"Buzzing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... spread, and stories of them were already rife throughout the country, such, for instance, as that of four uhlans galloping into a town with drawn revolvers and taking possession of it, when the corps to which they belonged was a dozen miles away. They were everywhere, preceding the columns like a buzzing, stinging swarm of bees, a living curtain, behind which the infantry could mask their movements and march and countermarch as securely as if they were at home upon parade. And Maurice's heart sank in his bosom as he looked at ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... waves—still sent its sinister echo through the still night air, and even in the house of Dea Flavia it seemed that hundreds of eyes were still open, fear having chased sleep away. There was a sound—like the buzzing of bees—that came from the slaves' quarters beyond the peristyle, and from the studio, which lay the other side of the atrium, came the sound of muffled footsteps gliding over ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Catherine could see that all the poor thing's foolish whims and affectations were trampled on; that she suffered, rebelled, found herself no more able to affect Mr. Wendover than if she had been a fly buzzing round him, and became all the more foolish ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... talk harder," she said. "I'm sorry. But there," she went on. "It doesn't really matter, does it? Anyway I want to tell you right away of the craze the sight of your splendid Sachigo has started buzzing in my head. Say, Mr. Sternford, it beats anything I ever dreamed, and I want to say that there's no one in the Skandinavia, from Mr. Peterman downwards, has the littlest notion of it. It's not a mill. It's a world of real, civilised enterprise. And it's set here where ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... all because of a lost pair of stockings; a loss which we treated with unseemly levity. However, the chill haughtiness of our cabin companion is something of a relief in this terrible heat. For it is hot. I am writing in the cabin, and in spite of the fact that there are two electric fans buzzing on either side of me, I am hotter than I can say, and deplorably ill-tempered. Four times this morning, trying to keep out of Mrs. Albert Murray's way, I have fallen over that wretched hat-box, still here despite our hints about the baggage-room, and now in ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... whistle—anyhow each sweaty hour brings St. Louis and Nancy nearer. St. Nancy, St. Nancy, St. Nancy, says the sleepless racket of the wheels, but the peevish electric fan at the end of the corridor keeps buzzing to itself like a fly caught in a trap. "And then I got married you see—and then I got married you see—and when you get married you aren't a free lance—you aren't ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... hallucination theory is out of court, too, and there is nothing left but the old-fashioned one, that what he said he saw, he saw, and did not fancy; and that which he said he heard, he heard; and that it was not a buzzing of a diseased nerve in his own ears, but the actual speech of the glorified Christ. Very well, then; if that be true, what then? The old-fashioned belief—Jesus who died on the Cross is living, Jesus who died ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the most surprising event that has been heard of in recent ages, was brought to the King at Marly on the 9th of February, 1702, by Mahony. Soon after it arrived I heard of it, and at once hastened to the chateau, where I found a great buzzing and several groups of people talking. Mahony was closeted a long time with the King. At the end of an hour the King came out of his cabinet, and spoke strongly in praise of what had occurred. He took pleasure in dwelling at great length upon Mahony, and declared that he had ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... of the brain I heard him addressing the Rector and protesting against the absurdity, the monstrosity, of the charge—yet still with that recurring agonised glance at me. But my eyes now were on Mr. Rogers; and the buzzing ceased and my brain cleared when he swung round, inviting me to speak. I cannot tell what question he put to me, but ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... listening post had carried it out last night, in order to receive directions from the trench; perhaps the mining party—man killed, receiver dropped, wire connection not cut, or tangled up with other wires—who can tell? One thing is sure—here is the receiver, faintly buzzing. Phipps-Herrick joyfully puts it to his ear. He hears a voice and words, but it is all gibberish to him. With a look of desperation on his face he gives ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... pestered all day by vast numbers of mosquetoes, which are not much unlike the gnats in England, but much more venomous in their stings. At sunset, when the musquetoes retired, they were succeeded by an infinity of sand-flies, which made a mighty buzzing, though scarcely discernable by the naked eye; wherever these bite, they raise a small lump attended by painful itching, like that arising from the bite of an English harvest bug. The only light ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... lid, and, starting up, looked about her, to see what had befallen Epimetheus. The thunder cloud had so darkened the room that she could not very clearly discern what was in it. But she heard a disagreeable buzzing, as if a great many huge flies, or gigantic mosquitoes, or those insects which we call dor bugs, and pinching dogs, were darting about. And, as her eyes grew more accustomed to the imperfect light, she saw a crowd of ugly little shapes, with ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... Burst from the narrow chrysalis which we would gladly rebuild again, the seething, churning sea is before us and around us; we only catch, like the strains of bells through the fog, the hum of hymns, the drowsy murmur of the buzzing Sabbath-school, and the nasal ring of the itinerant's summer sermon. Margot is married to Chough, our whilom colleague, and makes her migration in his Bedouin train, and does not know how once she thrilled ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... and hardly stopped there, because of the stench of the dead men and their horses; and so many blue and green flies rose from them, bred of the moisture of the bodies and the heat of the sun, that when they were up in the air they hid the sun. It was wonderful to hear them buzzing; and where they settled, there they infected the air, and brought the plague with them. Mon petit maistre, I wish you had been there with me, to experience the smells, and make report thereof to ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... was taking a nap, Martha sat on the porch. It was warm and a bee was buzzing around the flowers. Every little while he would ...
— Sandman's Goodnight Stories • Abbie Phillips Walker
... than cooeperative. Sure, the whole plant was buzzing about that foreign-looking Swami who had been seen coming in and out of my office. Sure, a lot of the Girls believed ...
— Sense from Thought Divide • Mark Irvin Clifton
... still except for the monotonous voice and the breathing of the crowd. Oh, yes, and the flies. It was not that I forgot the flies, only their buzzing was the ceaseless accompaniment to everything that happened ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... purple haze; the bald top of Cat Bells stood out bright in the glory of the passing day. A gentle breeze came up from the south, and the young corn chattered with its multitudinous tongues in the field below. The dog lay at the charcoal-burner's feet, blinking in the sun and snapping lazily at a buzzing fly. ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... Kain told me his story, sitting late in his dressing-room at the Philharmonic I felt that I ought to say something, but nothing in the world seemed adequate. It was one of those times when words have no weight: mine sounded like a fly buzzing in the tomb of kings. And after all, he did not hear me; I could tell that by the look on his face as he sat there staring into the light, the lank, dark hair framing his waxen brow, his shoulders hanging forward, his lean, strong, sentient ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... upon the buzzing throng about them. Through it, with unfaltering composure, fell Piet ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... look back on it. I had been drinking hard of late, and the two things together fairly turned my brain. There's something throbbing in my head now, like a docker's hammer, but that morning I seemed to have all Niagara whizzing and buzzing in my ears. ...
— The Adventure of the Cardboard Box • Arthur Conan Doyle
... better luck; she got tangled up in the water lentils. And now came Walter himself. He approached Amalia, in her green robes, and was just about to rescue her, when he was swallowed by a duck. This was most unkind of the duck, for it was Walter's last stalk of grass; and now in the rattling and buzzing of the sawmills below he could hear Amalia repeating ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... by inflaming the flickering passions of old Louis with descriptions of Mary's beauty. As there was a prospect of a new emperor soon, and as the imperial bee had of late been making a most vehement buzzing in Henry's bonnet, he encouraged de Longueville, and thought it would be a good time to purchase the help of France at the cost of his beautiful sister and a handsome dower. Mary, of course, had not been consulted, ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... little other harm than leaving some red streaks upon his damp and lanky hair, he put over it some strips of plaster as large as he conveniently could, and then with a lugubrious expression went to hall, and gratified his malice by buzzing and babbling among his fellows all sorts of lies and exaggerations about Julian's conduct and state of mind. When Kennedy came in, however, he put an abrupt end to Hazlet's calumnies by handling his own tumbler with so significant a glance, that Hazlet assumed a look of terror, and, amid ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... Trojans, and commence the war. As wasps, provoked by children in their play, Pour from their mansions by the broad highway, In swarms the guiltless traveller engage, Whet all their stings, and call forth all their rage: All rise in arms, and, with a general cry, Assert their waxen domes, and buzzing progeny. Thus from the tents the fervent legion swarms, So loud their clamours, and so keen their arms: Their rising rage Patroclus' breath inspires, Who thus ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... is absolute it feels a profound impulse to welcome death, and even, by a transcendental confusion, to invoke the end of the universe.[B] The human soul reverts at such a moment to what an ephemeral insect might feel, buzzing till it finds its mate in the noon. Its whole destiny was wooing, and, that mission accomplished, it sings its Nunc dimittis, renouncing heartily all irrelevant things, now that the one fated and all-satisfying good has been achieved. Where parental instincts exist also, nature soon shifts ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... and depression. Prices were high, business slack, and the work ran light. Nevertheless, the Fernalds refused to shorten the hours. There were no night shifts on duty, to be sure, but the hum of the machinery that ceased at twilight resumed its buzzing every morning and by its music gladdened many a home where anxiety might ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... stir. She was panting for breath, her heart was beating fast, there was a buzzing in her ears, and she felt indeed exhausted by that ascent in the dense gloom. It seemed to her as if she had been climbing for hours, in such a maze, amidst such a turning and twisting of stairs that she would never be able to find her way down ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... bedstraw, and the large purple blooms of greater knapweed. Here and there a blue field gentian is still in flower; "eggs and bacon" grow beside the waggon tracks. Grasshoppers hop among the short dry grass; bees and humble-bees are buzzing about, and there are places ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... detached herself skilfully from the buzzing circle on the veranda, and the two stepped out on the springy turf. The undulating prairie was covered with a golden haze. Half a mile west a thin line of trees pencilled the horizon. The golf course lay up and ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... frustrated, murmured bitterly, bursting forth into angry invectives against the Saint, as if by cabals, and intrigue, according to the custom of the world, he had succeeded in gaining the post for himself. St. Francis, however, was merely amused by what he called the buzzing of flies, and wrote to one in ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... stairs, and to my surprise found, even at that early hour, that many of the garcons of the house were stirring and bustling about, getting all the luggage up in the huge wooden leviathan that was to convey us on our road. There they stood, like bees around a hive, clustering and buzzing, and all so engaged that with difficulty could I get an answer to my question of, What diligence it was? 'La ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... Pearl Street, and there they came upon Uncle Buzz's horse and buggy, standing as if carved from one and the same block of immutable immobility. Even the flies found little of excitement in lighting about the front section of the combination, and only one or two were buzzing about in the general neighbourhood in a ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... what a buzzing you make, as if you were a fly at Bartholomew-tyde at a Butchers stall: doe you ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... judgments by the use of our eyes, rejecting the improbable, and (as we consider) preposterous, and accepting and therefore "seeing" what our judgment approves even when it is not there! We accept as "a thing seen" a wheel buzzing round with something like fifty spokes—but we cannot accept a horse with eight or sixteen legs! The four-leggedness of a horse is too dominant a prejudice for us to accept a horse with several indistinct blurred legs as representing what we see when the horse gallops. The mind revolts ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... now gone down, but I heard, at lessening intervals and progressively louder, the rumble and roll of thunder. In the pauses between I now became conscious of a low humming or buzzing which, like the thunder, grew momentarily louder and more distinct. It seemed to come from the body of the automaton, and was unmistakably a whirring of wheels. It gave me the impression of a disordered mechanism which had escaped ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... the door was louder. This and the drug-induced buzzing in Brion's ear made thinking difficult. "Abstractly, I of course agree with you," he said haltingly. "But you know there is nothing I can do personally without being emotionally involved. A logical decision is valueless for action without ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... long rever'd, There stood an ancient laurel. 'Twas the same That sire Latinus, when the walls he reared, Found there, and vowed to Phoebus, and the name "Laurentines" thence his settlers taught to claim. Here suddenly—behold a wondrous thing!— Borne with loud buzzing through the air, down came A swarm of bees. Around the top they cling, And from a leafy branch in linked ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... in outer Hall. Everybody buzzing about. What has happened? Has dynamite been found? Has some eminent vocalist "gone up to see," and can't come down again in time? Sir DRURIOLANUS is present, explaining matters to the critics, and repeating explanation in various tongues to eager foreign inquirers. The sentinels eye the ...
— Punch Volume 102, May 28, 1892 - or the London Charivari • Various
... a dose of our newspapermen to-morrow, sir," Mr. Fink promised him. "They'll be buzzing around you all day long. They'll want to know everything, from where you get your clothes and what cigarettes you smoke, to how you like best to do your work and what complexioned typist you prefer. They're some boys, I ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... enormous suite of discontented generals who whispered among themselves behind his back. All along the road groups of French prisoners captured that day (there were seven thousand of them) were crowding to warm themselves at campfires. Near Dobroe an immense crowd of tattered prisoners, buzzing with talk and wrapped and bandaged in anything they had been able to get hold of, were standing in the road beside a long row of unharnessed French guns. At the approach of the commander in chief the buzz of talk ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... sleep, Nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee, That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down And steep my senses in forgetfulness? Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs, Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee And hush'd with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber Than in the perfumed chambers of the great, Under the canopies of costly state, And lull'd with sound of sweetest melody? O thou dull god, why liest thou with the vile In loathsome beds, ...
— King Henry IV, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Chiswick edition]
... did not make friends readily, but the comradery of cooking induced her to more than tolerate me. "I don't say I kin cook—but my mother can," she often told me—smiling proudly the while, with the buzzing praises of gourmets sounding in her ears. She could never tell you how she made her ambrosial dishes—but if you had my luck to be persona gratis she could and did show you, ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... Explain why a bell rung in a vacuum makes no noise; why the clicking of two stones under water sounds louder if your head is under water, than the clicking of the two stones in the air sounds if your head is in the air; why you hear a buzzing sound when a bee or a fly comes near you; how a ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... from each of your corollas, some devouring insect, some wasp with pointed sting, some furious horse-fly, and let them all together throw themselves upon him, harass him and persecute him with their threatening buzzing, and pierce his face with their poisoned stings. And you yourselves, my cherished daughters, at his approach, fold up your beautiful petals, refuse him your perfumes, cheat him of his cares and hopes, let the sap dry up in ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... who took their daily stands where they might best elbow the actor, and come in for their share of the auditor's attention. In many a laboured scene of the wannest humour and of the most affecting passion I have seen the best actors disconcerted, while these buzzing muscatos have been fluttering round their eyes and ears. How was it possible an actor, so embarrassed, should keep his impatience from entering into that different temper which his personated character might require him ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... over. Old Joyselle gave his arm once more to his wife, and between two lines of buzzing admirers conducted her to the carriage, followed by his famous son, the rest of the ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... Children cried, women called to one another as they hurried their innocent charges homeward; even the stray dogs started barking again, just as they had done when Rod and his friends hit the place with their buzzing motorcycles. ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... week they had had a glimpse of the Mortlake machine in flight. One still, breathless morning, the air had been filled, soon after dawn, with a vibrant buzzing sound, which Peggy's trained ear had recognized as the song ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... Lingard. "It rests with you. I cannot let you speak any vessel. Your yacht has gone ashore in a most inconvenient place—for me; and with your boats sent off here and there, you would bring every infernal gunboat buzzing to a spot that was as quiet and retired as the heart of man could wish. You stranding just on that spot of the whole coast was my bad luck. And that I could not help. You coming upon me like this is my good luck. ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... How awkwardly it moved, how clumsily it attempted to get clear!... After prolonged efforts, it somehow gets better, crawls, tries to open its wings ... but there is no more frolicking for it, no more light-hearted buzzing in the sunshine, as before, when it was flying through the open window into the cool room and out again, freely winging its way into the hot air.... The fly, at least, fell through none of its own doing into the dreadful web ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... the buzzing bee said, "Here is honey sweet. Don't you think the Baby Would like that ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various
... Master, he was waiting on him in the Casemet, where he observed, sometime before the rest of the Company took notice of it, that General Richards appeared very pensive and thoughtful, that the whole Night long he was pester'd with, and could not get rid of a great Flie, which was perpetually buzzing about his Ears and Head, to the vexation and disturbance of the rest of the Company, as well as the General himself; that in the Morning, when they went upon the Battery, under which the Mine was, ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... gullet, or, if you will, out of his throat. In the Hunter, on the other hand, the divine gift which distinguishes us from beasts was located between his front teeth and his lips, whence the sounds broke forth in a wonderful sonorous gravity and fulness and a buzzing sibilancy. But through these strange husks the young man and the old one soon learned to like each other. Inasmuch as both were men of full-weight, sterling stuff they could not fail to understand each other's ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... listened to—much less considered. Mr. Johnson had personally discredited himself to such a degree that the connection of his personality with anything he advocated fatally discredited his cause. The air, not only in Washington, but throughout the country, was buzzing with rumors of iniquities which Andrew Johnson was meditating and would surely attempt if he were not disarmed. He was surely plotting a coup d'etat; he had already slyly tried to get General Grant out of the way by sending ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... narrative; he must needs remain himself on the stage and talk about his own person and belongings; he alone is a whole comedy. One must perforce keep silence when the Wife of Bath begins to talk, irresistible gossip, chubby-faced, over-fed, ever-buzzing, inexhaustible in speech, never-failing in arguments, full of glee. She talks about what she knows, about her specialty; her specialty is matrimony; she has had five husbands, "three of hem were gode and two were badde;" the last is still living, ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... hear it, child," she said. "Dr. Harrison's too smart for me—I can't get a bit of good out of him. My, Faith! I suppose Mr. Linden can manage him, but if I had that man buzzing round me, I shouldn't know whether I was sick or well. When ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... D'Urberville retreated over the sheaves, and descended the ladder, while the workers below rose and stretched their arms, and shook down the beer they had drunk. Then the threshing-machine started afresh; and amid the renewed rustle of the straw Tess resumed her position by the buzzing drum as one in a dream, untying sheaf after sheaf ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... he could hear sounds made by men. Through the chapel windows there came a continuous murmur, like the buzzing of a monster bee under the dome of a glass hive—the voice of the pastor preaching his sermon. Then all at once came loud music, shuffling of seats, scraping of chairs; and a voluminous song poured ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... there—all this had taken barely more than five seconds. She thrust herself between the three men and the Dweller. She spoke to it—and the wild buzzing died down; the gay crystal tinklings burst forth again. The Thing murmured to her—began to whirl—faster, faster—passed down the ivory pier, out upon the waters, bearing with it, meshed in its light, the sacrifices—swept on ever more swiftly, triumphantly and ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... studied its habits. We know now that as the fly is "tickling baby's nose" it may be spreading there where they may be inhaled or where they may be taken into the baby's mouth thousands of germs some of which may cause some serious disease. We know that as they are buzzing about our faces while we are trying to sleep they may, unwittingly, be in the same nefarious business, and we know that as they sip from our cups with us or bathe in our coffee or our soup or walk daintily over our beefsteak ...
— Insects and Diseases - A Popular Account of the Way in Which Insects may Spread - or Cause some of our Common Diseases • Rennie W. Doane
... and creates a distinct atmosphere of its own. In the 'Knights' the air fairly reeks with the smell of leather and the tanyard. The 'Birds' transport us to a world of trillings and pipings, and beaks and feathers. There is a buzzing and a humming and a stinging throughout the 'Wasps.' The 'Clouds' drip with mist, and are ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... cherry, named it Jarvis, pulled out its stem, cut out its heart, and finally plumped it into her mouth and chewed it viciously. Then she felt better. There was a cool morning breeze lifting the leaves of the big elms, and nodding the hollyhocks' heads. The sound of late summer buzzing and humming, and bird songs, made the back porch a pleasant, placid spot—no place in which to keep ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke
... fertilized with the pollen from some other, insuring cross-fertilization. The bumblebee takes his toll in honey, but when he comes to back out he has trouble. If you will listen close by you will hear him buzzing and burbling like an overheated teakettle as he struggles. The arching filaments of those fuzzy stamens have tangled his short legs and he is shaking the pollen out of the antlers all into the fur of his yellow overcoat. Before he gets out he is right mad and loaded with pollen for ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... meat-cart jolted on and out of sight, and for a long time nothing disturbed the stillness except the distant whirring of a reaper and nearer buzzing of a fat, inquisitive bluebottle fly, which paused to see what this strange thing might be, and then zoomed off excitedly ...
— Anything Once • Douglas Grant
... the tavern swam in a blue haze of smoke, which rose to the blackened rafters, hung with many and various sausages, cheeses, and dried vegetables. Dishes clattered, there was a buzzing of voices, a scraping of feet and chairs, a banging of tankards, altogether noisy and cheerful. The Fraeu-Wirtin preferred waitresses, and this preference was shared by her patrons. They were quicker, cleaner; they remembered an order better; they were not always surreptitiously emptying the ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... Chu (or should I call thee "Chow"?), Say, what hast thou to do with all this fuss, The ceaseless hurry and the beastly row, The buzzing plane and roaring motor-bus, While far away the sullen Hwang-ho rolls His lazy waters to the Eastern Sea, And sleepy mandarins sit on bamboo poles Imbibing countless cups ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 19, 1919 • Various
... reprovingly from Mrs. Cameron, spoken as only she could speak it, with a prolonged buzzing sound on the first syllable, and warning the husband that he was ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... following dawn, the glory of a magnificent sunrise over a green world of mountain, valley and plain, were quite lost to his unpoetic soul. The only things which seemed able to distract his concentrated thoughts were the fiercely buzzing mosquitoes, and these he cursed with whole-hearted enthusiasm which embraced a perfect ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... been mystified so long by a noise of such humble origin: merely that of a woman comfortably engaged in the household task of ironing. It was simple enough, once one thought of it; yet ridiculously incongruous when injected into the cognisance of a girl whose brain was buzzing with the incredible romance of ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... in the centre, in advance of the others. Madame van Gleck rises majestically. Gretel trembles, but feels that she must look at the beautiful lady. She cannot hear what is said, there is such a buzzing all around her. She is thinking that she ought to try and make a courtesy, such as her mother makes to the meester, when suddenly something so dazzling is placed in her hand that she gives ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... in bed now, shrouded in blankets, a smile of content illuminating his face, while the buzzing little machine on the table at his side was ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... clinging diplomacy. Preliminary politenesses were followed by long walks upon the Pincio, and the gradual interchange of more and more important and confidential communications. Soon poor Mr. Russell was little better than a fly buzzing in gossamer. And Manning was careful to see that he buzzed on the right note. In his dispatches to the Foreign Secretary, Lord Clarendon, Mr. Russell explained in detail the true nature of the Council, that it was merely a meeting of a few Roman Catholic ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... mumbled to a buzzing fly. "'At's it. Tryin' to bust yo' brains out on de window glass. 'At's how come you ain't got none. Cravin' to git loose all de time. S'pose you git loose? Whah at would you go? Some ol' spidah'd ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... in till 11 and Nick was buzzing away like a saw buck and I figured on getting some sleep myself but I hadn't no sooner layed down when the wispering begun on the other side. First I didn't catch what he was trying to get at but I heard him the second time ...
— Treat 'em Rough - Letters from Jack the Kaiser Killer • Ring W. Lardner
... formation, with which the twenty miles are occupied, as truly enormous. And yet it is but one of three that occur in a single system. We reach the long flat bay of Dunnet, and cross its waste of sands. The incoherent coils of the sand-worm lie thick on the surface; and here a swarm of buzzing flies, disturbed by the foot, rises in a cloud from some tuft of tangled sea-weed; and here myriads of gray crustaceous sand-hoppers dart sidelong in the little pools, or vault from the drier ridges a few ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... procured him a clerkship in the House. The post to which he was assigned was that of attendant in the Vote Office, so that his days (and a great part of his nights) were spent in the two little rooms which open off the Members' Lobby, that buzzing centre of parliamentary gossip, activity and intrigue. Half a dozen steps only separated him from the door of the Chamber itself, and that door he was always privileged to pass and listen to the debates, standing by the entrance outside the magical strip of matting ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... career that Jonson wrote, "The fear of every one that heard him speak was that he should make an end." The publication of his Essays added greatly to his fame; but Bacon was not content. His head was buzzing with huge schemes,—the pacification of unhappy Ireland, the simplification of English law, the reform of the church, the study of nature, the establishment of a new philosophy. Meanwhile, sad to say, he played the game of politics for his personal advantage. He devoted himself ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... Colonel went back to the artillery lines and spent three hours talking to the Battery Major, and I looted a dozen three-pounder rockets of var-i-ous colours out of the stores. In the afternoon the Colonel called all his officers together, and kept the blighted motorcycle dispatch riders busy buzzing up and down the line with messages, till ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... or too familiar in the thought that Christ is willing to bear, and help you to bear, the pettiest, the minutest, and most insignificant of the daily annoyances that may come to ruffle you. Whether it be a poison from one serpent sting, or whether it be poison from a million of buzzing tiny mosquitoes, if there be a smart, go to Him, and He will help you to endure it. He will do more, He will bear it with you, for if so be that we suffer with Him, He suffers with us, and our oneness with Christ brings about a community of possessions ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... the door, dragging him after me. Then I did something I never thought I could do, but maybe you've noticed you can do most anything when you have to. I just stood up, then fell down again, coughing and choking, and my ears were buzzing all the time. But I didn't care, I just stood up again with him hanging to me, and I grabbed the window sill and dragged him half way across it and with his head outside, and then I staggered and tried to grab something and my eyes were stinging ...
— Roy Blakeley • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... depressed with the thought that these human lives of ours mean so little. It sometimes seems as though nature cared nothing for us, and swept us away as the first cold and the frost sweep away the millions of flies that had been buzzing their little ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... come to me in a moment—or, rather, what was that dream buzzing in my brain of 'proof' and 'copy' and all the tame stagnation of a long delirium of order? I had nothing in common with the latter. In some telepathic way—influenced by these past-dated surroundings—dropped into the very den ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... us we could hear the hornets buzzing aloft under the smoke-stained eaves. There was no other sound in ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... throughout the day, and at night it is useless to seek for coolness; a faint zephyr is succeeded by a calm of several hours. The atmosphere is heavy and oppressive, and the body, weakened by perspiration, becomes languid; the appetite fails, and the mosquitos, buzzing about the ears by day and night, perplex and annoy by their stings, while the fevers of the tropics attack Europeans with sudden and irresistible violence. This is the most sickly season for the European. The thermometer frequently ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... the fourth floor," panted Marie, "collecting linen for the Sisters. In the room next to the linen-closet I heard a strange buzzing sound. I opened the door softly. I saw Briand with his back to me seated by an instrument. There were receivers clamped to his ears! My God! The disgrace! The disgrace to my husband and to me, who vouched for him to you!" Apparently in an agony of remorse, the fingers of the woman ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... to get along without Dinah," said Mr. Bobbsey, with a smile. "I'll put some wire netting over the windows. I was going to do it anyhow, for the mosquitoes will soon be buzzing around. The netting will keep thieves from reaching in and ...
— The Bobbsey Twins on a Houseboat • Laura Lee Hope
... for he held a cloth to his breast which was crimson with his blood. A pool had formed all round his couch, and he lay in a haze of flies, whose buzzing and droning would certainly have called my attention if his groans had not come ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... buntings, blackbirds, nightingales, and others. The mornings and afternoons were enjoyable from the pleasant odours emitted from the trees and many kinds of flowers, together with the sweet basil. A bee was also seen, and harvest flies were heard buzzing. ...
— The First Discovery of Australia and New Guinea • George Collingridge
... to the buzzing throng behind her, and she saw a glint of criticism—or was it merely easy contempt?—dispel the smile with which he had regarded her. His mouth wore a ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... a great deal of wondering talk, after she was gone; and the guards and servants passed the talk to the town, the town passed it to the country; Domremy was already buzzing with it when we ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... the meanwhile the fool Ciaruszek, sitting on a chair in the doorway, began to imitate the singing of a nightingale, of which the king was very fond. Then another jester went around the table, stopped behind the guests and imitated the buzzing of a bee so well, that some of them began to defend their heads. Seeing this, the others burst with laughter. Zbyszko had served the princess and Danusia diligently; but when Lichtenstein began to clap his baldhead, he again forgot ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... Truesdale, decorated with a daring and wanton orchid, followed Paston out into the middle of the chancel of a crowded and buzzing church; when his father, despite his failing powers and an innate repugnance to the conscious dramatization involved in the ceremonial side of life, led Rosamond up a long aisle with the tremulous embarrassment of ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... humming of the flies about that shuttered window seemed to Hatteras to have more explicit language than the Kru boys' chatterings. He penetrated into the interior of the house, and reckoned up the doors. He opened one of them ever so slightly, and the buzzing came through like the hum of a wheel in a factory, revolving in the collar of a strap. He flung the door open and stood upon the threshold. The atmosphere of the room appalled him; he felt the sweat break cold upon his forehead and a deadly sickness in all his body. Then ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... "Here goes!" He raised the little brown fruit—which did indeed somewhat resemble a bean—to his mouth and swallowed it. He found it quite tasteless, but the deed was no sooner done than he was startled by a curious buzzing in his ears and a momentary but peculiar lapse of memory. He sat and looked around him like a man who has been asleep and suddenly awakened in unfamiliar surroundings. Then the sound of his client's voice suddenly recalled him to himself. ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... in the event, but who all participated in that love of being present wherever there is anything fresh to be seen. An Academician would say that the entertainments of the fashionable world are collections of flowers which attract inconstant butterflies, famished bees, and buzzing drones. ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... around understood. In the thick, green branches the birds began to twitter the secret, and certainly the wise, wise bees knew also, in some occult way, of the love and joy that had just been revealed. A wonderful humming and buzzing filled the hives, and the air vibrated with the movement of wings. Some influence more swift and secret than the birds of the air carried the matter further, for it finally reached Royal, the Squire's favorite ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... despairing manner, with her head reclining upon her hands: he asked her to bind up his wounds, but she made no reply: he then placed his mouth close to her ear, and vociferated, "I am hungry, give me some food." The wife thought she heard a buzzing in her ear, and remarked it to one who sat near her. The enraged husband, now summoning all his strength, struck her a blow upon the forehead. She only complained of feeling a shooting pain there, such as is not unfrequent, and, raising ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... house again and dropped into a chair. There was a loud buzzing in his ears, so that he could hardly hear the murmur of voices in the drawing-room below. This was annoying, because Henson liked to hear everything that other folks said. Then he dropped off into a kind of dreamy state, ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... was going to New York, it was about as easy to fit her dresses as to clothe a buzzing blue-bottle fly. With spinning head and dancing feet, she was set down, ...
— Little Folks Astray • Sophia May (Rebecca Sophia Clarke)
... that afternoon. They kept starting up all about us, and dashing off down the draw as if they were playing a game of some kind. But the little buzzing things that lived in the grass were all dead—all but one. While we were lying there against the warm bank, a little insect of the palest, frailest green hopped painfully out of the buffalo grass and tried to leap into a bunch of bluestem. ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... this; neither that the buzzing of the fly was produced, as in a wind instrument, by a constant current of air through the trachea. But he had seen, and, doubtless, meant us to remember, the marvellous strength and swiftness of the insect's flight (the ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... test a hopeless hazard. By all logic the minutes should have been very precious and should have fairly flashed into eternity. The best we could reasonably wish for was death in combat, or self-inflicted. Yet we cursed the heat, the buzzing flies, the choking fumes of powder, the lack of water, and ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... Longueville, more beautiful than when I had met her before as Mademoiselle de Bourbon, perfectly dazzling, indeed, with her majestic bearing and exquisite complexion, but the face had entirely lost that innocent, wistful expression that had so much enchanted me before. Half a dozen gentlemen were buzzing round her, and though I once caught her eye she did not know me, and no wonder, for I was much more changed than she was. However, there I stood forlorn, in an access of English shyness, not daring to take a chair ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... The anachronism of buzzing along a Roman road, which had not been repaired since the days of the Caesars, on our way to Pergamos, in the only Ford car in the country, was punctuated by having to get out and shove whenever we came to a cross-drain. These always ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... brought it unto Rota. I borrowed Tyr's, the Asa's dress and figure. "Behold," I cried, "thy spear, thou crafty Rota! Late at a Jotun's foot I found it lying, Sent from the Leir-King's hand; it still was buzzing, For strong is Hother's arm; I knew the weapon, And I, who trusted in thy art, I shouted. Now ill it stands with yonder mountain Jotun; But loud he laugh'd, and straight the lance upsnatching, He shiver'd it, and here, O crafty Rota! Here bring I back to thee the precious fragments!" ...
— The Death of Balder • Johannes Ewald
... hear! Hark to me, one and all! Toilers upon the sea, list to the Fog-horn's call! List to my buzzing cry! list, as I growl and groan: Here is the sullen shore where the white-toothed breakers moan; Where the silky ripples run with the wolf-like wave behind, To leap on the struggling wreck and worry and gnaw and grind, To toss on the cruel crag ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... moment a wasp, who had grown tired of buzzing about the peaches in the garden, and trying in vain to get at them (for Peter had covered them with network), peeped in at the window with one of his many eyes, and, spying Master Harry's pudding, thought, ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... word: the Bumble-bees whom I draw from the fatal hole are a sufficient proof. As soon as that shrill buzzing, which I called the death-song, ceases, in vain I hasten to insert my forceps: I always bring out the insect dead, with slack proboscis and limp legs. Scarce a few quivers of those legs tell me that it is a ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... as the lever snapped into place. This was succeeded by a buzzing hum, as the motor began to absorb the great power from the red substance, which was not unlike radium in its action. There was a trembling to ...
— Lost on the Moon - or In Quest Of The Field of Diamonds • Roy Rockwood
... was so fidgety and nervous that even a solitary insect buzzing around kept him awake at night, and, at his request, Mrs. Rushton had secured the sticky sheet that now lay glistening ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport
... pushing on. We saw several natives to-day, but they invariably fled to the fastnesses of their mountain homes, they raised great volumes of smoke, and their strident vociferations caused a dull and buzzing sound even when out of ear-shot. The pattering of the rain-drops became heavier, yet we kept on, hoping at every turn to see an opening which would free us from our prison-house; but night and heavier rain together came, and ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... staggered back again, and would have fallen had the footman not caught him in his arms. He found himself in the carriage without knowing how he had got there, with an unpleasant bright light opposite to him, and a loud buzzing in his ears. Little by little he understood. He was alone; an acetylene lamp was shining in his face. The door on his right was open and the footman was speaking to him. What was he saying? Where should they drive? To Villa Mayda? Yes, certainly, ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... critique is written, the author convicts himself in it of such intense narrowness that he will be very welcome to many other people less narrow than himself. His like has already often existed, but is constantly in demand. The musician nowadays cannot get out of the way of all the buzzing. Twenty years ago there were hardly a couple of musical papers in Europe, and the political papers referred only in the most rare cases, and then only very briefly, to musical matters. Now all this is quite different, and with my "Preludes," for instance (which, by the way, are ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... down, Sally, and tell me how you manage it—how you manage, that is, to bustle about with perfect confidence in the necessity of your own activities, which to me seem as futile as the buzzing of a belated blue-bottle." She said nothing of the kind, however, and the presence of industry which she preserved so long as Mrs. Seal was in the room served to set her brain in motion, so that she dispatched her morning's work much as usual. At one o'clock she was surprised to find ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... power deck with a new hyperdrive unit for the big hop to Tara. So many guys buzzing around you can't ...
— Danger in Deep Space • Carey Rockwell |
