"Swish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... didn't, and I can tell you it puzzled me no end, for I went miles and miles and I did not see so much as the swish of a tail," answered Rumple, with a dramatic flourish of the broken basin from which he had been eating his portion ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... was slow, but spacious and comfortable, and there was a motherly decency in her long nursing rock and her rustling old-fashioned gait, the multitudinous swish, in her wake, as of a thousand proper petticoats. It was as if she wished not to present herself in port with the splashed eagerness of a young creature. We weren't numerous enough quite to elbow each other and yet weren't too few to support—with ...
— The Patagonia • Henry James
... her contemptuously aside. The swish of her dress caught the candle, and by good fortune put it out, or she would have been in a blaze. Now there was only the light from the paraffin lamp in the kitchen below striking upwards through the ...
— Bessie Costrell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and over the dale, And he went over the plain; And backward and forward he swish'd his tail As a gentleman swishes ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... inestimable beasts. The man who owns the cattle on a thousand hills, who employs stockmen by the dozen, who sends off hundreds of fat, contented, happy, liberty-loving oxen in droves to end their days in an unknown locality amid the clatter and swish of machinery and with the fearful scents of blood and decaying offal defiling the air, has few opportunities of studying the nicer qualities of his possessions. He may be full of bullock lore and able to recite sensational and entertaining stories illustrative of the ways of the big mobs ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... about not launching out too soon And so not carrying the tree away Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise To the top branches, climbing carefully With the same pains you use to fill a cup Up to the brim, and even above the brim. Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish, Kicking his way down through the air to the ground. So was I once myself a swinger of birches. And so I dream of going back to be. It's when I'm weary of considerations, And life is too much like a ...
— Mountain Interval • Robert Frost
... to note how in "Sylvie and Bruno" his idea of the thoughts of a child has become deeper and more spiritual. Yet in the earlier tale, told "all in a golden afternoon," to the plash of oars and the swish of a boat through the waters of Cherwell or Thames, the ideal child is strangely beautiful; she has all Sylvie's genuineness and honesty, all her keen appreciation of the interest of life; only there lacks ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... we crossed seemed to be a raging torrent, its waters racing at top speed," said one traveler who arrived in Chicago on March 26th. "We could hear the swish of the waters and hear the cries of people in ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... warning passed his lips we had shot around the projecting rock, where the road had been cut from the mountain-side. We were near our journey's end then, for at the foot of the embankment that sheered down at our left we heard the swish of a mountain-stream. The horse went down. There was a cry from Tip—a sound of splintering wood—something seemed to strike me a brutal blow. Then I lay back, careless, fearless, and ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... ought to do it as well as it could be done—at least, the way you fellows do it!" He clenched his fingers as if upon the handle of a house-painter's brush. "Slap, dash—there's your road." He paddled the air with the imaginary brush as though painting the side of a barn. "Swish, swash—there go your fields and your stone bridge. Fit! Speck! And there's your old woman, her red handkerchief, and what your dealer will probably call 'the human interest,' all complete. Squirt the edges of your foliage in with a blow-pipe. Throw ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... wharf rough sheds housed the cutting plant. Where they stood was the head of a big slide, with back-up sides, and the forest giants, brought to the top from the place where they were felled, were levered over, to swish down in a cloud of dust ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... Swish! came the whip down on the withers of the late frisky runaway, and Gabe went helter-skelter down the road, headed ...
— Fred Fenton on the Track - or, The Athletes of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... feeling of fear he was passing a certain big, hollow log. Without really knowing why he did it, because, you know, he didn't stop to do any thinking, he dived into that hollow log, and even as he did so there was the sharp swish of great wings. Terror the Goshawk had missed catching Peter by the fraction of ...
— The Burgess Bird Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... to consciousness after being wounded the first thing that met my ears was the roar of musketry and the boom of cannon, with the continual swish, swash of the grape and canister striking the trees and ground. I placed my hand in my bosom, where I felt a dull, deadening sensation. There I found the warm blood, that filled my inner garments and now trickled down my side as I endeavored to stand upright. I had been shot through ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... in the spacious halls; the courts were inlaid with mosaic; there were festooned partitions and a great profusion of architectural fancies; and everywhere reigned a silence so deep that the swish of a sash or the echo of a ...
— Three short works - The Dance of Death, The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, A Simple Soul. • Gustave Flaubert
... she covered her face with her hands. A moment she stood rocking there—a fair, lissom plant swept by a gale of ineffable emotion. Then the breath seemed to go all out of her in one great sigh, and Gregory, who dared not look her way, heard the swish of her gown, followed by a thud as she collapsed and lay swooning on ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... to fish in such a place and at such an hour! The novelty of the scene, the grandeur of the landscape, lend a strange charm to the sport. But the sport itself is so familiar that one feels at home—the motion of the rod, the feathery swish of the line, the sight of the rising fish—it all brings back a hundred woodland memories, and thoughts of good fishing comrades, some far away across the sea, and, perhaps, even now sitting around the forest camp-fire in Maine or Canada, and some ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... gaily. A pretty group was rustling past the office, all muslin frills and silk sashes and flowers of every colour, and the prettiest and best dressed of them all came running up the steps to his side, with a swish of silken skirts and a ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... behind the brass rail in the office beat to a froth, and I was enjoyin' it, lazy and comf'table, with my feet up on the bench and my head back; when all at once there's a big spasm of applause, the doors openin' on the back veranda are swung open, everybody starts chatterin' together, there's a swish and a rustle and a clatter of high heels; and the next thing I knew the whole blamed garden ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... still paced restlessly back and forth, now on the turf and now on the brick walk. He closed his eyes, but he still saw Evelina and noted the slight difference of sound in her footfalls as she crossed the walk. He heard the swish of her skirts as she lifted them when she passed the pool of water—was it possible that his hearing was becoming more keen? He was sure that he had not heard it from ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... swish of thousands of shells, the guns smashed the stillness. Instantly, the flash of their explosion lit up the opposite trenches. For a fraction of a second the thought came to McKnutt how wonderful it was that man could produce a sound to which Nature had no equal, either ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... victim prepared himself for the swing, grasped the hooks, and then, with good momentum, landed in the hammock. There was a swish, a distinct thud, and young Potter rolled out upon the deck with a gasp of amazement. Turning as quickly as he could, he looked up and saw the hammock swinging in its proper place. It was physical labor for us to keep from howling with glee at the expression on his face. He glanced ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... voice rang up the stairs, as Helene pinned the girl's hat upon her fair head. Celie sprang up, took a quick step or two towards the door, and stopped in dismay. The swish of her long satin train must betray her. She caught up the dress and tried again. Even so, the ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... with whom Nero used to play, was far off in Africa, so our circus friend had to stay by himself. He curled up on the leaves, listened to the swish and patter of the rain, and ...
— Nero, the Circus Lion - His Many Adventures • Richard Barnum
... on it went—the agonised remembrance of all that banging, trampling; the swish of her own scrubbing-brush; the voices round the table where old Mrs. Cohen had stood ironing for hours and ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... and enter a room across the hall. She knew it was he. She could hear the clink of his spurs and the swish of his chaps. While she realized that he was Mrs. Adams's son and had a right to be there, she rather resented his proximity, possibly because she had not expected to ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... signalled Ledyard to embark; and before the white man could solve the problem of how three men were to sit in two manholes, he was seized head and heels, and bundled clear through a manhole, lying full length imprisoned like Jonah in the whale. Then the swish of dipping paddles, of the cold waves above and beneath, shut out by parchment thin as tissue paper, told Ledyard that he was being carried out to sea, spite of dark and storm, {250} in a craft light as an air-blown bladder, that bounced forward, through, under, over ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... finish his sentence. There was a rush of swift feet, a swish of skirts, then full upon him there fell a whirlwind of sobs, clinging arms, ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... drink tae," put in Marget, "and that's the window I pit the licht in to guide him hame in the dark winter nichts, and mony a time when the sleet played swish on the glass I wes near wishin'—" Domsie ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... put his ear and shoulder against it, and push his way forward. It was better, however, when he turned into the lane. The high bank and the hedge sheltered him upon one side. The road, however, was deep in mud, and the rain fell in a steady swish. Not a soul was to be seen, but he needed to make no inquiries, for he knew whither his father had gone as certainly as ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the teacher's platform with an angry swish of her skirts, and took up a position half-way down the aisle where she had a better view of the class. John studied her carefully. The usually smiling lips were set in a thin, nervous line, and the hand which held the record book trembled ever so slightly. ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... another. It was slow work, one step at a time; but at length they found that there was firm ground in this new region. They concluded that the world was only a larger calf pen, after all; but it was a wonderfully light calf pen, and its walls were certainly a long way off. Swish! up went their tails into the air and away they scampered like the wildest of ...
— Lisbeth Longfrock • Hans Aanrud
... Michelot!" I cried. Obediently he wheeled to the left, and I caught the swish of his sword as it left ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... slipped into the darkness, the panel closed, and he heard the swish of the hanging as it ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... butlers and the upper maids, especially to the butlers, who make it resplendent on Sunday afternoons when the weather is good. As the weather had thickened in the late afternoon, our party walked in a dumb-show, listening to the soft swish of the waves on the rocks below, and watching the figures of other promenaders, who were good enough ladies and gentlemen in this ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... stooping shoulders, in long-skirted nankeen coats, belted round the waist, with a strong, sour smell always clinging to them. And on the women's side, one could hear nothing but the patter of bare feet, the swish of petticoats. The chief valet was called Irinarh, and Alexey Sergeitch always called him in a long-drawn-out call: 'I-ri-na-a-arh!' The others he called: 'Boy! Lad! Whoever's there of the men!' Bells he could ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... this," he began. "Five years ago I worked for a fruit company, and business sent me sliding along the edges of strange seas and picture-book lands. I met little brown men, and listened to the soft swish of the banana growing, and had an orchestra seat at a revolution or two. Don't look for a magazine story about overthrown tyrants, or anything like that. It's just a quiet little lie I'm speaking of, told on a quiet little afternoon, by ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... tree lying across it. Edd waited a few moments. The woods was all gray and quiet. I don't know when I've felt so good. Then he called again. At once turkeys answered from all around in the trees. Next I heard a swish of wings, then a thump. Then more swishes. The turkeys were flying down from their roosts. It seemed to me in my excitement that there were a hundred of them. We could hear them pattering over the dry ground. Edd whispered: 'They're down. ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... and sank upon the rolling waves, their swish and thud fell strangely on the ear of one who lay deep down in the recesses of the hull, where—among barrels of pork, and casks of tar, and cans of oil, and coils of rope, and other unsavoury stores—he consorted with rats and mice and an uneasy conscience, in thick ...
— Philosopher Jack • R.M. Ballantyne
... the beat of the Indian drum, the eerie penetrations of the turtle rattle that set the time of the dancers' feet. Dance? It is not a dance, that marvellously slow, serpentine-like figure with the soft swish, swish of moccasined feet, and the faint jingling of elks'-teeth bracelets, keeping rhythm with every footfall. It is not a dance, but an invocation of motion. Why may we not worship with the graceful movement of our feet? The paleface worships by moving his lips and tongue; ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... the swish of ghostly wings which brush her face or neck and the air is full of chattering noises like the grinding of hundreds of tiny teeth. Sometimes a soft little body plumps into her lap and if she dares to take her hands from her face long enough to disengage the clinging animal she is liable to receive ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... from the palsied lips of David Cable, so low and lifeless that the sound was lost in the swish of the water below. The intermittent red signal in the lighthouse far out in the lake blinked back at him, but to him it was a steady, ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... head under the bedclothes, I used to lie quaking because of the crying of the ghosts. It was a wild winter when Theobald left us, and they cried every night. It is a sound I have never grown used to, though I have heard it every winter I can remember. And also the swish of the satin as it went by my door, and the tap of high-heeled shoes. They cried more that winter than I ever heard them, except in the winter after Uncle Luke went away (but then I was little, and had the company of Maureen ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... things long forgotten, as dying people do; sounds and smells of the Vico Dritto di Ponticelli, and the feel of the hot paving-stones down which his childish feet used to run to the sea; noises of the sea also, the drowning swish of waters and sudden roar of breakers sounding to anxiously strained ears in the still night; bright sunlit pictures of faraway tropical shores, with handsome olive figures glistening in the sun; the sight of ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... when the log on which he was walking tipped a little, and although Tom made frantic efforts to save himself by seizing all the branches within his reach, it set the whole structure in motion. There was a "swish" of tree-tops, and in a moment more the bridge and Tom went into the water together. The negro looked, but did not see ...
— Elam Storm, The Wolfer - The Lost Nugget • Harry Castlemon
... and whatever else it lacked, it had a front window, with shutters, and a balcony with an iron railing, and when tucked up in their beds at night, in the tiny dark alcove, the children could hear the soft swish of the water against ...
— Chico: the Story of a Homing Pigeon • Lucy M. Blanchard
... cut, Paddy!" The words were on my lips when a "waddy," torn from the vindictive tree and flung, high and straight into the inoffensive sky, descended flat on the red stump with a gunlike report. The swish of the waddy down-tilted the frayed brim of ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... the Road, with her spray of brown blossoms in her one hand and her garden hat in the other, she espied young Eliza rapidly approaching from up the Road and there was excitement in every movement of her slim, little body and in every swish of her short calico skirts, as well as in the way her long pigtail ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... wall—washing vainly against it with a wistful wailing swish—seems to be thrown back on itself, and then to hasten away on either side, where lies the moist fog of a ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... mouthed in those velvet muzzles; a hoof pawed sharply on the road; swish of long, restless tails; creaking of saddlery; and sudden bursts of all the instruments in unison when heads were tossed and shaken. Remotely the whirr of a reaping ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... scudding ring reversed within scudding ring, the bowmen outermost. Around and 'round and 'round they galloped, yelling, gibing, taunting, shooting so malignantly that the air was in a constant hum and swish. The lead whined and smacked, the shafts ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... roof. There, with nothing on but my nightgown, tennis shoes, and the moonlight, I would dance frenetically. The tiles would break loose beneath my gossamer tread and, accompanied by sections of gutter, go poppity-swish into the street below and hit all manner of funny things. I fancy that some of the funny things complained. I know the police called, and I seem to remember rather a nasty letter from the landlord's agent. I had a long interview with mamma on the subject. She pointed out that if I slipped ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain
... said that morning. There was something unpleasant in the isolation; it made us look longingly down to earth, wondering whether we shall ever feel really at home in the air. I, too, longed for the sound of human voices, and all that I heard was the roar of the motor and the swish of the wind through wires and struts, sounds which have no human quality in them, and are no more companionable than the lapping of the waves to a man adrift on a raft in mid-ocean. Underlying this feeling, ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... was a rush for the door, a swish of draperies, a little sob from Lois, who was terrified. Saton remained standing alone. He had not moved. His eyes were fixed upon the figure of the judge, who also lingered. They two were left in ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... an idea. As soon as I heard Miss Patricia's silk skirts coming slowly through the hall with their soft swish, swish, I ran and sat in the doorway with my hands over my eyes, in token that there was something that she ought not to look at. It should have amused her, for she knew the story of the ebony paper-weight, but instead it seemed to arouse her ...
— The Story of Dago • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... glass shimmered and waved before us, as we rushed on through the mountains, past the beautiful place of Gelert's grave, up toward Pen-y-gwrd. And the tinkling swish of the rain on the glass sounded to me as the Welsh names had begun to sound. I wish you could hear them spoken, for the spelling gives no idea of their pronunciation, or the pleasant, muffled music of them. But all I can tell you is, that when ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... state bed shivers beneath its velvet coverlet. Above, dim, in the smoke, a tarnished coronet gleams dully. Overhead hammers and chinks the rain. Fearfully wails the wind down distant corridors, and there comes the swish and sigh of rushes lifted off the floors. The arras blows sidewise out from the wall, and then falls ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... music of their chatting, and the cracks of their powerful whips. Suddenly, a shout at the front, and an abrupt pull up, brought the whole column to a halt. The Captain's dogs had broken into a gallop. On turning suddenly round a spur of a glacier about as big as Saint Paul's Cathedral, they went swish into a shallow pond which had been formed on the ice. It was not deep, but there was sufficient water in it to send a deluge of ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... ceaseless patter and swish of the gloomy rain—the gusty sighs of the wind through the shade-trees' naked branches—louder still the rolling of heavy wheels over the rough streets; and all these were torn and rent by the shrieks of men ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... "Swish—thud! swish!" Half blinded by a blow dealt between the eyes by a hurling slungshot, the young engineer could discern a break in the program, the appearance of a new element that startled and astonished him. He had expected to see the furious Fogg join the mob ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... will surge backward and forward through the circuit until it dies out. If there be no E.M.F. present it will cease suddenly, and neutrality will be attained at once. Telephone circuits indicate the operation by peculiar and characteristic sounds. An iron wire circuit produces a long swish or sigh, but a copper wire circuit like the Paris-London telephone emits a short, sharp report, like the crack of a pistol, which is sometimes startling, and has created fear, but there is no danger or liability to shock. Indeed, the start has more than once thrown the listener off his stool, and ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... you think we're babies? Here, shy us the reins. Come along, you fellows, there's room for all three on the box. Now then, Joe, give her her head. Come up, you beast! Swish! See if we don't make her step out. Let ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... swish, a click of high heels on the stairs, a flash of red, with a momentary glimpse of white, and the girl stood ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... held up a green melon in one hand, and signalled with the other to one of our men to advance and receive this gift. Our man dropped his rifle, and was sliding a leg over his barricade, when with a swish a bullet went through the folds of his shirt—the nearest shave he had ever had. The volunteer dropped back to his side, and then, after, a while, waved an empty tin in his hand as a notice that he desired a resumption of friendly relations. The Chinese brave cautiously put ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... should like an apple. I ran on deck. The watch was all forward looking out for the island. The man at the helm was watching the luff of the sail and whistling away gently to himself, and that was the only sound excepting the swish of the sea against the bows and around ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... handled sheets and braces and hove the vessel to so as to steady her as they worked, but she still labored heavily in the sea, and beneath them they could hear the leaden swish of water in the floor of the hold beneath. Their labor was having its effect, and by infinitesimal gradations they were counteracting the list and getting the ship upright; but the wind was worsening, and it seemed to them also that the water ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... those unpainted old farm buildings were—how utterly isolated. The twinkling lights of the village were mere pin-points in the distance. Each thick shadow beneath the eaves of the house was blacker than he had ever noticed before. Even the soft swish of the rain as it seeped from the sodden shingles, even the very familiar complaint of loose nails lifted by the wind under the clapboards, set his heart pumping faster. All in an instant his sensation-hungry old ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... them, she stood for them, with the other foot. You see, Doro, sometimes the much despised slang is—the real thing," and with a tantalizing swish of her skirts, and a most frivolous toss of her head Tavia called "Ta-ta!" and dashed across the fields with the lunch box ...
— Dorothy Dale • Margaret Penrose
... The white miller in the doorway of the gray-stone, red-roofed mill laughed, and anxious children ran down from a knot of storybook cottages and gay dooryards. "I'll gie ye ten shullin's for the sperity bit dog," the miller shouted, above the clatter of the' wheel and the swish of the dam. ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... ship had left St. Vincent that a certain amount of peace came to establish itself in his heart, and the large and beautiful consolation of the sea began to make itself felt. The weather was calm and clear, and the monotonous slap and swish of the water against the ship's side was in itself soothing. The company on board were all strangers to him, and this helped to give him a feeling that he was starting anew in life. Also he was on his way to do the best he could to find his brother, if he were living, ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... and the great oak trembles; the heavy rain drops through the treble roof of oak and hawthorn and fern. Under the arched branches the lightning plays along, swiftly to and fro, or seems to, like the swish of a whip, a yellowish-red against the green; a boom! a crackle as if a tree fell from the sky. The thick grasses are bowed, the white florets of the wild parsley are beaten down, the rain hurls itself, and suddenly a fierce blast tears the green oak leaves and whirls ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... drew swiftly toward him as though to go beneath the bark on her way to the pass. The paddles leaped to a rousing song and crashed in unison on the slopping gunwales. Dip, swish, bang! and then the accentuated thunder of forty voices, the men's hoarse and straining, the women's rich, falsetto, and musical. In the stern the old chief swayed with every rush of the boat, one sinewy hand ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... out in the open with the sunshine pouring down and a big lazy white cloud tangled in tree-tops. So he flung himself on the moss, hands under his head, and lay there, Prince beside him, looking up, up into the far blue, listening to the swish and rustle of the wind talking secrets to the leaves, and all the tiny mysterious noises that make up the silence of a wood ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... stifled exclamation. Ned was too horror-struck to answer; above the clicking of the oars in the rowlocks he fancied he could hear the swish of the savage sharks rushing through the water at their living prey. He was not sorry when George again rested ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... started for somewhere else. The trees had colic; everything became as dark as winter twilight; streaks of wildfire ran miles in a second, and somebody seemed to be ripping up sheets of copper and tin the size of farms. The rain came with a swish, then with a rattle, and then with a roar, while people listened at their garret doorways and marveled. Window-panes turned to running ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... Tom took him to the lookout far ahead on the tow and Paul forgot all about home and gave himself up to the delight of watching the swiftly passing banks while he listened to the swish, swish of the water as it beat against the bows of the barges. He was seated with the men on the watch, who passed the time telling stories and laughing at rough jokes. When it was getting late his big ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... foot in long cloaks and veils, lay about the floor or on the divans round the walls, hardly distinguishable from the bundles except that now and then they moaned or uttered some brief lamentation. From other parts of the house came sounds of hammering and the hurried swish of cleaning walls. From the long windows a deep and quiet harbour could be seen, and a few orange lights were beginning to glimmer from the quay and anchored boats. Across the purple of the water rose the blue mass of Olympus, its craggy edges sharp against the sunset sky, and over ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... As they waited and listened to the whining of the wind, the swish of the rain and the angry muttering of the thunder, and saw the vivid lightning, it was no wonder they did not want to decide hurriedly to go out in that out burst of the elements. But it was also trying on the nerves to stay in the stalled auto, ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car - The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley • Laura Lee Hope
... zigzag, a swish over a bridge, where as one rather felt than saw the full green Anio dashing through rocks; and just at sunset we came upon Subiaco—rising violet, with its great pointing castle mound, from the green valley of water ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... to come suddenly over the sibilant Miss Sidonia Sabrina a quieting down, a lessening of twinkle and shimmer and swish. She moved slowly toward the huddle on the cot, parasol leading, and her hands crossed ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... there was a sudden swish and a swirl of restless, tumbling waters. The motion, as my carrier buried his bared legs in the waves, was such as accompanies impossible flights described in dreams, through some unknown medium. The surging waters seemed struggling to submerge us both; the two thin, ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... of the afternoon the day's work of tramping the rounds of the agents' offices is over. Past you, as you ramble distractedly through the mossy halls, flit audible visions of houris, with veiled, starry eyes, flying tag-ends of things and a swish of silk, bequeathing to the dull hallways an odor of gaiety and a memory of frangipanni. Serious young comedians, with versatile Adam's apples, gather in doorways and talk of Booth. Far-reaching from somewhere comes the smell of ham and red ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... while I began to recover, and to look with interest at objects which we passed and at the hind-quarters of the led horse which was trotting on my side. I watched how it would swish its tail, how it would lift one hoof after the other, how the driver's thong would fall upon its back, and how all its legs would then seem to jump together and the back-band, with the rings on it, ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... the seal of despair on this fine and handsome visage. He is shown, not as a sea monster, but as some rabid, evasive, impatient thing, dashing from point to point—as from policy to policy—with the angry swish that tells the unspoken anger failure everywhere compels. For the victories do not bring surrender, nor does frightfulness inspire terror. The merchant ships still put to sea—and the U boats pay ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... went with rapid steps to her study. Bazarov followed her quickly, not raising his eyes, and only with his ears catching the delicate swish and rustle of her silk gown gliding before him. Madame Odintsov sank into the same easy-chair in which she had sat the previous evening, and Bazarov took up the same position ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... the old woman again appeared in the hatchway. A bar of keen, white light thrust its way into the cabin. It came from somewhere above. No longer could Peter hear the groan and swish of the sweep, and the cabin no longer keeled from side to side. He guessed that the sampan ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... children, come, Scattering their buds and dew upon These acres of my home, Some rapture in my rags awakes; I lift void eyes and scan The skies for crows, those ravening foes, Of my strange master, Man. I watch him striding lank behind His clashing team, and know Soon will the wheat swish body high Where once ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... convalescent after an illness, and was also recommended a sunbath, so we travelled together. The hotels being all full, we took up our quarters in a small boarding-house, standing in dense groves of orange trees, where each shiver of the night breeze sent the branches of the orange trees swish-swishing, and wafted great breaths of the delicious fragrance of orange blossom into our rooms. I was in bed, when the Guardsman, who had never been in the tropics before, rushed terror-stricken into my room. ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... ladies began literally, as the slang phrase is, to mop the deck with him. He felt himself being slowly pushed back and forward across the deck, and he wondered how long he would last if this treatment were kept up. By and by he found himself lying still in his bunk, and the swish, swish above him of the men scrubbing the deck in the early morning showed him his dream had merged into reality. He remembered then that it was the custom of the smoking-room steward to bring a large silver pot of fragrant coffee early every morning and place it on ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... the trio dashed spontaneously into the triumphant swing of the waltz. It was as though the room were instantly flooded with water. After a moment's hesitation first one couple, then another, leapt into mid-stream, and went round and round in the eddies. The rhythmic swish of the dancers sounded like a swirling pool. By degrees the room grew perceptibly hotter. The smell of kid gloves mingled with the strong scent of flowers. The eddies seemed to circle faster and faster, until the music wrought itself into a crash, ceased, and the circles ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... chair under the cloister which faced the barred stone door. He swished with a rhino riding-whip at the stone column beside him, and the much-swathed individual of the plethoric paunch who stood and spoke with him kept a very leery eye on it; he seemed to expect the binding swish of it across his own shins, ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... weather alone, but in the night, when the headlands are like black clouds ahead, and in the mist, when the noise of breakers tells him all that he may know of his whereabouts. A flash of white in the gray distance, a thud and swish from a hidden place: the one is his beacon, the other his fog-horn. It is thus, often, that the ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... Swish! came the well-directed stream of water plump against the helmsman's face. Again and again it flew, until dripping and sore he dropped the tiller and dashed down the companion-way calling ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... brightness of midday; and when I stepped out upon the pavement, trumpets blared, so that all might know of my coming. But there was no roar of welcome. "Deucalion," they lisped with mincing voices, bowing themselves ridiculously to the ground so that all their ornaments and silks might jangle and swish. Indeed, when Phorenice herself appeared, and all sent up their cries and made lawful obeisance, there was the same artificiality in the welcome. They meant well enough, it is true; but this was the new fashion. Heartiness ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... bank, but he scrambled up out of the water like lightning, and ran after the rest. He was pretty long-legged, and he soon caught up, but he was just raining water from his clothes, and it made the fellows laugh so that they could hardly run, to hear him swish when he jolted along. They did not know what to do exactly, till one of them said they ought to go down to the river and go in swimming, and they could wring Jim Leonard's clothes out, and lay them on the shore to dry, and ...
— The Flight of Pony Baker - A Boy's Town Story • W. D. Howells
... would have us reconcile the holy zeal for truth and the swish of this bright blade of the intellect. He himself confesses that after reading Swedenborg he turns to Shakespeare and reads "As You Like It" with positive delight, because Shakespeare isn't trying to prove anything. The monks of the olden time read ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... good earth so hesitatingly with those crumpled shoes are now standing firmly in wool-lined rubber boots topped by brown corduroy trousers, upon the winter slat walk that leads to the tool house, while their owners, touched by the swish of the Whirlpool that has recently drawn this peaceful town into its eddies, are busy trying to turn their patrol wagon, that for a year has led a most conservative existence as a hay wain and a stage-coach dragged by a curiously assorted team of dogs and ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... though, of course, I didn't see how anything could happen, placed as I was. But just as I said those words, something did happen—and about the last thing I would have expected. The first I saw was a big shadow, and the first I heard was a kind of swish in the air, and the first I knew I wasn't in the water any more, but was on the way to the sky with Mr. Eagle, who had one great claw around my hind leg and another hooked over my shell, not seeming to mind my weight at all, and paying no attention to Old ...
— Hollow Tree Nights and Days • Albert Bigelow Paine
... below him came the swish of mops and the gurgle of water in the scuppers, for it was still early morning, and under the directions of Hayton, the bo'sun, the swabbers were at work in the waist and forecastle. Despite the heat and the stagnant air, ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... lariats flew. "Swish—pat!" one, two, three, they fell. These were not men to miss. Three ropes, three horses, leaping away to bear on the great beast's neck. But swifter than thought the supple paws went up. The ropes were slipped, and the spurred cow-ponies, ready for the shock, went, shockless, bounding—loose ...
— Monarch, The Big Bear of Tallac • Ernest Thompson Seton
... meeting and mixing confusedly together, tumble down in broken frothy masses into the vat. Beginning with a slow steady stroke the coolies gradually increase the pace, shouting out a hoarse wild song at intervals; till, what with the swish and splash of the falling water, the measured beat of the furrovahs or beating rods, and the yells and cries with which they excite each other, the noise is almost deafening. The water, which at first is of a yellowish green, is now beginning to assume ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... became aware of a faint rustling at his door, and what seemed to be a slight tap on the panel. He rose and opened it—the long passage was dark and apparently empty, but he fancied he could detect the quick swish of a skirt in the distance. As he re-entered his room, his eye fell for the first time on a rose whose stalk was thrust through the keyhole of his door. The consul smiled at this amiable solution of a mystery. It was undoubtedly the playful mischievousness of the vivacious MacSpadden. He placed ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Great Swamp was led by a wrinkled old cow, wise beyond belief. Scrag we called her. She would take the herd in to the bedding-ground by the river, to a landing-point on the opposite side, never twice the same, and drift noiselessly through the canebrake, choosing blowy hours when the swish of cane over woolly backs was like the run of the wind. Days when the marsh would be full of tapirs wallowing and wild pig rootling and fighting, there might be hundreds feeding within sound of you and not a hint of it except the occasional ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... the dead winter silence, that was broken only by the hoots of a flitting owl hungry for the food that it could not find, and the swish of the feet of a galloping fox as it looped past them through the snow. Presently they came to an open place ringed in by forest, so wet that only marsh-trees would grow there. To their right lay a little ice-covered mere, with sere, brown reeds standing here and there upon its face, and at ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... them almost overwhelmed her. The shrieks of the frantic throng at the main door of the theatre died away. She heard the shouted commands of the police and firemen—then the swish of water from the first pipe brought to play upon the flames. ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... spears, clattered in about him. He heard the swish and tang of them; heard the leaves flutter as ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... Maria who brought on the FLOOD I have learned today.... With a stone she found uncovered by the filtering from the little opening she began pounding against the wall.... Suddenly the wall bulged inward.... There was a swish, and a roar, and a deadening GUSH,—and then a RUSHING FLOOD tore open the side of the wall and burst like a torrent into our muddy, narrow cell. Higher and higher it mounted, enveloping us to our arm pits.... My 'prisoner' moved ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... kindly not told us, go to Christ and say, 'Grant that we may sit, the one on Thy right hand and the other on Thy left, in Thy kingdom.' That was what he wished and hoped for, and what he got was years of service, and a taste of persecution, and finally the swish of the headsman's sword. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... this mighty effort was just enough. But for the birch-tree it was just too much. The shallow earth by which it held gave way; and the next moment, with a clatter of loosened stones and a swish of leafy branches, it crashed majestically down into the crevice, closing one end of it with a mass of boughs and foliage, and once more frightening the imprisoned cub ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... breath he watched till the kopje was blotted from his sight, and the demons of the storm came shrieking back. Then suddenly there came a crash that shook the world and made the senses reel. He heard the rush and swish of water, water torrential that fell in a streaming mass, and as his understanding came staggering back he knew that the first, most menacing danger was past. The cloud ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... then led Chan to the door, and gave a wave of his hand in the direction of the sky. Instantly the sound of the fluttering and swish of wings was heard, and in a moment a splendid eagle landed gracefully at their feet. Taking their seats upon its back, they found themselves flashing at lightning speed away through the darkness of the night. Higher and higher they rose, till they ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... and went in with a swish of silk and patchouli. The candles were unlit. Miss Darrell, still wearing her hat and scarlet wrap, sat at the window contemplating the ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... he caught the regular swish, swish of the big wheel; but he must have been mistaken, for after a moment he realized that the Standish ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... reply, before he could take a step, there was a swish of woman's garments, and before the father's astonished eyes there stood his daughter by the side of her lover. Her form was drawn to its full height, her bosom was heaving, her eyes were flashing. Taking her lover's hand, she cried: "Father, what have ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn
... grinned at each other, and, to pass the time, took a cigar apiece. They had just finished them when a swish and rustle of skirts sounded from the stairs, and Mrs. Jobson and the girls, beautifully attired, entered the room and stood buttoning their gloves. A strong smell of scent fought with the aroma of ...
— Ship's Company, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... when he desired victuals he would wade across the tides to the mainland and furnish himself forth with all that came in his way. The poor folk and the rich folk alike ran out of their houses and hid themselves when they heard the swish-swash of his big feet in the water; for if he saw them, he would think nothing of broiling half-a-dozen or so of them for breakfast. As it was, he seized their cattle by the score, carrying off half-a-dozen fat oxen on his back at a time, and ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel |
