"Strident" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... interested, and the energetic sense of loathing for the negro proved it. The music, loud and strident—an ordinary Italian piano-organ having been introduced amongst the Oriental instruments—banged on, and then abruptly came to a stop when the negro cracked his whip. The two African women resumed their chairs, there was some applause, and a good many ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... flash of her jewels, the soft brilliance of her eyes as she leaned towards him. His voice sounded, even to himself, harsh and strident. ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... came back from the deep shadows of the trees with glittering swords and more strident music, and louder beating on gongs, and harsher notes on chanters, and a loud booming sound on a narrow, six-foot-six drum with bell-shaped mouth; and the figures danced quickly, going backwards, in circles, and breaking into groups, the swords whirling and flickering beautifully in ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... through brushwood. They end their sharp, breathless rush in the water of the river pool with a loud "Splash! splash!" Before the songsters have time to resume their interrupted rivalry a missel thrush, the strident whistling butcher's boy of the wood, appears round the corner, and, just like that blue-aproned youth, he proceeds to cuff and abuse all the smaller fry, saying, "Yah! get along! Who's your hatter? Does your mother know you're ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... the hills where twilight stands, Above the shadowy pasture lands, With strained and strident cry, Beneath pale skies that sunset bands, The ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... glaciers and cascades, and others preparing for more distant and more hardy enterprises. It was a perfect Babel of voices—French, Scotch, German, Italian, and English; with notes of every sort of patois—above which the strident bass of the mules soared triumphantly at intervals. There are not many busier spots than Chamouni at early morning in the ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... trail; but the breed bent steadily ahead. Once or twice an owl whirred suddenly low over their heads; and somewhere far off a loon guffawed insanely. In the end their guide, to cheer his own soul, lifted up his voice in the strident, unearthly chant of the Crees; and it only needed this to add the last touch of unreality to their eerie journey. They began to feel like spirits after death, hurried in the darkness ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... across the path, or hung tremulous with gauzy wings and gleaming bodies. Once a white-necked sea eagle soared screaming high over the traveller's head, and again a flock of brown bustards popped up from among the bracken, and blundered away in their clumsy fashion, half running, half flying, with strident cry ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... while that unknown noise increased A rattling, that with strident roars did blend, And whining moans; but suddenly it ceased, A fearful thing stood at the cloister's end, And eyed him for a while, then 'gan to wend Adown the cloisters, and began again That rattling, and the ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... slope, and was pouring over and down the other side like driving smoke. The wind had climbed along with it; and though I was still in calm air, I could see the trees tossing below me, and their long, strident sighing mounted to me ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... women who were prophesying; the shouting of the beggars singing old songs of the harem; the bleating of sheep; the braying of asses; the sailors calling tardy passengers; all these confused noises caused a deafening uproar, over which dominated the strident voices of the little naked negro boys, running about ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... tenor voice was hard, strident, sang lustily but inexpressively in the glaring sunshine. And the dialect made the song seem different, almost new. Its charm seemed to have evaporated. Yet she remembered vaguely that it had charmed her. She sought for the charm, striving ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... March 16.—The WINSOME WINSTON, sauntering in from behind SPEAKER'S Chair when Questions had advanced some way, startled by strident cheer from Ministerialists and Irish Nationalists. Opposition angrily replied. FIRST LORD, faintly blushing, found anchorage on Treasury Bench. Unpremeditated outburst of enthusiasm meant as welcome ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 25, 1914 • Various
... windows Mrs. Bracken and Mrs. Willoughby watched the performance. Solomon really was a clever dog and Jimmie had been an excellent teacher so that the entertainment was very creditable. They were all so interested in it that they never saw an addition to their number until a harsh strident voice sounded beside them. It made Mary Rose jump and Mrs. Bracken and Mrs. ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... went his way, flinging back a trail of chaff as long as his voice could carry to the room above, a room curiously dim and still, it seemed to him, as he came out into the strident sunshine of the July day. Once in the street, moreover, and safely out of range of Opdyke's windows, his fun dropped from him, and he shook his sturdy shoulders, as if he were trying to shake them free from an ugly, yet ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... after that brief speech during which the room might have been empty, so profound was the silence. The hissing of a kettle upon the stove rose sharp and strident to the ear. Seven white faces, all turned upward to this man who dominated them, were set motionless with utter terror. Then, with a sudden shivering of glass, a bristle of glistening rifle barrels broke through each window, while the curtains were ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... Sink of Iniquity,' and the chapel as 'This Little Corner of the Vineyard,' and through the front windows of the latter, one sabbath morn after another for many years, lusty Cornishmen, moved by the spirit, had hurled down upon McMahon and his house strident and terrible denunciations. ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... of heaven were torn, A strident shout rang from some neighbour shrubs Three Nubian soldiers ran upon her with Delighted oily faces. Screaming first Commands to her small son to make for home, She laboured to recross the current as when In nightmares the scared soul expects to die Tortured ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... having exhausted the patience or repelled the company of all the rest, found itself alone, and set up a fretful, continuous scream, disagreeable even to me, and torturing to Martial ears, which, adapted to hear in that thin air, are painfully alive to strident, harsh, or even loud sounds. Instantly obeying a sign from her mother, Eveena rose in the middle of a conversation to which she had listened with evident interest, and devoted herself for half-an-hour to please and pacify this uncomfortable child. ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... chaos; and it was only by slow degrees that Italy and Germany attained national unity. Poland, the Austrian Empire, and the Balkan States still remain in a condition to trouble the peace of the world. In Austria-Hungary the clash of the dynastic and the nationalist ideas is strident; and every citizen of that empire has to choose between a wider and ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... the world dark and peopled with restless, moving shadows. There was still much hurrying here and there, and from the kitchens came strident sounds of nervous activity. Thither Nicanor started, across the unlighted court, stopping on the way for a cup of water at the well. As he put down the dipper and turned to go, he ran into some one bound in the same direction, who staggered under the shock with an exclamation, ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... people what they think that they are thinking, he tells them what they have always known but think they have forgotten. He performs, for this oblivious generation, the service of a great reminder. He lures us from the strident and factitious world of which we read daily in the first pages of the newspapers, back to the serene eternal world of little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love. He educates the many, not by any crass endeavor ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... the servant to bring the parrot cage back to the verandah, where the little daughter liked to have it, and grimaced tolerantly at its strident cry: ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... get through his duty dance as best he could. Rose stayed behind, dodging amongst the bushes to hide her white dress, deaf to Jim's strident calls. And then, presently, the lovers flitted out of the gate, across the boys' cricket ground, and down the bank of one of the five creeks, where Rose knew of a nice seat beyond the area of possible ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... the mountains of Numidia, shot between the strings of their lyres over which their naked arms were stretched. At intervals their instruments would become suddenly still, and a cry would break forth strident, precipitate, frenzied, continuous, a sort of barking which they made by striking both corners of the mouth with the tongue. Others, more motionless than the Sphynx, rested on their elbows with their chins on their ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... that I advanced barely a half-mile during this first day and, lost in my work, forgot the hour until it was suddenly recalled by the insistent, strident tooting of whistles that forewarns the setting-off of the dynamite charges from the little red electric boxes along the edge of the "cut." I turned back toward Paraiso and, all but stumbling over little red-wound wires everywhere on ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... away from Pamela's grimy street in the November fog, felt that London was terrible. An ugly clamour of strident noises and hard, shrill voices, jabbering of vulgar, trivial things. A wry, desperate, cursed world, as she had called it, a pot seething with bitterness and all dreadfulness, with its Rosalinds floating ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... had invaded the drawing-room of Forty-eight Bloomsbury Square, generally noisy with strident voices about this hour. The Colonel remained engrossed in his paper. Mrs. Devine sat with her plump white hands folded on her lap, whether asleep or not it was impossible to say. The lady who was cousin to a baronet had shifted her chair beneath the gasolier, her eyes bent on her everlasting ...
— Passing of the Third Floor Back • Jerome K. Jerome
... hempen harness told of the back country. Sometimes there sounded the slow and heavy tread of a pensive carabao, drawing a great tumbrel; its conductor, on his buffalo skin, accompanying, with a monotonous and melancholy chant, the strident creaking of the wheels. Sometimes there was the dull sound of a native sledge's worn runners. In the fields grazed the herds, and among them white herons gravely promenaded, or sat tranquil on the backs of sleepy oxen beatifically chewing their cuds of prairie grass. ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... need for a more thorough cultivation of the speaking voice. It is astonishing how few persons give specific attention to this important subject. On all sides we are subjected to voices that are disagreeable and strident. It is the exception to hear a voice that ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... Bugle-calls, loud, strident bugle-calls, leaping in unison from the brass throats of bugles; tawny soldiers lining up for guard-mount before the officer of the day, as spick and span as a toy soldier; troopers in blue shirts, ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... the Hutchinsons' was almost like a life on another planet. Margaret was the younger, somewhat delicate daughter of a family of rather strident academics. Professor Hutchinson was not dependent on his salary to defray the expenses of his elegant establishment, but on his father, who had inherited from his father in turn the substantial fortune on which ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... the paper, and for five minutes there was no sound in the room save the strident buzz of the sender and the whisper of Bob's pencil as it moved rapidly ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman
... corner of the room came a strident voice. "They were all of them foolish to go at all, that's what I say. They will be out there all night, and in the morning we will be laughing at them when they return aboard. ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... exclaimed, "Ech, sirs! but it's yer ain sel come back again at last!" Then seizing my hand, she added breathlessly, "I'se gotten anither ane, and ye maun come in and see him;" so she dragged me bodily through and over her surging progeny to a cradle, where, soothed by the strident lullabies of its vociferating predecessors, her last-born and eleventh baby lay ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... power. One teacher who had an excellent record as a student and was, besides, a fine girl, had so unpleasant and absurd a voice that her students were in a continual state of amusement and would learn nothing from her. A great many teachers have lost in power because of a poor voice, strident, or lifeless, or husky, or falsetto. A poor enunciation, or words that do not carry, are ineffectual means by which to reach a class, to hold a customer, or to introduce one's self favourably to the interest of others. For a girl who is going to have any ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks
... in its history. Then in one of the lulls came that sound which between the hours of ten and three is never heard save as the clarion of disaster. The great gong in the president's gallery sent out its strident and metallic voice, and in the dead silence that followed its command an ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... me forward, and I went straightway to the chairman who seized me by the back and held me aloft in his right hand, while a deafening roar of strident voices was measuring ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... that you have got in it, wrapped up in paper. See if she haven't, Mr. Newcome," the refractory waiting-woman cried out, and again she laughed a strident laugh. ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... monks, and Robber Mother saw that now it meant business! With feet firmly planted she stood in the path and began shrieking in strident tones all the awful vengeance she would wreak on the cloister if she couldn't remain in the herb garden as long as she wished. But the monks did not see why they need fear her and thought only of driving her out. Then Robber Mother let out ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... Chemist leaped forward, the other three men at his side. A strident cry came up from the swarming multitude, and in an instant hundreds of them were upon her, climbing over her and thrusting their swords into ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... was strident and insistent, but for a long time no response came. At last, however, as the strains of "Loch Lomond" ceased, a lady appeared on the balcony of a drawing-room, and, leaning over a little forest of flowers and plants, threw a half-crown to the sorry street-musician. She ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... metropolis, in striking contrast to the quiet and seclusion of the sick room in which he had lived for so many weeks, astonished him. The crowds of suburbanites rushing frantically for trains, elbowing and pushing in their anxiety to get home, the strident hoarse cries of newsboys, the warning shouts of wagon drivers as they drove recklessly here and there at murderous speed, the blowing of auto horns, the ceaseless hum and roar of the big city's heavy traffic—all this bewildered and ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... up to the derelict, and pretty soon a prolonged and vibratory hissing noise, strident, insistent, ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... he repeated, in a strident shout that echoed through the bare room. "Dog! Villain! You ensnare my daughter's affections—you entice her away from her father's house—you cover my family with eternal disgrace—and then you dare to tell me there is ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... Kid, with his usual strident tones. "Take it easy, Bud, We've got a long, hard trail ahead of us, and ...
— The Boy Ranchers Among the Indians - or, Trailing the Yaquis • Willard F. Baker
... arc became flattened so as to assume the appearance of those gas jets called 'butterfly.' The plane of the 'butterfly' was parallel with the pole that I presented, or, in other words, with the section of the magnet. At the same time, the arc began to emit a strident noise, which became deafening when the pole of the magnet was brought to within a distance of about 2 millimeters. At this moment, the butterfly form produced by the arc was greatly spread out, and reduced to the thickness of a sheet of paper; and then it burst with violence, and projected ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... the kind of place it was, and he shook his head gravely over the picture. Twice in the first months of Polly's stay at the hospital her aunt had been to visit her; recently she had not appeared. He recollected her well,—a tall, lean woman, with unshapely garments, and a strident voice. ...
— Polly of the Hospital Staff • Emma C. Dowd
... heard above the murmur of the machinery in the mill, and the wash and splash of the water, there arose the peculiar strident buzz of a large bluebottle, busily on the lookout for a suitable spot on ...
— Will of the Mill • George Manville Fenn
... transformed as by the touch of magic. A sudden and baleful light flamed into his eyes, his face grew as red as blood, and he clapped his hand to his pocket with a sudden and violent motion. "Ze ball!" he cried, in a hoarse and strident voice. "Ze ball! Give me ze ball!" And upon the next instant our hero beheld the round and shining nozzle of a pistol pointed directly ...
— The Ruby of Kishmoor • Howard Pyle
... neat-waisted little modistes, the felt-hatted young clerks, the obese and over-dressed and whiskered men from their offices on the Bourse, the hawkers crying the "Soir," and the "Derniere Heure," with strident voices, the poor girls with rusty shawls and pinched faces, selling flowers, and the gaping, idling Cookites who seem to eternally pass and re-pass the Metropole at all hours of the ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... a warm evening; in the dusk of the big rooms the hum of voices was low and pleasant, broken only now and then by Van Torp's more strident tone. Outside it was still light, and the starlings and blackbirds and thrushes were finishing their supper, picking up the unwary worms and the tardy little snails, and making a good deal of sweet ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... of the shrill, weird cry, the animal stood at bay. Again came the well-known strident halloo. A maelstrom of memories was awakened by the call. Instinctively obeying the old summons she started toward the train, when from over the hill behind her she ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... and their jaunty yellow and red forage-caps, showing up bravely in the clear morning light. Above them, on the top of the bank, was ranged the line of donkeys, and the air was full of the clamour of the boys. In shrill strident voices each was crying out the virtues of his own beast, and ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... were scarcely more than subconscious in him. He stood now a few inches behind Hilda, and, above these thoughts, and beneath the stir and strident glitter and noise of the crawling ant-heap, his mind was intensely occupied with Hilda's ear and her nostril. He could watch her now at leisure, for the changeful interest of the scene made conversation unnecessary and even inept. What a lobe! ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... to leave the nest a day and a half before any of the others. I happened to be looking at it when the first impulse to get outside the nest seemed to seize it. Its parents were encouraging it with calls and assurances from some rocks a few yards away. It answered their calls in vigorous, strident tones. Then it climbed over the edge of the nest upon the plate, took a few steps forward, then a few more, till it was a yard from the nest and near the end of the timber, and could look off into free space. Its parents apparently shouted, ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... crash like the reversed rush of a rocket was cloven with a strident and incessant yelling. Five people rushed into the gate of the mansions as three people rushed out, and for an instant they all deafened each other. The sense of some utterly abrupt horror seemed for a moment to fill ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... powerful arms he filed away at the bar of the padlock. For a moment the Father, forgot his part in the nocturnal business, and stood, breathless, at the window, fascinated by the quick motion of the arm back and forth, and the strident sound of the file as it slowly ate its way through the steel. Suddenly Pomponio paused and looked up, with an expression of fear and hate on his face, dreadful, to see. Snatching up the lantern from the floor, he dropped it behind the great box, and ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... diverse, and some heated, comment on the situation. But above the general clamor rose the strident tones of Black Mart, alluding with manifest satisfaction to the fact that Baldy was certainly proving himself ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... of three brief hours, which to the heavy sleeper appeared as so many minutes, the strident alarum woke the apprentice to the stress of life. By the light of a tallow candle he huddled on his clothes, and entered the ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... low, confused twittering of bird-notes which had infused the solemn silence with a vague hint of life, strident sounds grew dominant—a crow calling to his mate from tree to tree—a short, sharp symphony of swallows—a cock announcing the coming ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... marshal was resolved. He had decided that Calliope Catesby should no more wake the echoes of Quicksand with his strident whoop. He had so announced. Officially and personally he felt imperatively bound to put the soft pedal on that instrument of discord. ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... small street piano on wheels turned the corner, and, as the rain had now ceased, one of them pulled the oil-cloth covering from the instrument and, seating himself on a camp-stool at the curb, opened the piano. After a discouraged glance at the darkened windows, the other, in a hoarse, strident tenor, to the accompaniment of the piano, began to sing. The voice of the man was raucous, penetrating. It would have reached the ...
— The Lost House • Richard Harding Davis
... that all the notes of these most engaging birds, symbolic of light in plumage and in flight, are shrill and strident. When they feed—and they seem always to be feeding or carrying food—their chatter is perpetual and varied in tone. Occasionally a male bird sets himself to beguile the time with song. Then his flame-red eyes flash with ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... in white. She entered the door. Outside in the hammock Harvey strained his ears to hear the dialogue. His sweetheart's voice came to him only in a series of murmurs, but for him there was no difficulty about distinguishing the replies, for the replies were pitched in a strident, belligerent key which carried almost to the yard fence. From them he was able to guess with the utmost accuracy just what arguments against the presence of the negress the girl was making. This, ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... James, and they ceased. James one day could not help overhearing a conversation between the two. He was in the stable, and the kitchen windows were open. He heard only a few words. "You don't mean to say you are goin' to hev him?" said Emma in her strident voice. ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... its strident vibrations had ceased troubling the thin morning air, the train began to move slowly out of Kerb. Pobloff ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... now—save for that crackle of flame that grew in volume, that came now in quick, sharp reports, like revolver shots. From out in the street swelled a cry: "Death to the Gray Seal!" Then the clang of bells, the roar and rattle of fire apparatus, strident voices bellowing orders, and the crowd again, blood hungry: ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... his accustomed place but not in his accustomed attitude. The change in him was obvious but in a sense pathetic. He was quietly dressed, and his manner denoted a new nervousness, not to say embarrassment. Drops of perspiration stood upon his forehead. The strident note had gone from his voice. He spoke clearly enough, but more softly, and without ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the streets in his red coat trimmed with gilt braid, his hat cocked upon one side of his bony head, pleasing himself with the belief that he was the object of universal admiration, and swelling with a vast and consummate self-satisfaction as he boasted, with strident voice and extravagant enunciation, of the magnificence of ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... out in a strident voice to the soldiers about her dwelling. "Stand by, lazy rascals," cried she, "stand away from my gates. What are you doing on ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... Silvery-strident throat— so assiduously serenading my brain, flinching under the glittering hail of your notes— were you not safe behind... rats know what thickness of... plastered wall... I might fathom your golden delirium with throttle of finger and thumb shutting ...
— Sun-Up and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... strident-voiced ... belligerent ... waving my arms wildly. It was said that, full of threats, I had taken a shotgun menacingly from a rack ... that a vicious bull dog lay between my feet, growling ... that I went, sockless, in sandals ... ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... in the midst of the women, sunk her double chin in her lace collar, and read her paper in a voice like the whisper of a blade of grass. Doctor Sturtevant had a very low voice. His wife had naturally a strident one, but she essayed to follow him in the matter of voice, as in all other things. The poor hen bird tried to voice her thoughts like her mate, and the result was a strange and weird note. However, Mrs. Sturtevant herself was not aware of the result. ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... and strident hollow echoing cry, which was startling in its suddenness and resembled nothing so much as a badly-blown ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... falling into its first snooze, the instruments having all died away into the softest pianissimo, the full orchestra breaks out with a frightful BANG. It is a question whether the most vigorous performance of this symphony would startle an audience nowadays, accustomed to the strident effects of Wagner and Liszt. A wag in a recent London journal tells us, indeed, that at the most critical part in the work a gentleman opened one eye sleepily and said, ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... was blowing over the place. They were standing a little apart, in the shadow of a tree, and the hum of conversation and laughter, the noisy appeals of the vendors of flowers and other trifles, the strident voices from a distant stage, the far-off strains of swaying music, seemed blended together in an insistent and not inharmonious chorus. Jocelyn Thew stood as though listening to them for a moment. His eyes were following a tall figure in white, walking, a little listlessly by her brother's ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a roar of ironic mirth broke from his lips, resounding high above the strident rasping of the beetle-legs, and roaring over ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... Johnnie nodding at her side. In reaction from the excitements and fatigues of the day, they all early sought the rest which is never found in such perfection as in a mountain camp. Hemlock boughs formed the mattresses on which their blankets were spread, and soon there were no sounds except the strident chirpings of insects ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... quiet for a moment or two; then the strident voice of the Mate rang out, "Boy! Boy! Where the hell have you got to now? Lay aft and ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... an oasis in the day. Since morning he had been toiling through the Sahara of the city's noise: arid, senseless, inhospitable noise: roaring of wheels, clanging of bells, shrieking of whistles, clatter of machinery, squawking of horns, raucous and strident voices: confused, bewildering, exhausting noise, a desolate and unfriendly ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... century the forces of unity and of diversity seemed stalemated. War's end in 1945 saw the shadow of a universal state flicker across the screen of history. With the adjournment of the Bandung Conference in 1955 the shadow dissolved and was replaced by the strident nationalisms that have become an outstanding feature of planetary politics, economics and ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... women. These drink-offerings were received with a subdued hum of conversation—it was impossible to hear what was said or even to distinguish who was saying it, but a vague buzzing filled the room, as of imprisoned bees. In the midst of it Ellen's voice rose suddenly strident. ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... strident-sounding bell announced it, and the three passed directly into the next room, furnished so conventionally there was absolutely nothing upon which to let the eyes rest in surprise, or pleasure. But it was painfully neat and ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... down from the rear of the 'bus, assisted by two young men in brass buttons. Mr. Hooker made way for a corpulent, puffing old lady. She stopped in front of him and demanded in hot, strident tones: ...
— The Flyers • George Barr McCutcheon
... two or three sound posts were standing, she spoke to her sister. There was something strident in her voice, as if she pleaded for strength to break the ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... in strident tones; "this is no time for weeping. What have you done? How came this body in your room? Speak freely to one who may be helpful. Do you imagine I would ruin you? Do you think this piece of dead flesh on ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... her garden where she sat beneath a tree. Around, the cicadas whirred in the speaking trees. Zig-zig-zig-zig. But they were no longer strident. They seemed but a vibration of the high atmosphere in which ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... even those male knickerbockers, you will find the involuntary pleasurable thrill at a strong man's chivalrous attention, the delicious sense of a man's care and protection, which centuries and centuries of physical weakness have woven into the very tissues of her being, in however loud and strident a voice she may deny it. Whatever changes in the position of women may take place, the basic fact remains, and will always remain, the man is stronger than the woman, and his strength is given him to serve ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... think of the difference in the Christian teaching of St. Paul's epistles. Had any of the other Greek philosophers been more humane in their views on slavery? Then another voice struck in, and compared the ancient idea of slavery with the slave code of the United States. The voice was rather strident, but not unpleasant. It had a great deal to say, and for some minutes seemed likely to take the lecture altogether from the mouth of the lecturer. Henrietta looked in its direction, and saw a small apple-cheeked elderly lady. The voice and the face both set her thinking, and by the end of ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... awoke the echoes of the gorge with a long and furious tambourinade. While the women, in answer to this signal, were coming from all directions, carrying buckets in their hands, or copper water-pots on their heads, he unchained the pump-handle. Now for the next two hours the strident cries of the exasperated pump, and the screaming gabble of many tongues, all refreshed by slumber and eager for exercise, made such a diabolic tumult and discord as to throw even the braying of the donkeys ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... To where she stood came the strident sounds of the mechanical piano-player, for some of the gay party were waltzing in the hall. Their merry shouts and laughter were discordant to her ears. What cared any of those friends of her step-mother if she were in disgrace ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... its strident tones were to her ear! She dropped her eyes and caught sight of a dark stain on the snow-white plumage of the doves in the mosaic ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... house, a shop, a husband, and my best bed-linen. And now when I want her to call the child Yosef, after my first husband, peace be on him, her own father, she would out of sheer vexatiousness, call it Yechezkel." Malka's voice became more strident than ever. She had been anxious to make a species of vicarious reparation to her first husband, and the failure of Milly to acquiesce in the arrangement was a source of ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... charmante!" cried the actress, with an inflection of irony in her strident voice. "Miladi, il faut absolument que nous nous connaissions. Je connais votre chere mere depuis si longtemps! A Paris, l'hiver passe c'etait une ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... dropped down on chairs when they came in, for they were too tired to think about the dead. At that moment a loud noise came from the room next door, where people were pushing trunks about and striking against furniture to an accompaniment of strident, outlandish syllables. It was a young Austrian couple, and Gaga told how during her agony the neighbors had played a game of catch as catch can and how, as only an unused door divided the two rooms, they had heard ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... roundhead maples that stood guard along the north wall of the Puritan sanctuary. The windows were open. We could see the rhythmic motion of the fan-drill in the pews. The pulpit was not visible; but from that unseen eminence a strident, persistent voice flowed steadily, expounding the necessity and uses of "a baptism of fire," with a monotonous variety of application. Fire was needful for the young, for the middle-aged, for the old, and for those, if any, who occupied the ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... childhood, mingling with the tones of older voices, including thus in the Song of Death all human life and its developments, recalling the sufferings of the cradle, swelling to the griefs of other ages in the stronger male voices and the quavering of the priests,—all this strident harmony, big with lightning and thunderbolts, does it not speak with equal force to the daring imagination, the coldest heart, nay, to philosophers themselves? As we hear it, we think God speaks; the vaulted arches of no church are ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... island to the other side. There the beach was slashed by many black, saw-toothed reefs. The sea leaped up upon them on one side and the trees bore down upon them on the other. The air was filled with tumult, the hollow roar of the waves, the strident hum of the pines. For the first day, Pete entertained himself with exploration, clambering from one reef to another, pausing only to look listlessly off at the horizon, climbing a pine here and there, swinging on a bough while he stared absently back ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... sun on the back." Even the humble grasshopper rubs its flanks to express its joy, raises and lowers its shanks till its wing-cases squeak, and is enchanted with its own music, which it commences or terminates suddenly "according to the alternations of sun and shade." Each insect has its rhythm, strident or barely perceptible; the music of the thickets and fallows caressed by the sun, rising and falling in waves ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... he said to himself; "but for all that it is a fatal day to him. 'The sins of the father shall be visited on the children even to the third and fourth generation,' saith the Book Christians believe in. Christians!" he laughed a harsh, strident laugh. "Sir Jasper Kingsland is a Christian! The religion that produces such men must be a glorious one. He was a Christian when he perjured himself and broke her heart. 'Tis well. As a Christian he can not object to ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming |
