"Whistling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... perceive a young man pacing the quarter-deck, and whistling, as he walks, a lively air from La Bayadere. He is dressed neatly in a blue pilot-cloth pea-jacket, well-shaped trowsers, neat-fitting boots, and a Mahon cap, with gilt buttons. This gentleman is Mr. Langley. His father is a messenger in the Atlas Bank, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... my boy. You're a gentleman and an artist, and I trust you absolutely." And he walked away, whistling with rare skill the D flat valse ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... the trappers have them; and they heard Nightly the whistling calls of forest-men That mocked the forest wonners; and they saw Over the open, raging up like doom, The dangerous dust-cloud, that was full of eyes,— The bisons. So were three years gone like one; And the old cities ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... it was not music, but an indistinct and celestial harmony which penetrated my very soul. I discovered that it was produced by a violent wind which had just then arisen; my ear distinguished the distant noise and the whistling usually heard on such occasions, but the winds changing their nature as they approached this asylum of peace and friendship, formed only the most enchanting harmony as they met its trees and its walls. I was strongly disposed to believe in prodigies; but nevertheless I was determined ...
— The "Ladies of Llangollen" • John Hicklin
... the second floor. At one corner of the long corridor there was a notification that the numbers ran from 300 to 360. A waiter passed me, whistling; two girls were chattering and laughing in a kind of office at the stair-head; the various noises of the courtyard came up through ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... new plastered flat church, and to be wishing that it was but a cathedral! The very blackguards here are degenerate, the topping gentry stockbrokers; the passengers too many to insure your quiet, or let you go about whistling or gaping,—too few to be the fine indifferent pageants of Fleet Street. Confining, room-keeping, thickest winter is yet more bearable here than the gaudy months. Among one's books at one's fire by candle, one ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... in and lend a hand in case Mrs. Caukins should be outnumbered, will you? I'm engaged at present." And deeply engaged he was to the twins' unspeakable delight. Whistling softly an air from "Il Trovatore," he rubbed some orange-flower water on his chin and cheeks; then taking a fresh handkerchief, dabbed several drops on the two little noses that waited upon him weekly in expectation of this fragrant boon. He was ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... Lantier stood whistling while she gave these directions. Gervaise wore her silk dress, and she smiled as they walked down the street in alternate shadow and ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... to the negroes to come down and help handle the dogs, but just then the boy who started the dogs on the trail, at my request, came up whistling, with a dog whip in his hand, and all the dogs surrounded him, and he made them lay down and roll over. All of the scared people came down from their perches in the trees, and surrounded the boy and the dogs, and the dogs panted and lolled, as though they had been having ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... fill it. Unless I know myself to be under condemnation because of my sin, and fevered, disturbed, and made wretched, by its inward consequences which forbid repose, the sweetest words of Gospel invitation will pass by me like wind whistling through an archway. But if once I have been driven from self-confidence, then like music from heaven will come the word, 'Trust in Jesus.' The seed dropped into the ground puts out a downward-going shoot, which is the root, and an upward-growing one, which is the stalk. The downward-going ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... there was continued file firing. There no longer seemed anything in the street but smoke, the balls whistling and crossing each other, the brief and repeated commands, some plaintive cries, and the flash of the guns ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... the boy was leaning back with his feet on the dasher and whistling softly through his teeth. The gray was nibbling sleepily at the decrepit hitching-post. Wade glanced at his watch, and looked again in surprise. It was later than he had thought. If he meant to get out of Redding that night it was time he thought of starting ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... no notice of this, but, going for the dead man's musket, kept loading and firing, pausing now and then for his artillery to cool, and whistling a tune that runs in my head to this day. And all the time I heard shouts and cries and the noise of musketry all around, which made me judge that the attack was going on in many places at once. When I came to myself ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... a favourite sleeping-place for the white egrets. From all sides they were flying across the lake towards it; and as night set in, the trees and bushes by the water-side were full of them, gleaming like great white flowers amongst the dark green foliage. Flocks of muscovy and whistling ducks also flew over to their evening feeding-places. Great masses of a floating plant, shaped like a cabbage, were abundant on the lake, and on these the white egrets and other wading birds often alighted. The boatmen told me—and the story ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... for an answer, but went out at the front door, and Dick heard him whistling down the path. The whistle seemed like an intentional confirmation of his being in a cheerfully normal frame of mind, not likely to be led too far afield by premonitions of New England tragedy. Perhaps that was why he did whistle, for when he reached the ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... The Heart, whistling a gay tune, cocked its hat upon one ear, gave a twist to its cravat, and kicked the old savant ...
— A Book Without A Title • George Jean Nathan
... Big wigs, gold-headed canes, Latin prescriptions, shops full of abominations, recipes a yard long, "curing" patients by drugging as sailors bring a wind by whistling, selling lies at a guinea apiece,—a routine, in short, of giving unfortunate sick people a mess of things either too odious to swallow or too acrid to hold, or, if that were possible, both ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... absolutely could not bear it. He walked a few paces and equally could not forbear to stop and look again. The men were nearly all laughing and whistling and singing.... This bursting sensation in all his emotions! It was beyond anything he had ever experienced before. But he had experienced something like it before. His mind threw back across the years and presented the occasion to him. It was when he ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... be fool enough to go, without being told? And then, all at once, a thought came to me. The figure Tammy and I had seen. Had the Second Mate seen something—someone? I hurried on, and then stopped, suddenly. In the same moment there came the shrill blast of the Second's whistle; he was whistling for the watch, and I turned and ran to the fo'cas'le to rouse them out. Another minute, and I was hurrying aft with them to ...
— The Ghost Pirates • William Hope Hodgson
... declivity, full of danger and difficulty. At the bottom we halted three or four hours, to wait for the moon, in a position sufficiently romantic and uncomfortable. A north-east wind, cold and biting, came whistling over the hills, and seemed to be sucked down into the hollow where we sat on the chilly stones. The moment we sighted the slightly depressed orb of the moon over the vast hill of rocks, and the Milky Way spanning ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... urchins were marching us through street after street, one of them whistling that pleasing tune, Le lendemain elle etait souriante. Dark passage ways intervened between us and our destination: we threaded them. The cobble stones of the underfoot were not easy to walk on for my companion, ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... observed Harry, drily, "and make such confounded noise, that the first thing we heard after, it would be a Minie ball whistling past our ears; or should it catch without making any noise, the chances are that, when one of us ascends, it will be to meet the burly form of some Dutch sentinel traversing the walk. The idea is not feasible; so we must think ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams
... Healthy, and fearing nothing, he was a stranger to a feeling of loneliness. Alternately singing an old air, and then whistling with notes as clear and musical as a flute, he at last came in sight of the creek which had been so tranquil when he crossed it in the morning. There was an old house near, where lived the people who received the toll. A man and his wife, with a large family of children, ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... of the cold, the gloom, and the sad whistling wind that heralded the now fast approaching darkness, I felt glad to work with my sextant and sketch-book under the shadow of those fantastic ice-foots hung round with fringes of icicle. I loved to go with ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... more than you might suppose, and he was actually whistling as he rode through the glen, where the country road wound its way ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne
... cat, and always came when she was called. Miss Laura used to wear a little silver whistle that she blew when she wanted any of her pets. It was a shrill whistle, and we could hear it a long way from home. I have seen her standing at the back door whistling for Malta, and the pretty creature's head would appear somewhere—always high up, for she was a great climber, and she would come running along the top of the fence, saying, "Meow, meow," ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... buy you service in the West. When the hotel clerk—the man who awards your room to you and who is supposed to give you information—when that resplendent individual stoops to attend to your wants he does so whistling or humming or picking his teeth, or pauses to converse with some one he knows. These performances, I gather, are to impress upon you that he is a free man and your equal. From his general appearance and ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling
... I knew I smelled coffee, and heard Joyce whistling just as she used to at home when she was getting breakfast, and I didn't waste many minutes in going out to her in that cunning kitchenette. It is all white tiling and shining nickel-plate, as easy to keep clean as a china dish, ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... day in vigorous labor in preference to the easy task of going to the river for the luggage. Dusty and weary, but in excellent spirits over the large space that he and the hired man had "hilled up," he went whistling home through the long shadows of the June evening. The farm wagon stood in the door-yard piled with trunks. The front entrance of the house—rarely used by the family—was open, and as he came up the lane a young girl emerged from it, and leaned for a few moments against the outer pillar ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... hat and tried to walk jauntily to the fire, whistling a bit of a tune. The effort was a sad failure. "Here's where I get off. I'm in sure bad luck. Somebody must have put a copper on me when I was born. I ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... before an enemy. He might laugh at her after she was gone, and, at that thought, she sat down in the chair with composed face, looking through the door at the tumbling water, which broke with a thousand tints under the sun, but able still to see Rome, sidewise, as he moved about the hopper, whistling softly. ...
— A Cumberland Vendetta • John Fox, Jr.
... devotionally inclined. Most of the streets of these interior villages are paved with square stones which the wear and tear of centuries have generally rendered too rough for the bicycle; but occasionally one is ridable, and the astonishment of the inhabitants as I wheel leisurely through, whistling the solemn strains of "Roll, Jordan, roll," is really quite amusing. Every village of any size boasts a church that, for fineness of architecture and apparent costliness of construction, looks out of all proportion to the straggling street ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... day will reveal. Over the story of the two workmen, who each resolved to stick to a certain effort for six months, and did it, the one earning thereby a patent right worth thousands of dollars, and the other teaching a little dog how to dance to the whistling of a certain tune, Flossy looked unutterably sober, while the laughter swelled to a perfect roar around her. It was hard to feel that not "six months" only, but a dozen years of intelligent life, were gone from her, and she had not even ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... distant, rippling across the wind-blown grasses where the brown constabulary lay firing in the sunshine; but the rifle shots were the crack of whips, and it was only a fat policeman of the traffic squad whistling to clear the swarming jungle trails ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... feet, all in a regular time, which spread to the whole house, and in the midst of it the boys up there began to shout and call and whistle, and in a few minutes there was such a hubbub as only boys could make, with whistling between the fingers leading the riot. Toby nudged Freddie again with his elbow, and to Freddie's surprise began to clap his hands and stamp his feet with the rest; and as Freddie thought he ought to be ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... When on the ocean, far from land, for the first time, the dullest and most stupid mind cannot fail of being aroused to new and awful emotions. Man learns of God at such an hour, and finds new proof of his grandeur and glory in every dashing wave and every whistling blast. With but a single inch between him and a watery death, he gazes from his narrow deck upon the boundless expanse of tossing, foam-crested billows; while, as far as his eye can stretch, not a foot of land appears. His vessel may be on fire, she may ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy
... grey horseman's coat from his shoulders, and, extending his strong brawny arms with a look of determined resolution, he offered himself to the contest. The soldier was nothing abashed by the muscular frame, broad chest, square shoulders, and hardy look of his antagonist, but, whistling with great composure, unbuckled his belt, and laid aside his military coat. The company stood round them, anxious for ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... the room. Vine remained, leaning against the mantelpiece, and whistling softly to himself. He went through the whole of a popular ballad, and then he tried it in a different key. When he was sure that the three men had had time to leave the building, he too took up his ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... curtains, however, he became well assured of the fact, when he beheld the stiff and bony length of Richie, with a visage charged with nearly double its ordinary degree of importance, employed sedulously in brushing his master's cloak, and refreshing himself with whistling or humming, from interval to interval, some snatch of an old melancholy Scottish ballad-tune. Although sufficiently convinced of the identity of the party, Lord Glenvarloch could not help expressing his surprise in ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... that year, and Bathsheba Everdene came up the hill no more. Gabriel had reached a pitch of existence he never could have anticipated a short time before. He liked saying "Bathsheba" as a private enjoyment instead of whistling; turned over his taste to black hair, though he had sworn by brown ever since he was a boy, isolated himself till the space he filled in the public eye was contemptibly small. Love is a possible strength in ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... of Half King. Indian scouts tracked the Frenchmen to a forest near a place called Great Meadows, where, in May, Washington and his men attacked them on one side and the Indians on the other. The Colonel was in the thickest of the fight and, for the first time, heard bullets whistling about his head. Ten Frenchmen were killed and twenty-one taken prisoners. Half King sent the scalps of the dead men, with tomahawks and strings of black wampum (small beads made of shells and sometimes used by the ...
— George Washington • Calista McCabe Courtenay
... be observed that the first line is whistling only. I was informed that it is a common practice to whistle the air before singing the first verse; though I did not gather that it was always done. It will also be noticed that simple harmonies occur in the fourth and fifth bars. I cannot say whether the two parts in ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... on his errand, whistling as he went; but the whistle died on his lips as soon as he was out of Rupert's hearing. He resumed his geniality of bearing, however, when he stood in Mr. ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... outlaw gave him a look of admiration. "You've got the nerve, all right," he said. "Well, so long, till we meet again," and whirling around he sauntered slowly off in the direction of the forest, merrily whistling as ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... music from somewhere about the immense building sounded as out of place at that hour as would a boy's shrill whistling in the middle of High Mass, but unperturbed thereby, the pitted-face man knocked gently three times upon the door, vehemently upbraiding the while his shrinking and protesting companion, who tugged still more forcibly at the ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... burned blue overhead, she was in another street—was it Stanley? Sounds of music reached her, the rumble of marching feet; dark, massed figures were in the distance swimming toward her along the glistening line of the car tracks, and she heard the shrill whistling of the doffer boys, who acted as a sort of fife corps in these parades—which by this time had become familiar to the citizens of Hampton. And Janet remembered when the little red book that contained the songs had arrived at Headquarters from the west and had been distributed by thousands among ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... all means. I will make myself jolly until you return," said Cloudy, walking up and down the floor whistling a love ditty, and thinking of little Jacko. He always thought of her with tenfold intensity whenever he returned home ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... boat of one of the traders named Terry—an old ex-man-of-war's man—had come off, manned by half a dozen of his stalwart half-caste sons, and although it was still pitch dark, and the din of the gale sounded like fifty railway locomotives whistling in unison, and the brig was only revealed to the brave fellows by the white light of the foam-whipped sea, they ran the boat under the counter, and stood by while a number of women and children jumped, or were pitched overboard, ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... busy with some figures, nodded carelessly, and the last arrival promptly picked up his valise from the floor and began climbing the stairs, whistling softly. He was a long-limbed, broad-chested young fellow, with clean-shaven face, and a pair of dark-gray eyes that looked straight ahead of him; and he ran up the somewhat steep steps as though finding such exercise a pleasure. Rounding the upper railing, he stopped abruptly before Number Twenty-seven, ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... call it. It's real handsome. It cost consid'able—a pretty consid'able sum. I feel kinder sorry for the leetle feller, and I don't grudge it a mite." And he kept repeating, in a tone which suggested whistling to keep your courage up, "Not ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson
... hands in his breeches' pockets, and read a mural tablet, whistling scarce audibly the while. It was not reverent, but he was a gentleman; and the clerk standing behind him, retained his quiet posture, and that smile, that yet was not a smile, but a sort of reflected light—was ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... wallowing in the straw at last, and went down to help Rover catch the rats which were being uncovered by the pitchers as they reached the stack bottom.—The horses, with their straining, out-stretched necks, the loud and cheery shouts, the whistling of the driver, the roar and hum of the great wheel, the flourishing of the forks, the supple movement of brawny arms, the shouts of the men, all blended with the wild sound of the wind in the creaking branches of the oaks, forming a glorious ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... ceased at dark, the keen blast from the north shook the branches of the ancient trees encircling the parsonage, and dashed the drops in showers against the windows. Not a star was visible, and as the night wore on the wind increased in violence, roaring through leafless elm limbs, and whistling drearily around the corners of the old brick house, whose ivy-mantled chimneys had battled with the ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... the boy, fascinated. He came down the steps whistling, kicking off the snow. He stopped at the foot, and picked up some, and then leaned against the railing, making a snowball. A moment later he looked around and saw Jurgis, and their eyes met; it was a hostile ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... see the topgallant sails hauled down when the wind freshened, or a staysail set as the wind went round to the east. The taking in of the mainsail on a stormy night was a thing to be remembered for life: twenty-four men on the great yard at a time, clewing it in to the music of the wind whistling through the rigging. The men sing out cheerily at their work, the one who mounts the highest, or stands the foremost on the ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... to see the being, if visible at all, who troubled the nightly stillness of my mansion. I was fidgetty and nervous and tried in vain to interest myself with my books. I walked up and down my room, whistling in turn martial and hilarious music, and listening ever and anon for the dreaded noise. I sate down and stared at the square label on the solemn and reserved-looking black bottle, until "FLANAGAN & CO'S BEST OLD MALT WHISKY" grew into a sort of subdued ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 1 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... parts allure thee, think how Bacon shin'd, The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind! Or ravish'd with the whistling of a name,[319-2] See ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... sledgehammer, and flying over the deck, drenching us completely through. The topsail halyards had been let go, and the great sails were filling out and backing against the masts with a noise like thunder; the wind was whistling through the rigging; loose ropes were flying about; loud and, to me, unintelligible orders constantly given, and rapidly executed; and the sailors "singing out'' at the ropes in ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... captain, using the cane but whistling a sprightly air, strolled out to the front gate, where, leaning over the fence, he looked up and down the curving, tree-shaded road, dozing in the late summer twilight. And up that road came George Kent, also whistling, to swing in at the Fair Harbor gate and stride ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... I lay awake in my new room, listening to the whistling of the wind in the snow-laden branches outside, an idea came to me which I determined to put into action. So next evening, when the little girl was brought in after our supper, I begged that she might be put down on the fur before the fire, to play with me, and I watched my ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... joints, he still had something of the lithe, strenuous carriage of his youth. In his dignity of manner, there almost seemed to you a glimpse of the gallant age when forbears had gone whistling to the headsman. He was of a line which counted in English history, which among its women had a Lady Jane Grey. His mother, with the mother's wistful love and pride, had traced that line for him. He was not deeply moved, unless by ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... disabled. While her machinery stands, she moves steadily forward in her course; and so far as any idea of danger is concerned, the passengers in their cabins and state rooms below pay no more regard to the storm than a farmer's family do to the whistling and howling of the wind among the chimneys of their house, in a blustering night ...
— Rollo on the Atlantic • Jacob Abbott
... bathroom his whistling and vocal efforts vied with the feathered songsters outside the window. As he passed through the living-room on his way to the dining room he picked up a letter addressed to him. The upper left hand corner of the letter told him that it was from the Eagle. ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... to make notes or comments on them; you ought to have them as beloved companions to be near you night and day, to take up the parable when your own independent thought is hazy with delight or even with sorrow. As you tramp along the whistling stretches amid the blaze of the ragworts and the tender passing glances of the wild veronica, you can take in all their loveliness with the eye, while the brain goes on adding to your pleasure by recalling the music of the poets. Perhaps you fall ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... late, that Josh would be gone before he got back. While Josh was busy laughing and talking with the rest of the family the man went out, and secreted himself in the chimney corner of another cabin, and it was not long after he took his stand before Josh bade the family good night, came out whistling, and shouldered the wood, but as he started off the watchman cried out, "Is that you, Josh?" Josh threw the wood down and answered, "O no, tisn't me." Of course Josh was so funny one couldn't get angry with him if he wanted to; but the rest of the ...
— My Life In The South • Jacob Stroyer
... for the villa this morning." He handed her the solitary missive which the mail had brought and departed, whistling cheerfully, on his way down ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... that the best method of outwitting this particular sheep was to take him at his own valuation and proceed as a tenderfoot down the valley. So he walked unconcernedly along at an oblique angle to the sheep and never once taking a direct look at him. He went gaily along whistling, kicking pebbles and swinging his bow. When he had reached a distance of two or three hundred yards the old sheep lifted up his head to see what was going on. Young paid no attention to him, though he observed him out of ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... with ebony skin and white linen attire had appeared on the rear platform beating eggs, and half whistling, half singing: ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... the stinging sleet, Swept by the bitter gusts of air, Drives whistling down the lonely street, And ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... softly, rubbing her cheek against the down of the bird; whistling and coaxing with her hands. The doves flew about her, lighting, struggling for footing on her shoulder and curls; and she shook her ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... door of the saloon ajar, and was whistling through the crack; but in there it seemed to make no one afraid. Between roars of laughter, the clink of glasses and the rattle of dice on the hardwood counter were heard out in the street. More than one of the passers-by who ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... desolate and mournful when the buggy containing Judge Baxter and his two companions drove into the yard. The wagon belonging to Mr. Hallett, the undertaker, was at the front door, and Hallett and his assistant were loading in the folding chairs. Mr. Hallett was whistling a popular melody, but, somehow or other, the music only emphasized the lonesomeness. There is little ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... living who could have uttered that voice, went not forth himself, but at noon of Good Friday, his service being done, he sent his sexton, as one used not to fear the sight and company of dead men. The sexton set out, whistling for joy of the slaying of the Scot, but when he came back he was running as fast as he might, and scarce could speak for very fear. At the last they won from him that he had gone to the tree where the dead Scot was hanging, and first had heard a faint rustle of the boughs. Not affrighted, ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... Pierre's call out to the shed he had built at one side of their cabin. Its open side faced the west, and, as Joan came, her shadow went before her and fell across Pierre at work. The flame of the west gave a weird pallor to the flames over which he bent. He was whistling, and hammering at a long piece of iron. Joan came and stood ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... at eight-thirty, and at ten I dropped into the realms of the sand man, lulled to sleep by the roar of the distant surf, and the whistling and moaning of the ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... peculiar whistling in the air, a sound such as he had never heard before. It seemed to come from far away, a high, thin shriek that was torture in ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... that he had hit her, her captain seemed to lose patience, and she opened fire on the boat in return. The latter, however, especially in the night, offered too small an object to be easily hit. Still one shot came whistling over their heads, and another struck the water close to them, showing them, as Paddy said, that they were ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... patrons, who bought what the artist had to sell, and commissioned him to paint what he was pleased to paint. But in our time the artist is visited by a showily-dressed man, who comes into the studio whistling, his hat on the back of his head. This is the West-End dealer: he throws himself into an arm-chair, and if there is nothing on the easels that appeals to the uneducated eye, the dealer lectures the artist on his folly in not considering the exigencies of public taste. On public ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... the most comfortable motion for me. But I began to get numb, and could hardly stick on the saddle. Almost before I had dared to hope, Spot stopped. Uncovering my face, I saw Jim in the doorway of the lee side of the cabin. The yellow, streaky, whistling clouds of sand split on the cabin and passed on, leaving a small, dusty ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... set him to dancing and skipping as he went along. All the wood-flowers were as wide awake as he. They nodded at Archie, as if saying "Good-morning," and sent out fresh smells into the air. Busy birds flapped and flew, doing their marketing, and fetching breakfast to hungry nestlings, chirping and whistling to each other, as they did so, that the sun was up and it was a fine day. A pair of striped squirrels frisked and laughed and called out something saucy as Archie trotted by. None of these wild things feared the child: he was too small and too ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... battue and stampede commenced, and the scene was then wild and confusing in the extreme. The frightened whinny or neigh of the guanacos, the hoarse whirr of the flying ostriches, the shouts of the Gauchos, the bark and yell of dogs, the whistling noise of lasso or bolas, the sharp ringing of rifle and revolver—all combined to form a medley, a huntsman's chorus which no one who has once heard it and taken part in ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... Signals.—Extracts from a paper by A.B. JOHNSON.—Treating of gongs, guns, rockets, bells, whistling buoys, bell buoys, locomotive whistles, trumpets, the siren, and the use ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... losd?' said a Teuton bluntly. 'Eight-fifty,' replied the son of George Washington sweetly. 'Don't see how that prevents me having a drink. My glass, sirr.' He continued an interrupted whistling of 'I owe ten dollars to O'Grady' (which he very probably did), and his countenance departed not from its serenity. If there is anything that one loves an American for it is the way he stands certain ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... postman, a cheery soul, came whistling up the Kurhaus stairs, carrying with him that precious parcel of registered letters, which gave him the position of being the most important person in Petershof. He was a linguist, too, was Waerli, and could ...
— Ships That Pass In The Night • Beatrice Harraden
... rolled away, and the moon and stars began to shine. I looked around me, and could discern nothing but a wide, barren country, without so much as a tree to shelter me, or any animal in sight. I listened, in hopes of hearing a sheepbell, or the barking of a dog; but nothing met my ear, except the shrill whistling of the wind, which blew so cold that it chilled me to the very heart. In this situation I stopped a while to consider what I should do; and raising my eyes by accident to the sky, the first object I beheld was that very constellation of Charles' Wain, and above it I discerned ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... gun-brig as she had pretended to be, our skipper might perhaps involve himself in a considerable amount of trouble. It was therefore with a sigh of real and genuine relief that I heard a shot come whistling close past us from the brig ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... justify the remainder of the old woman's assertions, took such complete possession of his brain that he felt cold all over his body. Despairing of obtaining any additional information, he mounted his horse and began to ride through the woods, calling Pierre at the top of his voice, whistling, cracking his whip, breaking off branches to fill the forest with the noise of his progress, then listening to see if any voice answered; but he heard naught but the bells on the cows scattered among the bushes, and the fierce grunting of pigs ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... consider first that in these pavements, laid bare for us as 'the whistling rustic tends his plough,' we have work dating somewhere between the first and fifth centuries, work of unchallengeable beauty, work of a beauty certainly not rivalled until we come to the Norman builders of five or six hundred years later. I want you to ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... so much elation out of this resolve that from the electric car to Rodney Temple's house he walked with a swinging stride, whistling tunelessly beneath his breath. He tried to think he was delivered from an extraordinary obsession and restored to health and sanity. He planned to initiate Ashley as the new charge d'affaires without the necessity on his part of seeing ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... a loss how to go at the problem, having none of the intuitive sympathy of a woman. The boy is busy with his pencil, and represents sounds by shapes, letters by colours. For example, "the sound of an orchestra he drew as a round, smoky spot; whistling as a spiral thread." In making letters, he always painted L yellow, M red, and A black. He draws a picture of a house with a soldier standing in front of it. The father rebukes him for bad perspective, and tells him that the soldier in his picture is taller than the house. But the boy replies, ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... cap busy at her homely work." Into many wearisome pages these simple lines have since been expanded, without affecting the beauty of the original. "Will Dampier turned his broad back and looked out of the window. There was a moment's silence. They could hear the tinkling of bells, the whistling of the sea, the voices of the men calling to each other in the port, the sunshine streamed in; Elly was standing in it, and seemed gilt with a golden background. She ought to have held a palm in her hand, poor little martyr!" There is ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... arrangement of his part of the boat, as an old stage-driver is about the snugness of his box. When close to the whale, in the very death-lock of the fight, he handled his unpitying lance coolly and off-handedly, as a whistling tinker his hammer. He would hum over his old rigadig tunes while flank and flank with the most exasperated monster. Long usage had, for this Stubb, converted the jaws of death into an easy chair. What he thought ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... soon as I can," Bradby answered, and slipped into the shadows that were already gathering thick and fast. Abel Cumshaw worked away, whistling softly to himself the while. He was so busy doing one thing and another that it was not until darkness fell suddenly and completely on the scene that he realised how quickly time had passed. His first thought then ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... Leanard went off whistling, with the order slip tucked back of his hatband. In the yard, Mitchell the foreman, gave him a load "of sixteen-foot" pine boards ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... fine patch of grass down the hill a bit. I'm going to take the hosses down there and hobble 'em out." Whistling, Sinclair strode off down the hill, leading the ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... his grudges disappeared. Every evening until dark and every Sunday he worked away, whistling softly to himself. He always felt nearer to his wife, in the garden. She too had been bred on a New England farm. He always felt as if the fine orderliness of the rows was ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... that night when they rode into Towcester, and all that was to be seen was a butcher's boy carting garbage out of the town and whistling to keep his courage up. The watch had long since gone to sleep about the silent streets, but a dim light burned in the tap-room of the Old Brown Cow; and there the players ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... been nearer death than at that moment—not even when he faced the firing squad before the factory wall in Burgova. He had done that without a tremor—he had heard the bullets of the outpost whistling about his head a moment before, with a smile upon his lips—he had faced the leveled rifles of the three he had ridden down and he had not quailed. But now, his machine in the center of the road again, he shook like a leaf, still in the grip of the sickening ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... into the misty distance. Spring came and disappeared, summer followed, and the swallows fled from the lake to warmer climes, the maiden sending many a warm greeting with them. Wintry storms blew over the waters, whistling round the lonely island, and the maiden had become as pale as the flakes of snow which fell against ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... his two notes, and stamped them for the post, whistling gayly. While he had been writing, he had not noticed how his friend was occupied. When he had done, it struck him that a sudden silence had fallen on the cabin; and, looking up, he observed that Midwinter's ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... man's veins. He saw the perfect oval of her fair face, with its ripe, full lips and delicate, small nose, so perfect in shape, so regular in its setting under her broad open brow. Her wonderful hair, that ruddy-tinted mass of burnished gold which was her most striking feature, made him suck in a whistling breath of sensual appreciation. Without a moment's hesitation, hat in hand he ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... resting after a banquet, or about to plunge into the water in chase of one of the finny tribe, which their keen eyes detect swimming by. They are trapped, in Canada, by steel traps, which are submerged close to the bank below their "rubs." They make a peculiar whistling sound, which the Indian can imitate perfectly, and thus frequently induces them to approach. Their skins are manufactured into muffs and trimmings and caps, such as are usually worn in winter ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... trudged whistling up the path, striking at the hollyhocks with his rod, and wondering how long it would take Sally to brush the mud ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... than an arrow flew between him and Captain Mackintosh. He had just time to shout to his people to get under cover, when a whole flight came whistling over their heads, followed by a terrific war whoop, the most fearful sound of which the ...
— The Frontier Fort - Stirring Times in the N-West Territory of British America • W. H. G. Kingston
... but it held no terrors for the young hearts who met it in a mood as defiantly merry as its own. Only a suffering or morbid nature sees in winter the synonym of death and decay; fancies that mourning and desolation is the burden of the gaily whistling winds; and regards the bare trees, rid of their dusty garments, and quietly resting, as shivering skeletons, and the dancing snow-flakes as the colourless pall that hides from sight all there is of life ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... they heard the panting of the tired little horse and the drunken shouting of the peasants. Then the panting and the shouts died away, and around them nothing could be heard but the whistling of the wind in their ears and now and then the squeak of their sledge-runners over a windswept ...
— Master and Man • Leo Tolstoy
... a blinding sheet of vivid light, as though they had suddenly been transformed by some magic power into the living, seething crater of a volcano! Down came the whirlwind of destruction along the beach with the swiftness of lightning! How fearfully the hissing shot, the shrieking bombs, the whistling bars of iron, and the whispering bullet struck and crushed through the dense masses of our brave men! I never shall forget the terrible sound of that awful blast of death, which swept down, shattered or dead, a thousand of our men. ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... eyes gleamed with exultation. It was a mere preliminary to what was now to follow. Swinging the whip high above his head, with deliberate and well-judged aim, he suddenly brought it, whizzing down upon the backs of the two horses, who no sooner heard the whistling in the air above them, than instinctively they gave a great plunge forward, and broke into a gallop. Not a sound was heard from the two who sat behind. Mansana repeated the performance, and this time with maddening effect upon the horses. The road at this point began to slope down towards a ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... Bristles; I'm game to stick it out with you. Swing over a little farther, so as to get all the space you can for turning. Listen, wasn't that somebody screaming; or could it have been a locomotive whistling for ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... girl and dropped a courtesy as she sat in the seat Millar drew out for her. Elsa nodded at her in silence, and Millar, after watching them a few seconds with a smile of amusement, walked out of the room, whistling softly. Mimi was the first to break the silence, squirming under ...
— The Devil - A Tragedy of the Heart and Conscience • Joseph O'Brien
... the morning Wi' the loud sang o' the lark, And the whistling o' the ploughman lads, As they gaed to their wark; I used to wear the bit young lambs Frae the tod and the roaring stream; But the warld is changed, and a' thing now To me seems ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... he was taking, he did not care, not he; he should be very happy at home without him. He should cry no more: he wondered why he cried at first, for he had not cared all the while; and so he went whistling about the house the tune of the 'Jolly Miller' which ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... This time he wore a pleasant countenance, and took me into his shop, where he introduced me to three of his apprentices. At night I was given a bed in an unfinished attic, under a shingled roof, which was not even ceiled, so the constant draughts of air whistling through the interstices overhead and at the sides of my apartment, kept up a ventilation more perfect than was desirable; and I should have suffered from the cold had it not been for my German coverlet, which was a ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... of the nearest trees that were towering apparently into the very clouds as he gazed upward. Commonly selecting one of the most noble for the first trial of his power, he would approach it with a listless air, whistling a low tune; and wielding his axe with a certain flourish, not unlike the salutes of a fencing-master, he would strike a light blow into the bark, and measure his distance. The pause that followed ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... steadily, rallying all his forces to face her in this new mood. This sudden change in her baffled his powers of comprehension. Weakened and torn and shaken by her endless hours alone in the whistling, roaring storm, listening moment by moment to the hideous noises of delirium coming from the next room, the level nerves of Beatrix had at last given way completely. The noises had stopped now, and an ominous stillness lay over the room; but in Beatrix's ears they ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... duty, are marshalled on the quarter-deck, presenting arms as the Commodore passes them; while their commanding officer gives the military salute with his sword, as if making masonic signs. Meanwhile, the boatswain himself—not a boatswain's mate—is keeping up a persevering whistling with his silver pipe; for the Commodore is never greeted with the rude whistle of a boatswain's subaltern; that would be positively insulting. All the Lieutenants and Midshipmen, besides the Captain himself, are drawn up in a phalanx, ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... the glass so that he could sweep the edge of the plain; but the time went on, and the mounted party might, after all, have been a cloud-shadow for all the sign that he could see, and at last he began to grow weary and think of whistling to Ned to come ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... answered the Doctor impatiently, "but if you have heard them whistling, sire, they must ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... traffic rose from afar, for the night was still. Now and then a taxi whirred through the sloppy street, but there were few wayfarers. Once a boy passed whistling, and the man at the window above stiffened a little, as if in some fashion the careless melody stirred him, but as the whistler turned the corner he relaxed again with his head back, and resumed ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... the altogether admirable and shining family which Thoreau dreamed he saw in the upper chambers of Spaulding's woods, which Spaulding did not know lived there, and which were not put out when Spaulding, whistling, drove his team through their lower halls. They did not go into society in the village; they were quite well; they had sons and daughters; they neither wove nor spun; there was a sound as ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... High Sheriff of Nottingham proclaimed a great shooting-match in a broad open space, and Little John was minded to try his skill with the rest. He rode through the forest, whistling gaily to himself, for well he knew that not one of Robin Hood's men could send an arrow as straight as he, and he felt little ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... a seat on the sofas, we spoke not; and no sounds but the loud words of command, the noise of men running to and fro over head, and the cries of King, interfered with the sovereignty of the thunder, and whistling of the impetuous wind. ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... education because you are poor; so do you and your father come to me to-morrow morning, and I will see what I can do for you. Peter returned her Ladyship a great many thanks, made one of his best bows, and ran home whistling and singing as merry as a grig. As soon as he got within side the door, Good news, good news, says he, father; you and I are to go to Lady Bountiful's to morrow-morning; I believe her Ladyship is going to put me ...
— The History of Little King Pippin • Thomas Bewick
... working in his garden, and sitting in the willow-tree with his violin, for that green nest was a fairy world to him, and there he loved to perch, making music like a happy bird. The lads called him "Old Chirper," because he was always humming, whistling, or fiddling, and they often stopped a minute in their work or play to listen to the soft tones of the violin, which seemed to lead a little orchestra of summer sounds. The birds appeared to regard him as one ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... prove a Tartar, And Bylong's the horse that can stay, But Kean is in trouble—and Carter Is hard on the satin-skinn'd bay; And The Barb comes away unextended, Hard held, like a second Eclipse, While behind the hoof-thunder is blended With the whistling ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... the fire, and sat in silence, wondering what we should see or hear next. Once or twice that agonized cry came shivering through the cold moonlight. After an age, we heard Gavotte crunching through the snow, whistling cheerily to reassure us. He had crossed the canon to the new mill camp, where he had found two women, loggers' wives, and some children. One of the women, he said, was "so ver' seek," 't was she who was wailing so, and it was the ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... not running yet. When they commenced, she would take one to Whitechapel. The signs of awakening labor stirred her with new emotions; the early milkman with his cans, casual artisans with their tools, a grimy sweep, a work-girl with a paper lunch-package, an apprentice whistling. Great sleeping houses lined her path like gorged monsters drowsing voluptuously. The world she was leaving behind her grew alien and repulsive, her heart went out to the patient world of toil. What had she been doing all these years, amid her books ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... country. Once proposed as the capital of the nation—and of the state of Kansas. Now a whistling station and a ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing
... Commerce, we shoot scornfully past those blazing bellied windows of the aromatic dinners, and beyond Thames, away to the fishermen's deeps, Old England's native element, where the strenuous ancestry of a race yet and ever manful at the stress of trial are heard around and aloft whistling us back to the splendid strain of muscle, and spray fringes cloud, and strong heart rides the briny scoops and hillocks, and Death and Man are at grip for ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a battle at Mazaro, between Bonga and the Portuguese, when Dr Livingstone, landing, found himself in the sickening smell and among the mutilated bodies of the slain. He brought off the governor, who was in a fever, the balls whistling about his head in all directions. The Portuguese then escaped to an island opposite Shupanga, where, having exhausted their ammunition, they were compelled ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... dug-out about 9 o'clock when suddenly we opened artillery fire on the Turkish position with considerable vigour, and they replied but in a milder form. I retired and lay down in my dug-out listening to the shells whistling above and praying to Providence that none would land on my sail cloth roof. In about half an hour the bombardment ceased and one wondered what damage had been done and how many lives lost. I then slept. At breakfast the next morning remarking on the bombardment I was asked "which"? ...
— With a Highland Regiment in Mesopotamia - 1916—1917 • Anonymous
... made both look expectantly toward the turn in the road, all ready to cry out with one voice, "How many have you got?" Neither spoke a word, however, for the figure which presently appeared was not Ben, but a stranger,—a man who stopped whistling, and came slowly on, dusting his shoes in the way-side grass, and brushing the sleeves of his shabby velveteen coat as if anxious to ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various
... had already veiled the face of nature, and gathering gloom rested upon the brow of night. She listened attentively, to catch the sounds of coming footsteps, but nothing could be heard but the wind whistling around the sides of their slender lodge, and through the creaking branches of the surrounding forest of oaks and pines. Time passed away in this state of suspense; he came not, and every moment augmented her fears, and added to the loneliness ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... followers were provided with sticks, and others armed with poles. They had, in their haste, seized upon any implements that they could find; numerous lads, old guards of the leader, accompanied the strange procession. Whistling and making a blustering noise, most of them in rags and barefooted—a genuine mob, who soon became aware how much was left to their will and discretion. The Duke was in the palace, and with him many of the nobles belonging to the town, who advised him to strengthen his ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... of the womanly way for a girl. To be sure, there is not much difference between climbing fences and many of the gymnastic performances for girls; but time and place must be regarded. I should not frown if I heard a girl whistling, under two conditions,—she must be a good whistler, and confine her musical exercise to the woods. I think it is fine to see a girl go over a fence without sticking between the bars, and it really is too bad to have ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... the days when our caged blackbirds never saw a king's soldier without whistling impudently, "Come ower the water to Charlie," a minister of Thrums was to be married, but something happened, and he remained a bachelor. Then, when he was old, he passed in our square the lady who was to have been his wife, and her hair was ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... a moment on the opposite side of the street to look at his uncle's house. While he was standing there, a boy of about his own age, apparently, came down the street whistling, and ascended the steps of ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger |
