They were so quick with life, so warm, with their red-splashed breasts and blue flashing bodies; they wove such a tireless, ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... "that sempiternal twitter, that intolerable chirrup that destroys the best and latest hours of sleep! ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... going on, Lord John leaned forward and told me some interminable story about a buffalo and an Indian rajah which seemed to me to have neither beginning nor end. Professor Summerlee had just begun to chirrup like a canary, and Lord John to get to the climax of his story, when the train drew up at Jarvis Brook, which had been given us as the station ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and, if it hadn't been too dark to see her smile, there might have been seen 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 sad, sweet, ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... 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 ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... 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 a half-awakened bird. ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... hops and wild clematis twined and hung among its 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 the ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford
... 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 two years, Rhody, but that's ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... as soon as we were afloat, one poor boy near me began to wheeze, and I turned upon him in exasperation. He saw his danger, and meekly said, "I won't cough, Gunnel!" and he kept his word. For two mortal hours he sat grasping his gun, with never a chirrup. But two unfortunates in the bow of the boat developed symptoms which I could not suppress; so, putting in at a picket station, with some risk I dumped them in mud knee-deep, and embarked a substitute, who after the first ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... snipping, and then sewing, I am sure with admirable 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 some one 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, and had always shown it ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... ground and bare elm branches. A few inches of snow had fallen the day before; the sun 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
... its highest speed, that a 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 ...
— A Reversible Santa Claus • Meredith Nicholson
... of Arvina been less agitated than it was by dark and ominous forebodings, that walk had been a pleasant one, in the calm and breezeless evening. The stars were shining by thousands in the deep azure sky; the constant chirrup of the shrill-voiced cicala, not mute as yet, although his days of tuneful life were well nigh ended, rose cheerfully above the rippling murmurs of the waters, and the mysterious rustling of the herbage rejoicing to drink up the copious dew; and heard by fits and starts from ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... company of an intimate friend. At her, no man’s gaze was more frank and childlike than his. Hence the charm of his books. No man’s writing can take you into the country as Borrow’s can: it makes you feel the sunshine, see the meadows, smell the flowers, hear the skylark sing and the grasshopper chirrup. Who else can do it? I know of none. And as to personal intercourse with him, if I were asked what was the chief delight of this, I should say that it was the delight of bracingness. A walking tour with a self-conscious lover of the picturesque—an “interviewer” of Nature with ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... that cannot be rightly 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. Below, how the river seems to sleep ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... if you 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
... 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 in ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... dense wreaths of creeper, while many other beautiful blossoms flourished and faded unseen. In that dark dismal place there was an absence of animal life. Sometimes, however, by day we would hear the tuneful wail of the finger-glass bird or an occasional robin would chirrup, while at night great frogs croaked gloomily and the sloth would ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... 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, full-mouthed; rebellowing^, reboant^. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... like it, I 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. ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... 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 ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... shudder of delight. Even Matthew Arnold, a man who had a way of seeing things almost, sometimes, criticises Emerson for lack of unity, because the unity was on so large a scale that Arnold's imagination could not see it; and now the chirrup from afar, rising from the east and the west, 'Why doesn't George Meredith?' etc. People want him to put guide-posts in his books, apparently, or before his sentences: 'TO ——' or 'TEN MILES TO THE NEAREST ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... trundle-bed, where I 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 ...
— Riley Songs of Home • James Whitcomb Riley
... 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 ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... enemy's fire; 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 of shame. He was the fellow who had always expressed ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... 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, The tempests ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... scattering seeds or crumbs in sheltered spots, and fixing masses of suet in conspicuous places, to an approving chirrup of dee-dee, chick-a-dee-dee-dee, from friendly little throats. The basket was almost emptied by the time they reached the outskirts of the wood and neared the top of ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... neatness. Not a speck of dust could be supposed to lie on the shining painted floor; the back of every chair was in its place against the wall. The very hearth-stone shone, and the heads of the large iron nails in the floor were polished to steel. Ellen sat a while listening to the soothing chirrup of the cricket and the pleasant crackling of the flames. It was a fine cold winter's day. The two little windows at the far end of the kitchen looked out upon an expanse of snow; and the large lilac bush that grew close by the wall, moved lightly by the wind, ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... 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 go out with ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 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 her thoughts. When Susan started ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... 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 ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... 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. Ladies were always asking ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... birds, 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
... in pre-empting, would swear to any necessary number of 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
... are laid there, Safe from harm, till baby-birds Chirrup forth to take their places, 'Mongst ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller
... the more ethereal loveliness of September, and watch the subtle amber rays 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 ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... most bitter human 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, in quite a systematic way, and on being interfered with ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... Wouldn't care to do it myself. Had to come here on business and shan't be sorry when it's finished. I give you my word I couldn't sleep a wink last night because of the quiet. I was just dropping off when a beast of a bird outside the window gave a chirrup, and it brought me up with a jerk as though somebody had fired a gun. There's a damned cat somewhere near my room that mews. I lie in bed waiting for the next ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... and he ran up to the stately animal without a fear. Duke put back his ears and swished his tail as if displeased for a moment; but Ben looked straight in his eyes, gave a scientific stroke to the iron-gray nose, and uttered a chirrup which made the ears prick up as if ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... 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 little ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... {230} How taught old painters in 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 he who nobly sunk "ohs" And "ahs" ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... begins 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 ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... snow, the coats of the horses ruffled up, and they stepped sluggishly. Asa had to chirrup constantly to the six ahead, and those behind lagged at their halters. The storm increased and we got on slowly. By four o'clock ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... 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 walked up the road shrilling and clapping his wings, ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... that 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 ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... awakening chirrup of a bird sounded from the garden, and Helen's voice quavered as she said, "We'll talk about it in ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... 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 ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... Master Maloney. He strolled slowly out, while Billy Windsor, mounting a chair, proceeded to chirrup and snap his fingers in the effort to establish the foundations of an entente cordiale with the ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... persistency of type. The cockroaches of the carboniferous epoch are exceedingly similar to those which now run about our coal-cellars; and its locusts, termites and dragon-flies are closely allied to the members of the same groups which now chirrup about our fields, undermine our houses, or sail with swift grace about the banks of our sedgy pools. And, in like manner, the palaeozoic scorpions can only be distinguished by the eye of a ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... sees one 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 ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... or more 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 ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... excellent works in verse and prose, and, heaven be praised! but little left of the trash and trumpery stuff of those duncical mumblers of ave-maries and the barbarous foregoing Gothic age, I have made bold to choose to chirrup and warble my plain ditty, or, as they say, to whistle like a goose among the swans, rather than be thought deaf among so many pretty poets and eloquent orators. And thus I am prouder of acting the clown, or any other under-part, among the many ingenious ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... hat over 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 ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... day. 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 ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... 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 to weave the spell; and, though pleasure-jaunts are out of the ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... hollow 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 flower, flits noiselessly ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... a chirrup, a chirrup, A chirrup, a chirrup, a chirrup, A chirrup, a chirrup, a chirrup, a chirrup, A chirrup, a ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... bleeding angel, I am 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 of faults. He must command; he must be a chief; ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... in the 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 ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... leaving the Modder the sky grew black with clouds, the birds hid themselves from view and the veldt-cricket ceased from his monotonous chirrup. Then all at once the storm burst upon us. The lightning played incessantly and sheets of rain blotted out the kopjes and the veldt from view. It was in weather like this that our poor fellows advanced through the darkness upon the ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett
... Mr. Bury kissed Eyebright and lifted her into the wagon, where papa and Ben were already seated. Good-bys were exchanged. Bessie, drowned in tears, climbed on the wheel for a last hug, and was pulled down by some one. Ben gave a chirrup, the horses began to move, and that was the end of dear old Tunxet. The last thing Eyebright saw, as she turned for a final look, was Wealthy's grim, sad face,—poor Wealthy, who had lost most and felt sorriest of all, though she said ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... cow-stables are 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 ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... rows, among the dying leaves, the first bolls were opening. The air was still hot, for at noontime the glare in the sandy road was fierce, but the evening was cool, and from out in the gleaming dew came a sweetly, lonesome chirrup, an alarm in the grass, the picket of the insect army, crying the approach of frost. In the atmosphere was felt the influence of a reviving activity; new cotton pens were built along the borders of the fields, ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... almost comical fashion, giving away everything she owned, down to her treasures of colored bottles and needlework's, 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 of the Venus del Pardo along with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... 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 ...
— Golden Moments - Bright Stories for Young Folks • Anonymous
... dust ahead, and for a moment the prospect was obscured, the trees that filled the gulley, bunched at the summit into a thicket, just discernible in foggy outline. The horses had gained the level, Jim Bailey, who knew the road in his sleep, had cheered them with a familiar chirrup, when the leaders stopped, recoiling in a clatter of slackened harness on the wheelers. The stage came to a halt so violent that Jim Bailey lurched forward against the splashboard, the reins jerked out ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... evening were stealing rapidly, rapidly from the duhan and dark cypress, making the narrow winding valley of the Black River narrower and the mountains higher. They could hear the river murmuring and the unceasing chirrup of ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... constructed partly of stone and partly of wood, evolved rather than built, for evidently the work was done by many hands, and stretched over a century or more of time. Vines and flowers, fruits and shrubbery, stone walls covered close by creeping bellflowers where birds chirrup and cheep and play hide-and-seek the livelong day—all these are there. The house is situated on a little wooded plateau that overlooks the lake, and back of it the solemn and everlasting hills stand guard. There are no such mountains here ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... hand rose the Government bush out of which we get our firewood, standing grand and gloomy amid huge cliffs and crags; even the summer sunshine could not enliven it, nor the twitter and chirrup of countless birds. In front, the chain of hills we were crossing rolled down in gradually decreasing hillocks, till they merged in the vast plains before us, stretching away as far as the eye could reach towards the south, all quivering in the haze and glare of the bright ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... Tree-Frogs are active and utter various sounds, some a pleasing chirrup (like mine), others a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 17, 1914 • Various
... the washtub, 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 ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... 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 ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... 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? None met ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... 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 ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... I left the spot, I confess to a certain misgiving, as the pleading chirrup of the ousted fledgling followed me faintly and more faintly up the hill, recalling, too, the many previous similar acts of mine—and one in particular, when I had slaughtered in cold blood two of these irresponsibles found in a single nest. But sober second ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... 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 ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... 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 ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... are the nice little couple in question. Mr. Chirrup has the smartness, and something of the brisk, quick manner of a small bird. Mrs. Chirrup is the prettiest of all little women, and has the prettiest little figure conceivable. She has the neatest little foot, and the softest little ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... slight accent of exultation—"they've never found it. Come on. Old Nigger knows it; many a time has he trodden its soft and shaking surface. Good old horse!" and she patted the black neck of her charger as she turned his head towards the distant hills and urged him forward with a "chirrup." ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... 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 Bayard ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... out-door insect, through the spring month and the cold of winter, piping only in sadness when the still autumnal evenings close in their brightness and beauty over the earth; but he sang always, and his chirrup was heard at all seasons. In the winter the fire on the hearth warmed him; in the summer he had a cool resting place, and he was cheerful and merry through all the long year. And this reminds me of an anecdote ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... flowerland sprite, Your dear little lady sits near in delight; In a wee felted basket she lovingly huddles— Two dots of white eggs to her warm breast she cuddles! Whiz-z! whiff! off to your flowers! Buzz mid the perfume of jasmine bowers! Chatter and chirrup, my king of the fays, And laugh at the song that I ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... and the two smilingly held each other's gaze for the larger part of a minute. Then one by one came in the ladies of the house, and it was kiss and chirrup ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... with a chirrup clear and strong, Dispersing all his dream, I thence withdrew, and follow'd long The windings ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... caution. 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
... flower—flower is not complete without smell—but I don't care if I never smell a bush till I die. Then the birds they laugh and talk like Christians; they make me split my sides, God bless their little hearts; but they won't chirrup. Oh, dear, no, bless you, they leave the Christians to chirrup—they hold conversations and giggle and laugh and play a thing like a fiddle—it is Australia! where everything is inside-out and topsy-turvy. The animals have four legs, so ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... 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, ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... her 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 penetrating perfume of the onions. Auguste meantime ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... happiest when storms 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 ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... 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
... 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 sideways against ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... tiny bark of the squirrel, and the soft cooing of the Carolinian 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 ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... see the dolls dance and the larks and the woodpeckers sing and chirrup; you will see a home filled with happiness up to the roof, for there is no one there waiting for miracles which only happen in fairy tales. You will see a ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... 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. Lenox's sense of the humorous; and the ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... and besides, she had a 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 Minnie;" and then with sudden compunction, ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... 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; ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... up to 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 from firing his pistol up the chimney, ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... 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; LeConte speeds it to the westering peaks. The ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... will all flock together and descend upon him, shout and laugh him away, bully him with dead millionaires, bad corporations and humdrum business men, overawe him with mere history, argue him with statistics, and thunder him with sermons out of the world—if he puts up a faint little chirrup of hope that men ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... 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 ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... softly fluttering here 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 sighs ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... change themselves into wolves and into swine and into white hares, and when they are in their own shapes they are stronger than almost any man; and there are young men there who have cat's eyes and if a bird chirrup or a mouse squeak they cannot keep them shut even though it is bedtime and they sleepy; and listen, for this is a great wonder, a very great wonder, there is a long narrow bridge, and when anybody goes to cross it, that the Queens ...
— In The Seven Woods - Being Poems Chiefly of the Irish Heroic Age • William Butler (W.B.) Yeats
... chirrup, a 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
... is filled with music: sweet sounds of love. The bark of the squirrel, the cooing of mated doves, the "rat-ta-ta" of the pecker, and the constant and measured chirrup of the cicada, are all ringing together. High up, on a topmost twig, the mocking-bird pours forth his mimic note, as though he would shame all other ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... so green and gay, See him as he bounds away! Without bridle, spur, or stirrup, Oh! what music in that chirrup! ...
— The Quadrupeds' Pic-Nic • F. B. C.
... The roses 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 ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... young men from across the aisle had also arisen and pressed into the crowd. One was directly in front of Uncle, and the one who had made the false change had crowded himself between Uncle and Aunt Sarah. The train slowed up as the depot was reached, and all crowded toward the door. There was a low chirrup, and Uncle was being roughly jostled about by the two men, when there was a cry of "pickpockets," and the train-boy was seen swinging on to the wrist of one of the men behind Uncle and yelling "let 'er go; ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... 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 be back under ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... 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 get back ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... 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 she, "I am ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... 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
... 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 running ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... chirrup in the grass, The birds sing in the tree, And oh! how quick the time would pass If you ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... and truly may we consider that the very abundance of good versification has lowered the price of poets, and therefore, in this marketing world, has robbed them of proper estimation. Doubtless, there have been mighty men of song higher in rank, as earlier in time, than any now who dare to try a chirrup: but there are also many of our anonymous minstrels, with whom the greater number of the so-called old English poets could not with advantage to the ancients justly be compared. Look at 'Johnson's Lives.' Who can read the book, and the specimens it glorifies, without rejoicing in his prose, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Fezziwig, skipping 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
... 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
... 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 ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... 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 ...
— The Scarlet Lake Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... that Pluto was a cannibal, 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
... enters the Lake near its apex. We got a house from a Waiyau man on a bank about forty feet above the level of Nyassa, but I could not sleep for the manoeuvres of a crowd of the minute ants which infested it. They chirrup distinctly; they would not allow the men to sleep either, though all were pretty tired by the rough ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... 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 game for, Billy being a great favorite with ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... cage upon the grass where the sun was hottest, withdrawing myself into the shade as less in need of light and warmth, and read a volume of Berquin's Children's Friend in full sight of Caspar Hauser. Whenever I turned a page I would stick my finger between the wires and chirrup encouragingly to the captive, all with a single eye to getting him used to me. His speed and staying powers were equally extraordinary, but I was cheered, when the forenoon was spent and I picked up the cage to take him in, by observing that he ran more deliberately ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... perch ere swallowing it with a twitter of satisfaction. The wood-swallow wears a becoming suit of soft pearly grey and white, to contrast with its black head and throat. It has a graceful, soaring flight and a cheerful chirrup. At certain seasons scores congregate on a branch, perching in a row, so closely compact that their breasts show as a continuous band of white. When one leaves his place to catch an insect, the others close up the ranks and dress the line, and on returning, wrangle and scold as he may, he needs ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... 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
... by! O the days gone by! The apples in the orchard, and the pathway through the rye; The chirrup of the robin, and the whistle of the quail As he piped across the meadows sweet as any nightingale; When the bloom was on the clover, and the blue was in the sky, And my happy heart brimmed over, in the ...
— Riley Child-Rhymes • James Whitcomb Riley
... once; for it is only the weak who make 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 ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... wasn't quite sure whether he ought to laugh or not. And then Tommy winked at him. So Jolly thought there must be a joke somewhere and he began to chirrup as ...
— The Tale of Jolly Robin • Arthur Scott Bailey
... general practise, are very beneficial to the children: they 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 and dressing left to her, to give a child the rickets, and make it, instead of being ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... zenith blue melts away toward the horizon in dreamy violet, and the retreating sun leaves limber shafts of orange light, like Parthian arrows, among the green branches of the elms, what sounds can charm the ear like the soft chirrup of the cricket, the homely drone of the hive-seeking bee, and the cool rustle of the breeze through the tops of the spring-sodden water grasses? How fondly the mind blends the evening colors and the incipient voices of the night! 'Oh,' says ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... woods of Bas Meudon, alone beneath the trees, when they talked like children, and laughed over the luncheon basket which Madame Bolivard had stuffed full of electrifying edibles; when they lay on their backs and looked dreamily at the sky through the leaves, and listened to the chirrup of insects awakening from winter and the strange cracklings and tiny voices of springtide, and gave themselves up to the general vibration of life which accompanies the working of the sap in ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke |
