"Crooning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... about to pass him, by the sound of what was none the less like the Bible from the solemn crooning way in which Donal read it to the congregation of his listening thoughts, yet was certainly not the Bible, she was presently fascinated by the vague terror of what she heard, and stood absorbed: without much originative power, she had an imagination prompt and ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... too hot for Aurelia to go out of doors till late in the day, when the shadow of the house came over the steps. She was sitting on one, with Amoret nestled in her lap, and was crooning an old German lullaby of Nannerl's, which seemed to have a wonderful effect in calming the child, who at last fell into a doze. Aurelia had let her voice die away, and had begun to think over her strange ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... hind-legs dreadfully. But you do not do it. It is still too comfortable where you are. You may move a little, and have a vague idea that it might be rather nice outside. But you do not go to see; you only take the other paw into your mouth, and, still crooning to yourself, you ...
— Bear Brownie - The Life of a Bear • H. P. Robinson
... breast, and she, whose inmost nature was maternity, delighted in the pressure of the tiny body, crooning songs to him when they were left alone, and pausing now and then to pity and kiss the little shrunken foot that hung ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... was pressed into her favourite beast's side, and she was crooning soothingly to it as the white jets ping-panged into the frothing pail, and he stood for a ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... in his little garden until late at night, under the stars, with the sea crooning and calling to him down the slope. When he finally went to bed he did not sleep, but lay until morning with tear-wet eyes and despair in his heart. All the forenoon he went about his usual daily work absently. Frequently he fell into long ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... colors, atrocious reds, blues and yellows. These windows were opened a little at the top, and through the openings came soft sounds of Spring, the wind racing among the budding branches, the sudden call of a bird, and occasionally the crooning, sleepy cackle of hens from a distance. Now and then a cloud drifted by, across the sun, dimming the interior for a moment, so that the minister's voice seemed to come from farther off. The sunlight through the stained glass projected colored splotches here and there. I wondered if the people ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... turmoil of the wilderness brook; the little birch knoll, yellow in the evening glow; the mellow voice of the summer night crooning through the pines. But he had the rare tact ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... in the tropics it was after all not such a bad place. We could hear the crooning of lazy rollers on the beach, and what little sea-breeze moved at all came in to us through iron-barred windows. The walls were of coral, three feet thick. So was the roof. The wet red-tiled floor made at least an impression of coolness, and the fresh green foliage of an enormous ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... I was crooning some such babble as this to myself when, near Woodbridge, I came upon a big, shiny motor car stranded by the roadside. Several people, evidently intelligent and well-to-do, sat under a tree while their chauffeur fussed with a tire. I was so absorbed in my own thoughts ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... Elvira, "there's one person out there that isn't hardened and degraded." She looked with reverent eyes at Angel, who was walking at the head of the foremost horse, crooning a psalm; "and, as for me, I still feel myself quite soft, almost pulpy, and ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... teeth have been worrying him rather to-day. Ayah is with him. I left her crooning him to sleep. Will you ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... hour earlier than usual, I was aware of a small figure in the dining-room—a tiny, plump figure in a ridiculously inadequate shirt which came, perhaps, half-way down the tubby stomach. It wandered round the room, thumb in mouth, crooning to itself as it took stock of the pictures. Undoubtedly this ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... on his grey mare, Meg, A better never lifted leg, Tam skelpit on thro' dub and mire, Despising wind, and rain, and fire; Whiles haulding fast his gude blue bonnet; Whiles crooning o'er some auld Scots sonnet; Whiles glowring round wi' prudent cares, Lest bogles catch him unawares; Kirk-Alloway was drawing nigh, Whare ghaists and houlets ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... urchin, which in accord with a whim of the sea had floated and was now held aloft slantwise to the lips of the wind, firm in the branching tines of stag's-horn coral. A rustic pipe—giving forth a sonorous moan, now cooing and crooning, now bold and confident, and again irresolute and unschooled. Not too sure of instrumentalism, oft the note was hesitating, soliciting a compliant ear as became a modest wooer of the muses, polishing his unceremonious serenade to some, shy mermaid, ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... mother shields from all alarms The tired child she gathers to her breast, The brunette Night doth fold me in her arms, And hushes me to perfect peace and rest. Her eyes of stars shine on me, and I hear Her voice of winds low crooning on my ear. O Night, O Night, how beautiful thou art! Come, fold me closer ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... wounded man his groaning; Hushed the wife her little ones; Alone they heard the drum-roll And the roar of Sepoy guns. But to sounds of home and childhood The Highland ear was true;— As her mother's cradle-crooning ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... and shoutings, the deep inner beauty of the night stole upon us. A mystical, elusive beauty. difficult to define, that lay underneath and around, and within the moonlight—a beauty of deep nestling shadows, crooning whispers, and ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... The witch-crooning died away into a murmur; and the Frenchman became conscious of the withdrawal of that presence from the room. No sound came to tell of the reclosing of the door; but the obsession ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... which stood the great trees like mummies. Still the sound continued, seeming to come from under my feet. I stopped, and, kneeling down, put my ear to the crust, and there, as distinct as possible, I heard the wimpling of a baby brook, crooning to itself under its thick white blanket. Here then was the cradle of one of those streams that later would become such an ugly customer to meet. It was babily innocent now, and the one living thing beside myself on this May day in the ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... speech was a low crooning note, like the language in which doves converse, mingled with a twittering current of undertone. But every moment it rose into higher notes, evidently expressing ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... had been an angel he had seen in the high air, it would have been the Act—or the banshee, and her crooning and keening by the riverside, with her white cloak, her red, burnished hair.... But it was an island he had seen, a dancing town, with his own hard wee Scots-Irish eyes. And that was not an Act of God; it was a fact, and so outside his Uncle Alan's bailiwick and within his Uncle Robin's. ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... canoe lay Red Dog. He had secured more whisky, and was as the dead who know not. He would awake on the morrow with a headache, perhaps, but with a proud consciousness that he had accomplished the feat of a statesman for himself and for his band. Bigbeam rowed steadily toward home, crooning some barbarous old half-song of her race. ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... not catch his words. She was crooning over the pot inarticulately. The seams in the skin around her eyes netted together, almost closing the flaming red lids. Through the narrow slits she was following the steam as it rose and disappeared in the air. Then slowly her finger began ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... into town and get down before a weatherbeaten inn, the signboard above which testifies to respect and love for some emperor of long ago. Youths and maidens wander arm in arm by the foaming tide or sit in the little arbors crooning songs and clinking glasses. Officers strut about, calling each other loudly by their titles or responding to the sallies of those of their comrades who fill the after-deck of the steamer. The village mayor in a braided jacket, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... in a fairy garment of green and ivory-white. Each least sound was crystal clear in the rarefied air; the quarrelling of two sparrows, the high-pitched chatter from the compound behind the cottages, the crooning of ring-doves among the pines. Butterflies, like detached flowers, fluttered in and out. A faint breeze stirred the roses, so that an occasional creamy petal fell circling ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... thou canst go where I cannot, and bring no harm to my love. Thou shalt carry a letter to my dear one, and bring back an answer," and in delight at the thought, the young man rose and walked up and down the room, the gos-hawk preening its wings on his shoulder, and crooning ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... whinny of the loon, the whooping of the crane, the booming of the bittern, the vulpine bark of the eagle, the loud trumpeting of the migratory geese sounding down out of the midnight sky; or by the seashore, the coast of New Jersey or Long Island, the wild crooning of the flocks of gulls, repeated, continued by the hour, swirling sharp and shrill, rising and falling like the wind in a storm, as they circle above the beach or dip to the dash of the waves,—are much more welcome in certain ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... into the drawing-room. Mrs. Henson, wearing something faded and dishevelled in the way of a mourning dress, was crooning some dirge at the piano. Her white hair was streaming loosely over her shoulders, there was a vacant stare in her eyes. The intruders might have been statues for all the heed she took of them. Presently the discordant ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... an order with the telephone company to run a wire to Medicine Woods the first thing in the morning, and drove to the depot to arrange for the ticket and check. In less than an hour he was holding the Girl's hands and crooning over her. ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... it might be merely a little wind that was troubling her. She held the baby upright, hoping that the pain would pass away with a change of position, and she walked up and down the room rocking the child in her arms and crooning to her for fully half an hour. At last the child ceased to wail, and she laid her in her cradle and sat watching, thinking that if she were to lose her baby she must go mad.... She had lost Dick's love, and if the baby were taken away there would be nothing left ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... sit and tell me stories—mostly very childish, and often seeming to mean hardly anything. Now and then they would call a general assembly to amuse me. On one such occasion a moody little fellow sang me a strange crooning song, with a refrain so pathetic that, although unintelligible to me, it caused the tears to run down my face. This phenomenon made those who saw it regard me with much perplexity. Then first I bethought myself that I had not once, in that world, looked on water, falling or lying or running. ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... matted with dust stained his coat, making him almost as red and white as the Range stud. Drew holstered the Colt and went to his horse, crooning softly as he caught one of the chewed and ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... before her? Dick—" She staggered towards him, and the fine cloak slipped from her shoulders; and then it was that Tommy changed from a child into a woman, and raised the other woman from the ground with crooning words of encouragement such as mothers use, and led her to the inner room. "Do not go," she said, turning to Dick; "I shall be ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... precipitous paths he led the way buoyantly and now and then he broke into low almost inaudible crooning of an ancient ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... never expressed it in words, but he had a feeling that whatever he was meant to do, God would see that he did, so long as he gave himself wholly to the work. One evening when the Southern Cross was lifting above the darkling sea, and the violins were crooning something with a weird burden ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... signalized my release from the office of stableman. We were off again at six; an exquisite night it was, a big moon in the zenith, the evening star burning steadily over the dim, receding island. We finished with a sing-song on deck, a crooning, desultory performance, with sleepy choruses, and a homely beer-bottle passing ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... and out. I call it singing, but I dare say a musician would not use that word to the tuneless yet sweet humming of the low worn voice. I found out from the words, far more than from the attempt at the tune, that it was the Old Hundredth she was crooning to herself; but the quiet continuous sound told of content, and gave me a pleasant feeling, as I stood in the street just outside the door, quite in harmony with that soft May morning. I went in. At first she did not catch who it was, and stood up as ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... banks with trenches—burrowing themselves into the earth as only the muskrat had done in the forgotten days of peace. Strong, unafraid men came from the ends of the world to die by its side. And it would have gladly sung them a sweet, low lullaby, crooning a song 30 with which mothers on the shores of all the seven seas had once rocked them to sleep—only now the sound of heavy firing, dull booms of the cannon, and the spit and nervous drum of the machine gun, made its song as futile and indistinguishable ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... in idleness, hugging their misery, discussing the "bating" of the Unionist party, or, as I saw them yesterday evening, listening to the crooning of an ancient female gutter-snipe, a dun-coloured heap of decrepit wretchedness, chanting the great future of the Irish Parliament in a picturesque and extraordinary doggerel anent the "larned reprisintatives of the ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... an altogether different mollusc which is commonly known as the "bleeding-tooth shell," the gory stains about the base of the tooth being highly significant. The local example of the whimsicality of Nature owes its excellence to absolute purity. No fond mother crooning to her first-born ever looked on budding teeth more delightful in modelling ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... stared ahead of her at the shady lawn. Miss Daphne was bending over nasturtium beds gathering the black seeds, but instead, Kit saw in a vision ahead a great hickory fire burning in the outdoor veranda fireplace with the mystery of the night crooning low over the sleeping hills. Her mother's letter came next. Kit read it with delight. She could tell just exactly the mood the mother bird was in when she wrote, just how her conscience pricked her for having been a ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... took place on the eleventh day of the fourth month in the same year, B.C. 479 [1]. Early one morning, we are told, he got up, and with his hands behind his back, dragging his staff, he moved about by his door, crooning over,— 'The great mountain must crumble; The strong beam must break; And the wise man wither away like a plant.' After a little, he entered the house and sat down opposite the door. Tsze-kung had heard his words, and said to himself, ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge
... the woman. The blooming, rosy, graceful girl stood at the side of the pale, tear-eyed woman, and was quietly saying something to her; the latter was nodding her head and crooning unnecessary, belated words. Trirodov turned quietly ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... Russ," Dunbar said in a kind of dreadful crooning whisper. "You calm down now. You younger fellows—you don't look at things the way we used to. Thing is, we got to go straight. People trapped like this liable to start meandering. Liable to start ...
— To Each His Star • Bryce Walton
... in the upper room of one of the two towers that flanked the entrance to the forecourt. Bale was with him, and the two, with the door doubly locked upon them and guarded by a sentry whose crooning they could hear, shared such comfort as a pitcher of water and a gloomy outlook afforded. The darkness hid the medley of odds and ends, of fishing-nets, broken spinning-wheels and worn-out sails, which littered their prison; but the inner of the two slit-like windows that lighted ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... when, with all the passionate violence of the hills, the tempest broke. Safe inside, he talked and smoked with the patriarch and his thoughts wandered, as he sat there by the hearth, back to the room from which now and then drifted a fragment of plaintively crooning song. ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... drowsily, with a flush of sleep on her little ardent face and all her belongings in a bundle no bigger than a hat-box. But, with all his urgency, the eastern sky was stained with dawn before he was clear of the town, bludgeoning the donkeys before him, with the gear on one and Incarnacion laughing and crooning on the other. ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... more enchanting existed." But enough of subjective fancies. This study contains much beauty, and every bar rules over a little harmonic kingdom of its own. It is so lovely that not even the Brahms' distortion in double notes or the version in octaves can dull its magnetic crooning. At times so delicate is its design that it recalls the faint fantastic tracery made by frost on glass. In all instances save one it is written as four unbroken quarter triplets in the bar—right hand. Not so Riemann. ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... it. The old man had lived in the glen for nearly three-quarters of a century, and he, if any one, must know the girl. With the thought, Clayton sprang through the window, and a few minutes later was at the cabin. The old man sat whittling in the porch, joining in the song with which his wife was crooning a child to sleep within. Clayton easily identified Europa, as he had christened her; the simple mention of her ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.
... across the body of his friend, and was crooning into his ear the great chorus from the third act of Helen in Leuce. He said that nobody but Spinky understood it. And Spinky couldn't understand it ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... are swiftly gathering. Already the dusk—sure herald of night—is here. Above in the trees the birds are crooning their last faint songs and ruffling their ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... home again to the farm, with Mother Marshall cuddling and crooning to her: "Oh, my dear pretty child! To think you've really come all this long way to comfort us!" and Father running the old machine at an unheard of rate of speed, slamming along over the road as if he had been sent for in great haste, and reaching his big fur glove back now ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... glance deflected, alert and apprehensive—his ear had caught a low crooning of song. It came from a small boy who, a little wooden boat in his hand, was advancing up the slope. This was Tito Murano, Junior, Tito's first-born, nine years old, softly footing it home after a joyous hour along ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... "When a people would avert want and strife, or having them, would restore plenty and peace, this noble commandment offers the only means—all other plans for safety and relief are as vain as dreams, and as empty as the crooning of fools. And, behold, here it is: 'All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... was held on Winnsome's breast and that Marion was running up from the shore with more water. For a space she knelt beside her brother, and then she hurried to him. Joy shone in her face. She fell upon her knees and drew his head in the hollow of her arm, crooning mad senseless words to him, and bathing his face with water, her eyes shining down upon him gloriously. Nathaniel reached up and touched her face, and she bowed her head until her hair smothered him in ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... she read that letter, and James was prepared to sit it out until she did. It placed Mrs. Bagley in the awkward position of having to decide what to do next. Then the muffled sound of little-girl crooning came from the distant room. That brought the realization that as odd as this household was, it was a home. Mrs. Bagley delayed no further. She opened the letter ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... the young gamekeeper, wasn't it?" asked another man— the husband of the lady who was still crooning over her recovered diamonds. "You thought he had been led away by smart London thieves, but this seems as if he had taken a leading part. Looks, too, as if there may have been only himself ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... to break out and sing. All the world yearned one way; the stars leaned out of their courses and looked, not at him, but south; the north wind went by him, crooning, hurrying, and the moon sailed southward past the ragged clouds. All his soul went out with them, and his body sickened ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... Mucklewame was there, panting heavily, and cannily commending his soul to Providence. Messrs. Ogg and Hogg were there, shoulder to shoulder. M'Ostrich, the Ulster visionary, was there, six paces ahead of any other man, crooning some Ironside canticle to himself. Next behind him came the reformed ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... things now. The old house that had been patched and patched, and had one corner propped up from outside. The barn that was propped up all around and had a thatched roof that suggested an immense haystack. Old Barby crooning songs by the kitchen fire, sweet old Miss Arabella with her great high cap and her snowy little curls. Why did Aunt Priscilla think curls wrong? She had a feeling Aunt Elizabeth did not quite approve of hers, but Betty said the Lord curled them in the beginning. How sweet ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... anxiously over that grotesque but frightened head; soothing, polysyllabic German crooning from his bearded lips. ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... to throng its chambers and corridors. Physically fearless, she owned to a feminine dread of the unknown. It would be a relief to get away from this abode of grief and mystery. The fantastic dreaming of the unhappy creature crooning memories of a past life and a lost husband had unnerved her. She resolved to seek the fresh air, and wander through gardens and park until the fever ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... rooster never strutted about the place. All day long he kept close at her side, providing her with the choicest tidbits the garden afforded, and watching her with unselfish delight while she swallowed each dainty morsel. In the middle of the day they rested under the currant-bushes, crooning sleepily to each other or taking ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning
... on her pillow with a sigh; she did not even question the old negress who sat crooning over the fire, as to where she was, or what had befallen her; but accepted this new place as only another misty delirium, and in her secret heart prayed, for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... to know all things are for good and that a peace from mystic spaces far above the woodland is descending upon it. Heard through this song the tone of the brook's voice changes and instead of swift-syllabled gossip I seem to hear it softly crooning a hymn. ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... itself; but on every golden morning of that luxurious summer-land, for a little while before the carpenters and plasterers arrived and dragged off their coats, the pair spent a few moments wandering through and about the building together, she with her hen-like crooning, he with ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... modulated sounds; it is not in definite words, and hence, is not capable of translation; it is but the expression of feeling through the voice, as is the wail of the infant, the rippling laughter of youth, the crooning of senility, the groans ...
— Aboriginal American Authors • Daniel G. Brinton
... them—I think I first started the idea in my pamphlet—that the thing is to sleep on a pile of hemlock branches. I think I told them to listen to the wind sowing (you know the word I mean), sowing and crooning in the giant pines. So there they are upside-down, doubled up on a couch of green spikes that would have killed St. Sebastian. They stare up at the sky with blood-shot, restless eyes, waiting for the crooning to begin. And there isn't a sow ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... cradled his doll on his crooning heart and cried as a sea-bird cries; And the hot sun reeled like a drunken god through the violent violet vault: And the hillside cottage that danced to the deep debauch of the perfumed skies Grew palsied and white in the purple heath as a pillar ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... hate goes out o' me with the moonlight creeping in, And the water crooning cool-like in my veins. Who could smell the white azalea thinking then of sin, Or look on laurel buds a-caring for her pains? It's just my heart breaks open and the wild flood rains. O beauty of the moon-mist winding, winding slow, Till the tall lynns quiver vainly up to hold One leafy moment ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan
... of the scout. He had not the slightest knowledge in which direction Blythe had gone and his patrol leader was going to wrench this knowledge from the darkness. Off in the distance the unearthly voice crooning and whining in the night. The very air seemed ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... companion turn quickly aside; a nurse in uniform came towards them pushing, not a happy crooning baby this time, but a little emaciated wisp of a child lying back wearily in a wheel chair. Something in Robinette's face, or perhaps the bit of fluttering lace she wore upon her white dress, had attracted its notice, and it stretched out two tiny skeleton hands towards her as it passed. ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... little villages, almost touching but distinct, like five flowers or five berries on a single stem, each with its own old church and individual or parish life. It is a pretty tree-shaded place, full of the crooning sound of turtle-doves, hidden among the wide silent open downs and watered by a clear swift stream, or winter bourne, which dries up during the heats of late summer, and flows again after the autumn rains, "when the springs rise" in the chalk hills. ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... brown dusty province of Andalusia, with its oranges and pomegranates; its dancing fountains splashed with sunshine; its winsome damozels with such lisping languors of voice; its philosophic waiters upon the morrow, happy in a cigarette, a melon and a guitar; its muleteers crooning snatches of lazy song; its peasants with hair tied in beribboned pigtail; its tawny boys in Manola colours; aye, and ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... even had they been so inclined, which they were not, the old man left Nort and his chums holding their bottles of Elixer and rode away on his sorry looking nag, crooning something into his ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Death Valley - or Diamond X and the Poison Mystery • Willard F. Baker
... listens to the summer rain Against the roof when all the night is still, Save for the wind beneath the window-sill, Crooning its homely, comforting refrain,— And listening feels that neither joy nor pain Can trouble now—only the faint sweet thrill Of drowsiness and peace and rest until The barque glides ...
— The Rose-Jar • Thomas S. (Thomas Samuel) Jones
... dyed black. It was a comfort and relief to pass from the funeral gloom to the little pink-ruffled chamber among the cherry-trees, where the birds were singing and the summer breezes blowing, and the pretty Kathleen was crooning her Irish songs, and invoking the holy virgin and all the saints to bless the ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... is crooning and babies list. Hist, hist! The dewdrop lies in the flower's cup, Mother snuggles the babies up. Birdie in the tree-top, Do not spill the dewdrop. Cat be still, and dog be dumb; Sleep ...
— Gerda in Sweden • Etta Blaisdell McDonald
... gathered her up in her arms and rocked her for a long time in the rocking-chair, crooning over her queer little rambling tunes without meaning; only once she spoke, and then what she said was this: "Libby Anne, I hope you will never be as lonely to see me as I am right now to ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... of the rippling, crooning song, and before the verse was half done, joined unconsciously in with the others, forgetting the need of words in the melody ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... I should tell, Amaist as soon as I could spell, I to the crambo-jingle fell, Tho' rude an' rough, Yet crooning to a body's sel', ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... Pani was crooning over a handful of fire. The May sunshine had not penetrated all the houses, and her old ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... night she was again wakened by sweet singing and babies laughing. She rose and stole softly through her garden. The moon was shining brightly on the tulip bed, and the flowers were swaying to and fro. The old woman looked closely and she saw, standing by each tulip, a little Fairy mother who was crooning and rocking the flower like a cradle, while in each tulip-cup lay a little Fairy ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... arms, and again Mrs. Beale went back and forth, crooning the lullaby with which she had once put her own ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... The great ocean, crooning its lullaby with one unceasing melody, lapped the island to sleep with a thousand soft touches of its wave's white hands. The vast sky, like the outspread azure wings of the brooding mother-bird, nestled the island round with its downy plume. For on the distant horizon ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... of Andy Callaghan, who, when they turned the corner of the allotment, was discovered seated on the boxes as when they saw him last, and crooning the dismalest melody. But he had, in the meantime, recovered himself sufficiently to gather brushwood, and kindle a fire beside the road; likewise to cook a panful of rashers as the shadows grew ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... which Mrs. Burns, the wife of the poet, was fond of crooning to her children, is not yet without some vogue outwith the printed page—though mainly in this verse, the place of which, by the bye, would be difficult to fix in the song as printed ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... readiness to talk about everything except just what Mrs. Gaddesden most wanted to know. Elizabeth sitting on her mother's bed at night, crooning about Canada—her soft brown hair over her shoulders, and her eyes sparkling with patriotic enthusiasm, was a charming figure. But let Mrs. Gaddesden attempt to probe and penetrate beyond a certain ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Cape St. Vincent now. We went within about 400 yards of the cliffs and lighthouse in a calm moonlight, with porpoises springing from the sea, the men crooning long ballads as they lay idle on the forecastle, and the sails flapping uncertain on the yards. As we passed, there came a sudden breeze from land, hot and heavy-scented; and now as I write its warm rich flavour contrasts strongly with the salt air ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... wild Gaelic boat song in measured time with the strains of Dovenald's harp, and the galley, with ever-increasing speed, sailed out into the mid-bay. When there was a good way on her the work at the oars became easier and the song sank down into a subdued crooning sound ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... had examined the stones I had shown far more intently than any of them, he made no effort to leave the camp. Day after day he attended to my simple wants, spending all his spare time in polishing my weapons, a work he absolutely loved, and crooning interminable songs in a ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... Crooning it softly, and crooning it low, Rocking and nestling with—"By-baby-O!" Loving the melody known the world o'er, And adding sweet words that our baby ...
— Grandma's Memories • Mary D. Brine
... answer. "I guess 'twas all the talking I done last night that brung 'em into my head. I picked 'em up from that fellow I was telling you about. He'd start crooning 'em whenever he looked at the stars to find out ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... this poem of the fire worshippers is taken from Ralston's Songs of the Russian People, and runs as follows. Imagine the crooning voice of the old Slav woman singing ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... be exact—she had returned to Morgan's; and each time the man would understand what had drawn her, and with a kindly smile would sit down at the piano and play. Sometimes the music would be tender and dreamy, like a native mother's crooning to her young; sometimes it would be so gay that the flesh tingled and the feet were urged to dance; again, it would be ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... lost upon it. Their drawling iterative speech the iterative echoes conned. The ringing blast of a horn set astir some phantom chase in the air. When the cows came lowing home, there were lowing herds in viewless company. Even if one of the children sat on a rotting log crooning a vague, fragmentary ditty, some faint-voiced spirit in the rock would sing. Lonesome ...
— 'way Down In Lonesome Cove - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... of wings, she had two little feathery arms, with which she fanned herself, and complained of the dreadful heat; and she kept on crooning an old song to herself, which she learnt when she was ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... hum a melody, and comfort is restored. The emigrant, forced by various circumstances to leave his native land, where, instead of inheriting food and raiment, he had experienced hunger, nakedness, and cold, endeavours to express his feelings, and is discovered crooning over the tune that correctly interprets his emotions, and thrills his heart with gladness. The poet's song has become incorporated with the poor man's nature. You may see that it fills his eyes with tears; but they are not of sorrow. His cheek is flushed with hope, and a radiant ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... stable, and in the dull light he saw the Hussar officer standing in the stall by the mare, crooning some endearing words, while the beast, in her delight, rubbed her face against his clothes and whinnied her plea to be taken for ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... the Upper Thames, which men may see from these hills. He looked at it with a mixture of curiosity, of memory, and of desire which was very interesting but also a little pathetic to watch. And as he looked at it he went on crooning his little song until he saw me, when with great courtesy he ceased and asked me in the English language whether I ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... gnawing at him, he went out into the orchard. The grass was drenching wet, so he descended to the road. Two wood-pigeons were crooning to each other, truest of all sounds of summer; there was no wind, and the flies had begun humming. In the air, cleared of dust, the scent of hay was everywhere. What about those poor devils of laborers, now? They would get the sack for this! and he was suddenly beset with ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... to the shore and walked up to the house, and when Yulee found her mother half wild with thinking she had been drowned, and her grandfather, old Benjy Robin, crooning in his arm-chair and saying he had been the death of them,—she began to think it was not so fine, and lay down that night penitently in her little bed and promised over and over never to be cast away again. As for Bo, he would do just ...
— Seven Little People and their Friends • Horace Elisha Scudder
... bees in the clover! Crooning so drowsily, crying so low, Rockaby, lullaby, dear little rover! Down into wonderland, Down to the under-land Go, oh go! Down into ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... she asked if he had anything on his mind, he said: "I leave the world without a care. Not that I have seen all I would fain have seen. Many a time, especially this last year, when I have seen the mother in you crooning to some neighbour's child, I have thought to myself, 'I don't know my Grizel yet; I have seen her in the bud only,' and I would fain—" He broke off. "But I have no fears," he said. "As I lie here, with you sitting by my side, looking so serene, I can say, for the first time for half a century, ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... had been long, and the struggle with the March wind pulls hard upon the strength, and outside the pines were crooning softly, and gradually the brave head drooped till between the stitches she fell asleep. But not for many minutes, for a knock at the kitchen door startled her, and before long she heard ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... known it was Sunday if you had only waked up in the farmyard. The cocks and hens seemed to know it, and made only crooning subdued noises; the very bull-dog looked less savage, as if he would have been satisfied with a smaller bite than usual. The sunshine seemed to call all things to rest and not to labour. It was asleep itself on the moss-grown ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... benediction upon us. Then we had turned to the left, and were in the Bois de Boulogne. We stopped the carriage under the trees, which met overhead; the delicatest breeze stirred the branches to a crooning murmur. All around was solitude and a sort of hushed expectation. Suddenly Rosa put her hand into mine, and with a simultaneous impulse we got out of the carriage and strolled along ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... apartment in the village of Cawsand Bay an aged man stood, supported by an elderly man, at a window, gazing seaward with an expression of intense expectation, while a very aged woman sat crooning over the fire, holding the hand of a fair girl ...
— The Story of the Rock • R.M. Ballantyne
... Boyce, and Marcella was always eager to go to her. She would fly up stairs and passages, knock at the bedroom door, run down the steps to the queer little dressing-room where the roof nearly came on your head, and down more steps again to the sitting-room. Then when the door was shut, and she was crooning over the fire with her friend, she was entirely happy. The tiny room was built on the edge of the terrace, the ground fell rapidly below it, and the west window commanded a broad expanse of tame arable country, of square fields and hedges, and scattered wood. Marcella, ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... when I was eating my lunch near a fountain, there came up a moody, meditative hen, crooning plaintively after her wont. I threw her a crumb of bread while she was still a good way off, and then threw more, getting her to come a little closer and a little closer each time; at last she actually took a piece from ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... street. The hen and chickens fled with shrill cries at his approach, and the old negress stopped her song. After he had passed she chuckled slowly to herself, thrust her head up sideways to get the sun in a new place, and began her crooning chant afresh. ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... hunchback, in a crooning whisper. Her twisted hand was on the arm of the dead woman, which stretched as pallid and motionless as an arm of wax over the figured quilt. "She's gone, and she never knew that he had come." With a gesture that appeared as natural as the dropping of ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... ranch. At dark they reached it, the horses badly spent, unaccustomed as they were to moving faster than a walk. There was an automobile at the ranch, and Hiram was hurried on to the doctor at Julia, while Jo worked far into the night rubbing down her trembling whites, crooning to them, and giving them short drinks of water until they were resting their weary bodies in the litter, content ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... the melody they're tuning Has the sweet and sleepy crooning That the mother hums the baby at her breast, Till the world forgets its sorrow And the cares that haunt the morrow, And is sinking, hushed and happy, to its rest Sometimes bubbling o'er with gladness, Sometimes soft and fall of sadness, Through ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... flat, music made part of every day's programme. Pixie, seated on the hearthrug, would sing Irish ballads in a voice of crooning sweetness, she and Pat would join in duets, occasionally Stephen was persuaded to join in a trio, and presently, as the performers became "worked up" to their task, they would recall one by one performances of bygone days, and ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... Little!" He said crooning. "Never mind, my love. I'll stop with you half an hour, my pigeon; then perhaps it will ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... these brisk gossips. Two of them, plucking up tardy courage, did call one afternoon. Their hostess was out among her bees, crooning to them, as it seemed, while they lighted all about her, lit on the flower in her dark hair, buzzed vivaciously about her snow-white linen gown, lighted on her long, dark hands. She came in brightly when she saw her ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... through all your windows at the green. Your homely floor is creaking for our tread; The smiling tea-pot with contented spout Thinks of the boiling water, and the bread Longs for the butter. All their hands are out To greet us, and the gentle blankets seem Purring and crooning: ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... applause. Memory brought back a picture of Minnie as I had first seen her, a wee thing, blinking and smiling in the arms of her Madonna-faced mother, on a bench in Our Square, and the mother (who could not wait for the promised return—she has lain in God's Acre these three years) crooning to her an unforgettable ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... singing together very softly when at the end of the day they have retired to their emone, and have lain down to sleep, the singing being very gentle, and producing what I can only describe as a sort of crooning sound, like a lullaby or cradle song. I once heard one of these songs sung by my carriers the last thing at night as they lay beneath the floor of the building in which I was sleeping; and the effect ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... were playing cards, silently, intently. The cook, serene and cool, was smoking in the doorway of his cabin. Above the dull roar of the river Paul could hear Min Tolley's cackle of laughter from the cottages a hundred yards away, and Mrs. Hopps crooning over her baby. ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... calm, but with the calmness which is the outgrowth of an excitement so tense that it is still. As the vision floated nearer, I heard soft music—a crooning, yearning, soul-satisfying lullaby; I saw a little child, a mother, and a father. The child was as beautiful as an angel, and there was that in its face which made my eyes flood with tears, and my heart ache with yearning; the faces of the parents were too vague for me to recognize at first; ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... already back in her corner with the child, hugging it, kissing it, rocking it in her arms, crooning over it, holding it tightly against the lump that hung down on her barren bosom. Long after the baby had ceased to cry she sat crooning and yearning over it. And the mothers watched her, with wonder and ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... crossed the space, and fell on her knees beside the inert form, crooning over it pitifully. In the same moment, the gust of anger in Zeke ended. He stood motionless, except for his quickened breathing, with eyes fast on the girl. Remorse stabbed him as he realized her distress, for which he was responsible. He went toward her hesitatingly, forgetful of ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... loud rush or the low crooning of water, and over every wall comes the scent of jasmine and rose. Far off, from the red purgatory between the walls, sounds the savage thrum-thrum of a negro orgy, here all is peace and perfume. A minaret springs up between the ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... to his mocking words, to the undoubted-truth of his complaint. Stooping over, she gently lifted the child up. With hungry tenderness she laid it against her breast and pressed its cheek to her own, murmuring and crooning to it. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the Bible. One of the latter, seated at the right of the teacher, was reading aloud, in a sing-song voice, the section of the Pentateuch assigned for the following Sabbath in the synagogue, and his cantillation blended with the crooning of the teacher's wife as she sat by her baby's bed, ... but every now and then the master's voice rose and drowned the sounds of both, as the growl of the thunder stifles the roar ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... which for nearly an hour had been gliding smoothly forward with a soothing, cradling motion of its heavy trucked Pullmans, and a crooning, lullaby sound of its droning wheels, came to a jarring stop at one of the mountain stations, and Lieutenant Allison wakened with a start. The echo of the laugh that he had heard in his dream still sounded in his ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... thought if she could. One day she went into the garden with her spade and an old tin biscuit-box. She put the box on the ground beside her, with the lid off, and began to dig. By-and-by the kitten came crooning and sidling up to her, and hopped into the box. Beth instantly put on the lid, and the kitten was a corpse which must be buried. She hurriedly dug its grave, put in the box, and covered it up with earth. Just as she had finished, a gruff ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... the studio was slightly ajar, and the sound of a singularly sweet voice crooning out a lullaby was plainly audible. Malcolm, who was about to knock, changed his mind and peeped in through the aperture; then he beckoned to Anna ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... being saber-toothed while the other pair was merely saw-fretted—and he gave a man the same kind of treatment he gave a horse, only he tied the horse's legs first. But now electricity is in general use and no dentist's establishment is complete without a dynamo attachment which makes a crooning sound when in operation and provides instrumental accompaniment to the song ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... wife were soon concluded, and it was still early morning when we took our places in the big skin canoe with all our personal belongings under our eyes now; and the Indians having been well fed, pushed off rather sluggishly. But they kept time with their paddles, and soon set up a low, sad, crooning kind of chorus as they carefully avoided the powerful stream by keeping well inshore, where I gazed up in wonder at the magnificent trees which appeared in masses and clumps ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... and she is trying To lull it asleep—balow! balow! And while she is singing, the snowflakes are winging And whirling in eddies all through, all through. I listed the rening and wondered the meaning: Was it the tale of her woe, her woe— A truthful crooning or a maniac mooning— All ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... your ears. It is the ceaseless whirl of the great mill sails. Far out at sea the winds are as foolish savages, fighting, shrieking, tearing— purposeless. Here, in the street of mills, it is a civilized wind, crooning ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... side, shading the expanse of close-clipped turf. At the left, a fountain-sprayer now whirled a mist of water over the trim grass, and far to the rear a man in rubber boots was hosing off a phaeton before a carriage house. On the back porch, an elderly cook was peeling potatoes and gently crooning ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... proved to be our best herdsman, has a low croon in his mouth all the time. It can hardly be called a tune, though I believe he has faith in it, but it has a fetching way with the herd. I have never known him to be quick, sharp, or loud with the cows. When things go wrong, the crooning ceases. When it is resumed, all is well in the cow world. The other man, French, who is an excellent milker, and who stands well with the cows, has a half hiss, half whistle, such as English stable-boys use, except that it runs up and down five notes and is lost at each end. The cows like ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... answer is No. To-day we find that savages and aborigines, who are still in the childhood stage of evolution, are immensely susceptible to the sway of rhythm, and in their weird dances to the beating of the Tom-toms accompany their antics with a crooning or chanting, which no doubt to them stands in ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... When Anna had finished crooning over her, and the story of the discovery had been repeated more than once, she was taken upstairs by Esther, and washed and changed, so that by the time Miss Ashe returned, instead of the bedraggled, dirty little maiden of an hour before, she saw only a perfectly neat and spotless one, and had no ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... house, making strange though rarely unpleasant sounds. I have seen her rock her doll, making a continuous, monotonous sound, keeping one hand on her throat, while the fingers of the other hand noted the movements of her lips. This was in imitation of her mother's crooning to the baby. Occasionally she broke out into a merry laugh, and then she would reach out and touch the mouth of any one who happened to be near her, to see if he were laughing also. If she detected no smile, she gesticulated ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... old hags were crooning over the pots, surrounded by swarthy children and lazy men, who were watching the preparation ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... Then suddenly I heard a sound which of a truth did make my heart stop its beating. It was a quaint and prolonged laugh which I once thought I would never hear again on this earth. It came from the corner of the barouche next to where Mme. la Marquise was so tenderly and gaily crooning to her child. And a kindly voice ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... reading of the arrest of Mareno inquired indignantly, "But who is Kazmah, and where is Mrs. Monte Irvin?" Sin Sin Wa placidly pursued his arrangements for immediate departure to the paddyfields of Ho-Nan, and sometimes in the weird crooning voice with which he addressed the raven he would sing a monotonous chant dealing with the valley of the Yellow River where the opium-poppy grows. Hidden in the cunning vault, the search had passed above him; and watchful on a quay on the Surrey shore whereto his dinghy was fastened, ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... man perched on the rail of the veranda, and Irene took one of the red-painted rocking-chairs where she could conveniently look at him and at her sister, who sat leaning forward lazily and running on, as the phrase is. That low, crooning note of hers was delicious; her face, glimpsed now and then in the moonlight as she turned it or lifted it a little, had a fascination which kept his eye. Her talk was very unliterary, and its effect seemed hardly conscious. She was far from ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... not so much as a rumor of the person Mudlow had reached me. My friend expressed surprise. It was now that the black boy Tom came up with the desired hat. Tom made his approach with a queer backward and forward shuffle, crooning ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... his shaggy head against her knee, whimpering unhappily, looking up into her face. And when she noticed him he reared up and flung his long body across her lap, thrusting his wet nose into her face. She caught his head in her hands and rubbed her cheek against his rough hair, crooning over him softly. Even the dog was comfort in her loneliness, and they both waited for ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... in England. Its absence from so promising a locality seemed strange. Another species, also said to be increasing in the country—the turtledove, was extremely abundant. In the tall beech woods its low, montonous crooning note was heard all day long from all sides. In shady places, where the loud, shrill bird-voices are few, one prefers this sound to the set song of the woodpigeon, being more continuous and soothing, and of the nature of a lullaby. It sometimes reminded me of ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson |
