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More "Buzz" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... beside the elevator and on around the end, and then, with an exclamation, he hurried forward; for there was the same idle crowd about the tracks that had been there during the trouble with the section boss—the same buzz of talk, and the idle laughter and shouting. As he ran, his foot struck a timber-end, and he sprawled forward for nearly a rod before recovering his balance; then he stopped and looked along the ground. A ...
— Calumet 'K' • Samuel Merwin
... and the chafers began to buzz; And the swallows began to chatter: "We have come from abroad with the summer at last. How lazy ...
— Friends in Feathers and Fur, and Other Neighbors - For Young Folks • James Johonnot
... low-toned conversation carried on by the two young officers, with an occasional creak or rattle from a swinging sail was all that broke the silence of the drowsy vessel; now from everywhere came the buzz of voices and ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... waited. The Man-eater came in late, very tired with his long walk, and flung himself on the bed, placing his sword with its shining blade by his side. Scarcely had he lain down than the mosquitos began to buzz about and bite him, and he rolled from side to side trying to catch them, which he never could do, though they always seemed to be close to his nose. He was so busy over the mosquitos that he did not hear Ciccu steal softly out, or see him catch up the sword. But the horse heard ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... the torture. In the market-place of Loudun in 1643 this terrible sentence was carried into execution, and together with his book, Contra Caelibatum Clericorum, poor Grandier was committed to the flames. When he ascended his funeral pile, a fly was observed to buzz around his head. A monk who was standing near declared that, as Beelzebub was the god of flies, the devil was present with Grandier in his dying hour and wished to bear away his soul to the infernal regions. An account ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... pieces, the anecdotes of the day, which form the common talk among all the idlers of the capital, must furnish them with subjects in working up which little delay can be brooked. These vaudevilles are like the gnats that buzz about in a summer evening; they often sting, but they fly merrily about so long as the sun of opportunity shines upon them. A piece like the Despair of Jocrisse, which, after a lapse of years, may be still occasionally brought out, passes justly among the ephemeral ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... regard it as intrinsic. This tendency to silence, to go out of the rattle and dazzle of the conversation into a quiet apart, is largely, I hold, the consequence of a certain elevation and breadth and tenderness of mind; I am no blowfly to buzz my way through the universe, no rattle that I should be expected to delight my fellow-creatures by the noises I produce. I go about to this social function and that, deporting myself gravely and decently in silence, taking, if possible, a back seat; and, in consequence ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... better believe—I want it quick. I found it, and I'm gwine to give it up; and you have got no right to jeppardy my life, if you are fool enough to resk your own stiff neck. Gim'me that hank'cher! Fantods is played out. I would ruther play leap frog over a buzz-saw than—than—pester and rile Marse Alfred, and have the cunstable ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... from the emptying town A crowd of five thousand all rushing down; They hurry, they scurry, they buzz, they brize, And all to see this witch in a blaze. Deep in the midst of the jubilant throng A harmless woman is hurried along,— She is weary, and wheezing for lack of breath, And o'er all her face is the pallor of death; And she says, as they push her, in grim despair, "Ye needna hurry ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... towards the ground like an untrained honeysuckle—and but for one, in my own house—but of this I cannot speak. It was a lonely life, growing green like the grass around it. Books and dreams were what I lived in—and domestic life only seemed to buzz gently around, like the bees about the grass. And so time passed, and passed—and afterwards, when my illness came and I seemed to stand at the edge of the world with all done, and no prospect (as appeared at one time) of ever passing the threshold of one room again; ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... man entered into a lively little war of words with a yellow-haired young person near the door. Anna picked up an ancient magazine, and began to turn over the pages in a leisurely way. The conversation which her entrance had interrupted began to buzz again all around her. A quarter of an hour passed. Then the inner door opened abruptly. A tall, clean-shaven man came out and walked rapidly through the room, exchanging greetings right and left, but evidently anxious ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... solemn dinner ever I sat at. Not a health drank, scarce a word said until the cloth was taken away. Then the President, filling a glass of wine, with great formality drank to the health of every individual by name around the table. Everybody imitated him and changed glasses and such a buzz of 'health, sir,' and 'health, madam,' and 'thank you, sir,' and 'thank you, madam' never had I heard before.... The ladies sat a good while and the bottles passed about; but there was a dead silence almost. Mrs. Washington at last withdrew with ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... politics with the pestering faculty of an old maid and the persistency of a child. Minds like his prefer to dash themselves against the light; they return again and again and hum about it without ever getting into it, like those big flies which weary our ears as they buzz upon the glass. ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... marshes, and a trickling of light green down around each tue, or little mound of earth covered with moss and tiny berry plants. Ptarmigans roam about in solitary pairs, murmuring when any one comes too near their nests; gnats and horseflies buzz through the air; and cows, with tails set straight up, scamper friskily about, trying to escape ...
— Lisbeth Longfrock • Hans Aanrud
... right-hand corner of the picture. See! I am on board, and I am driving her at one hundred and ten miles." And he followed with his pointer the swift course of the vessel, as it shot down the screen like a great comet, leaving a long tail of smoke behind it. To the overwrought nerves of the audience, the buzz and splutter of the moving-picture machine seemed to increase in volume, and thus lend a semblance of reality to the monster as it ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... release from the day's toil. The workers in the factory, a small army of men and women, boys and girls, poured forth from the doorways of the huge buildings, swarmed up the street, laughing and chattering, and dispersed to their several homes. The buzz and jarring of the machinery have ceased and silence fills the place. Even the offices are deserted, with the exception of one from which issues the steady ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... with the hope of seeing much of her during the Long Vacation. He did see her once at her own reception, but this time her husband wandered about the two rooms. The cosy corner was impossible, and they could only manage to gasp out a few mutual endearments amid the buzz and movement, and to arrange a rendezvous for the end of July. When the day came, he received a heart-broken letter, stating that her husband had borne her away to Goodwood. In a postscript she informed ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... favourite toys, and down which I have shouted many valuable, but prematurely arrested, monologues upon art and morals. I remember a mild shock of surprise when I discovered that one could use the telephone on Sunday; I did not expect it to be cut off, but I expected it to buzz more than on ordinary days, to the advancement of our national religion. Through this instrument, in fewer words than usual, and with a comparative economy of epigram, I ordered a taxi-cab to take me to the railway station. I have not a word to say ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... the blast, as the compressed oxygen and acetylene were expelled, carried a fine spray of the disintegrated metal visibly before it. And yet it was not a big hole that it made— scarcely an eighth of an inch wide, but clean and sharp as if a buzz-saw were eating its way through a plank ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... hum of the people gathered there, which a shrill whistle, or a louder song or hail than the rest, occasionally pierced. Soon afterwards the Judges, two in number, entered, and took their seats. The buzz in the Court was awfully hushed. The direction was given to put the Murderer to the bar. He appeared there. And in that same instant I recognised in him the first of the two men ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... Johnson entered her room in response to a peremptory call on the private-telephone, "Inspector Carfon is to honour us with a call during the next few minutes. Give him a chair and a copy of The Sunday at Home, and watch the clues as they peep out of his pockets. Now buzz off." ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... lets loose. Yu' see, one batch o' tourists pulls out right after breakfast for Norris Basin, leavin' things empty and yawnin'. By noon the whole hotel outfit has been slumberin' in its chairs steady for three hours. Maybe yu' might hear a fly buzz, but maybe not. Everything's liable to be restin', barrin' the kid. He's a-watchin' out. Then he sees the dust, and he says 'Stage!' and it touches the folks off like a hot pokeh. The Syndicate manager he ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... was installed in a capital chamber; and if those incarnate demons the musquitoes would have made peace with me, I should have scorned comparisons with the Nabob of the Carnatic. But, oh! immortal gods, how they did hum and bom, and bite and buzz! and how I did fume, and slap, and snatch, and swear, partly in fear, and partly through sheer vexation of spirit, at having no means of vengeance against a foe whose audacity was open and outrageous, whose trumpets were for ever sounding a charge, yet who were withal, ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... was more than the ordinary morning commotion of farm life, and the buzz of talk going on at the well and the racing and shouting of a parcel of children all had in it a touch of eagerness and expectancy. While I still was drinking my coffee—in the excellence and delicate service of which I recognized the friendly hand of Mise Fougueiroun—there came a ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... if that fly had a father and a mother? How would he hang his slender gilded wings, And buzz lamenting doings in the air! Poor harmless fly! That, with his pretty buzzing melody, Came here to make us merry! and thou Hast kill'd ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... a buzz in the front of my head as if something was spinning round and round very quickly, and that makes my eyes tired, and there's a sort of feeling as if my head was twice as heavy as it should be. Hang up the glass again. I'll try and ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... out of the hive. Now in a democracy, too, there are drones, but they are more numerous and more dangerous than in the oligarchy; there they are inert and unpractised, here they are full of life and animation; and the keener sort speak and act, while the others buzz about the bema and prevent their opponents from being heard. And there is another class in democratic States, of respectable, thriving individuals, who can be squeezed when the drones have need of their possessions; there ...
— The Republic • Plato
... of impending battle had leaked out among the rest of the body of squires, and a buzz of suppressed excitement hummed through the dormitory that evening. The bachelors, to whom, no doubt, vague rumors had been blown, looked lowering, and talked together in low voices, standing apart in a group. Some of them made a rather marked show of secreting knives in the straw of their beds, ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... The loudest buzz of commercialism is to be heard on the east shores, where fertile valleys and sightly plateaus checkered with farms and gardens stretch away to the foot hills of the Cascade Mountains, comprising five of the most densely ...
— The Beauties of the State of Washington - A Book for Tourists • Harry F. Giles
... his mount ceased to move, and undoing his leathern belt with a jerk, he struck the camel a smart blow on the shoulder. There was the protesting buzz of a large fly and an angry, disabled blundering on the sand, silenced by ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... A reluctant buzz of admiration ran through the crowd. Many of them had come from Paris, but they had never seen such swordsmanship before. Whoever the hunter might be they saw that he was the master swordsman of them all. They addressed low cries of ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... those days such books 'swarm and buzz about one:' 'flap them away,' says Chesterfield, 'they have no sting.' The earl directed the whole force of his mind to oratory, and became the finest speaker of his time. Writing to Sir Horace Mann, about the Hanoverian debate (in 1743, Dec. 15), Walpole praising the speeches of Lords Halifax ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... roof, and were dying in hundreds, in their attempt to escape through the closed windows. There were plenty of apertures in the church through which they could have escaped, if they had had any idea of exploration. But they were content to buzz feebly up and down the panes, till strength failed them, and they dropped down on to the sill among the bodies of their brothers. An old man who was digging in the churchyard told Hugh that the same thing had gone on in the church every ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... a bitterly cold night, but there was a long delay before starting. We are rear-guard to-day. Just before leaving an infantry man shot himself while cleaning his rifle. There was a little buzz and stir, and then all was quiet again. He was ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... this fact is becoming generally recognised. You cannot go anywhere without hearing a buzz of more or less confused and contradictory talk on this subject—nor can you fail to notice that, in one point at any rate, there is a very decided advance upon like discussions in former days. ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... packed; pastor and people were at their best; and an expectant hush fell over the little audience when Mr. Strong took his seat after reading the weekly announcements. The organ began to play softly, necks were craned to catch a glimpse of the singer, and then a buzz of surprise filled the room. Peace, dressed all in white, and looking like a rosy cherub, had mounted to the organ loft where Faith was playing, and at the proper moment, she began to whistle a beautiful bird melody which ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... Czernowitz sat in the other room, talking to Jastro, a buzz of voices came from the hall through the thin pine panels of the door. All day long a sixty-mile gale had twisted the snow of the lane into whirling, fantastic columns and rattled the windows of Franco-Belgian Hall. But now the wind had fallen.... Presently, as his self-made ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... in pink, La France roses, place cards from somewhere." He paused to laugh. "Maimie was doing it up brown, but she lacks tact. What does she do but ask for Miss Bentley's picture for the Saturday edition! I tried to stop her, but it was too late. You should have heard the 'phone buzz. 'My niece's picture in the Evening Record!' 'I don't care, mean old thing,' says Maimie, when she hung up. 'Nicer people than she is do it, and are glad to. 'That's all right, my honey,' I told her, 'but there are ...
— The Little Red Chimney - Being the Love Story of a Candy Man • Mary Finley Leonard
... however, was he seen by his men than there was a loud buzz of voices, and he learned what a change had taken place between them, for instead of being welcomed back with sidelong glances and a half meaning look, the soldiers saluted him with a loud cheer, in which sentries ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... forests in the deepening twilight, one is impressed with a feeling of awe and mystery by the strange, weird shapes outlined against the sky. In the cooler air of evening the animals come from their retreats. The insects and the snakes are then abroad, and if one is on foot the sudden buzz of a rattlesnake is not a pleasant sound ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks
... arriving occasionally, and never were letters more warmly welcomed. There would be a buzz of excitement while a mail-bag was being sorted, and then a strange quiet would hang over the terraces while every one in his ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... in here, and when I buzz send in Corbett. The poor kiddie!" With which lamentation over the fate he was about to mete out to Miss Adair, Mr. Vandeford dismissed Mr. Meyers and opened the door which led from his sanctum into that which had been so recently assigned to the ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... next the wight, whose drone Bores, sotto voce, you alone With flat colloquial pressure: Debarr'd from general talk, you droop Beneath his buzz, from orient soup, To ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 327, August 16, 1828 • Various
... I somewhat marvel, since there is a compulsory school law in Germany; but perhaps to-day is a holiday; or maybe, after school hours, it is customary for these unhappy youngsters to repair to the road-sides and blister their hands with cracking flints. "Hungry as a buzz-saw" I roll into the sleepy old town of Rothenburg at six o'clock, and, repairing to the principal hotel, order supper. Several flunkeys of different degrees of usefulness come in and bow obsequiously from time to time, as I sit around, expecting supper to appear every minute. At seven ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... down. During the respectful, appreciative buzz of voices that followed the speech, General Montero raised a pair of heavy, drooping eyelids and rolled his eyes with a sort of uneasy dullness from face to face. The military backwoods hero of the party, ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... A buzz across the room called the doctor to his personal receiver. It was a message in code from Potomac National Headquarters. We watched the queer-looking characters printing on the tape. Very softly, in a voice hardly above a whisper, Georg ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... shrinking from the crust. "It's a house I seldom go into, though I'm fond of the boys, and Martin Poyser's a good fellow. There's too many women in the house for me: I hate the sound of women's voices; they're always either a-buzz or a-squeak—always either a-buzz or a-squeak. Mrs. Poyser keeps at the top o' the talk like a fife; and as for the young lasses, I'd as soon look at water-grubs. I know what they'll turn to—stinging gnats, stinging gnats. Here, take some ale, my boy: ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... trees, and observed that they were teasing a Hawk about as large as themselves, which was also on the wing. Presently all three had risen above the branches, and were circling higher and higher in a slow spiral. The Crows kept constantly swooping at their enemy, with the same angry buzz, one of the two taking decidedly the lead. They seldom struck at him with their beaks, but kept lumbering against him, and flapping him with their wings, as if in a fruitless effort to capsize him; while the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... supposing that among all the midges that buzz about a man there happened to be an artist-midge with exceeding sensitiveness of soul, one which was able to recognise a fundamental identity of life between it and the man, one which was able to recognise samenesses of feelings and emotions and aspirations, and by recognition of the samenesses ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... of the Fairview party was not less cordial than had been that of the others, and presently all were seated and a buzz of ...
— Elsie at Home • Martha Finley
... were the faults of his rival, until no good quality seemed to remain of either. That the public service must suffer was certain, but what were the sufferings of the public service compared with the risks run by a young mosquito — a private secretary — trying to buzz admiration in the ears of each, and unaware that each would impatiently slap at him for belonging to the other? Innocent and unsuspicious beyond what was permitted even in a nursery, the private secretary ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... out, and a buzz of talk and comment ran through the waiting synagogue. Eliphaz had not ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... it is quite amusing. We buzz like bees, in spirit we fly through the whole world, suck honey when we find it, and sting when something displeases us. Such a life is not apt to make great heroes, but queer dicks like us are ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... An' she sais why ain't yo' gone faght fo' th' South ef yo'-all so hot about it, an' Ah sais yo' was eageh to go, but yo' been in the timbeh business, an' one day yo' got rash about yo' saw-mill, an' th' ole buzz-saw jes' natchelly tuk off yo' ahm, so's yo' couldn't go to th' wah. Yes, seh, Mahstah Majah—Ah laid Ah'd brek it grajally—an' Ah suttingly did have that lady a-thinkin' ve'y highly of yo' at th' time of yo' ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... scarcely engaged the attention of the officials when the buzz of a motor, livelier and more nervous than our faithful "thrum, thrum," called to us to turn our heads; and there was Prince Dalmar-Kalm's brilliant car flying up the hill, even as ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... myriads of insects, whose hum and buzz make a good part of the noise and stir of a summer afternoon, are all gone. No whirring wings rush past; there is no sound of "dragon-fly, or painted moth, or musical winged bee" to break the stillness; ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... motion is put," said Mr. Maynard, again arising. The Clerk was ready for the emergency, and before Mr. Maynard could complete his sentence, he uttered the imperative and conclusive words, "The Clerk can not recognize as entitled to the floor any gentleman whose name is not on this roll." A buzz of approbation greeted the discreet ruling of the Clerk. The difficult point was passed, and the whole subject of the admission of Southern Representatives was handed over intact, to be deliberately considered after the House should be ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... divertisements. By the time the clock in the steeple strikes twelve the church is well filled. The music of the organist, who has now reached Mendelssohn's Spring Song for the third and last time, is accompanied by a huge buzz of whispers, and there is much craning of necks and long-distance nodding and smiling. Here and there an unusually gorgeous hat is the target of many converging glances, and of as many more or less satirical criticisms. ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... was seated on a bank overhanging the river, which, being shallow at this spot, brawled loudly over its pebbly bed, some parts of which were dry. It was at such a distance from the city, that all the noises common to its streets were united into one buzz or hum, and the whole scene was well adapted to suggest meditations upon private matters, or the affairs of the world in general. Yet Bruin did not seem influenced by any such reflections: if one might venture a ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... Here the company were of both sexes, and of every grade and condition of rank, from the highest noble of the once court, to the humblest peasant of La Vendee. If the sounds of mirth and levity were less frequent, the buzz of conversation was, to the full, as loud as in the lower hall, where, from difference of condition in life, the scenes passing presented stranger and more curious contrasts. In one corner a group of peasants were gathered ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... me down as a wretch, but hear me. I have been ill again, in the first place; then as weak as a rag in consequence, and then with business accumulated on impotent hands; proofs to see to, and the like. You may have heard in the buzz of newspapers of certain presentation swords, subscribed for by twenty thousand Romans, at a franc each, and presented in homage and gratitude to Napoleon III. and Victor Emmanuel. Castellani[72] of course was the artist, and the whole business had to be huddled up at the end, ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... it commenced to whirl around rather rapidly, then the speed increased as the power was let on, until a buzz was heard, which quickly gave way to a singing, hissing sound; now followed a spark, then another and another in quick succession, and the whole rim of the extractor seemed ...
— Under Fire - A Tale of New England Village Life • Frank A. Munsey
... together, and plunged into conversation. Elizabeth was left solitary a moment, behind the tea-things. The buzz of the room, the hearty laugh of the Lord Lieutenant, reached the outer ear. But every deeper sense was strained to catch a voice—a step—that must soon be here. And presently across the room, her eyes met her mother's, ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... ole clock a-strikin' Chris'mas-gif now. Come 'long, go ter bed, honey. You needs a res', but I ain' gwine sleep none, 'caze all dis heah news what you been a-tellin' me, hit's gwine ter run roun' in my head all night, same as a buzz-saw." ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... the lady heaved a deep sigh; then, marvelling not a little, for she had thought 'twas known to none, albeit on the day when the man was slain, who was afterwards buried as Tedaldo, there had been some buzz about it, occasioned by some indiscreet words dropped by Tedaldo's gossip and confidant, she made answer:—"I see that there is nought that men keep secret but God reveals it to you; wherefore I shall ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... steadiest nerve, a frightful velocity. But the Trapper was of too cool and courageous temperament to be disturbed even by actual danger. Indeed, the swiftness of their downward career, as the sled with a buzz and a roar swept along over the resounding crust, stirred the old man's blood with a tingle of excitement; while the splendid manner with which Wild Bill was keeping it to the course settled upon filled him with admiration, and was fast making him a convert ...
— Holiday Tales - Christmas in the Adirondacks • W. H. H. Murray
... Blasphemies often buzz'd by the Temptations of the Devil, into the minds of the best Men alive. What a most Execrable Thing was here laid before our Lord Himself: Even, To own the Devil as God! a thing that can't be uttered, without unutterable Horror of Soul. The best man on earth, may have such ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... arrive about nine o'clock, the ladies in large numbers, and the room was soon abreeze with a buzz of conversation and the rustle of gayly- ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... Joseph Willet, whom they couldn't find, darted down haphazard on the first young man that caught their fancy, and settled on him instead. However this may be, certain it is that on the very day of Joe's departure they swarmed about the ears of Edward Chester, and did so buzz and flap their wings, and persecute him, that ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... lady no more loved wasps than did her pupils. She retreated as the wasp advanced. The intruder ranged itself on the side of the girls and circled towards their instructress with malevolence in every turn and vicious intent in its buzz. ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... tintype taken in which a young lady sits in the alleged grass, while he stands behind her with his hand lightly touching her shoulder as though he might be feeling of the thrilling circumference of a buzz saw. He carries this picture in his pocket for months, and looks at it whenever ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... bird thirty feet from the ground, afraid to move or turn your eyes, lest you miss what you are waiting for, while the sun moves steadily on till his hottest rays pour through some opening directly upon you; while mosquitoes sing about your ears (would that they sang only!), and flies buzz noisily before your face; while birds flit past, and strange notes sound from behind; while rustling in the dead leaves at your feet suggests snakes, and a crawling on your neck proclaims spiders? If you have ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... busy morning, for the night had been full of snipers perched on trees. The faithful three spread aseptics and bandaged and sewed, and generally cheered the stream of callers from the Ninth and Twelfth Regiments, Army of the King of the Belgians. In the early afternoon, the buzz of motors penetrated to the stuffy cellar, and it needed no yelping horn, squeezed by the firm hand of Smith, to bring Hilda to the surface, alert for the expedition. Two motor ambulances were puffing their lungs out, in the roadway. Pale-faced Smith sat in one at the ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... shrieking passionately, like a hundred knife-grinders at work, is no joke; especially when their melodies are mingled with the discordant cries of herons, and bitterns, and cranes, and the ceaseless buzz and hum of insects, like the bagpipe's drone, and the dismal croaking of boat-bills and frogs,—one kind of which latter, by the way, doesn't croak at all, but whistles, ay, better than many a bird! The universal ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... be doing now, sir?" said Phoebe, hearing a noise as it were of a carpenter turning screw-nails, mixed with a low buzz ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... quickest to discern, Had known divine Sarpedon, from his head To his foot-sole with mingled blood and dust Polluted, and o'erwhelm'd with weapons. They Around the body swarm'd. As hovel-flies 780 In spring-time buzz around the brimming pails With milk bedew'd, so they around the dead. Nor Jove averted once his glorious eyes From that dread contest, but with watchful note Marked all, the future death in battle deep 785 Pondering of Patroclus, whether him Hector ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... that?" asked Joe, after a pause, during which he and his chum could hear the low buzz of conversation from the ...
— The Moving Picture Boys at Panama - Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal • Victor Appleton
... the town, and coffee-houses had been opened in every direction. They sold many things besides coffee, and served a variety of purposes, but primarily they were temples of talk and good-fellowship. The buzz of conversation and the smoke of tobacco alike filled the rooms which were the forerunners of the club-houses of a ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... if a man had the art of the second sight for seeing lies, as they have in Scotland for seeing spirits, how admirably he might entertain himself in this town by observing the different shapes, sizes, and colors of those swarms of lies which buzz about the heads of some people, like flies about a horses' ears in summer; or those legions hovering every afternoon in Exchange alley, enough to darken the air; or over a club of discontented grandees, and thence sent down in cargoes to be ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... of another, and a more successful special train than Adair's. No sooner was the care-free young director safely on his way to meet the delays so painstakingly prearranged for him than the wires began to buzz with a cipher message of warning to Penfield. A precious half-hour was lost in ascertaining that the wire connection to the end-of-track was temporarily out of commission; but during that half-hour Mr. North had held his chin in his hand ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... bow and he aft, rowing fisherman fashion, face forward. The schooner had backed her yards on the fore when she was within a mile of the berg, and we had not far to row. Our four arms made the fat little jolly-boat buzz over the wrinkled surface of the green, cold water. The wreck—if a wreck she could be called—lay with her decks sloping seawards upon an inclined shelf or beach of ice, with a mass of rugged, abrupt stuff behind her, and vast coagulated lumps heaped ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... had ever fallen upon the island seemed to have left some of their heat behind them here. The air was damp and close like the air of a laundry; and the mournful and perpetual buzz of insects filled the silence without ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... hot on the heels of his article. He may not be able to enlighten the public but the associated press dispatch will give the grim facts relating to the end of that editor, who undertook to monkey with the buzz saw of the freedom of the press ...
— The Ballotless Victim of One-Party Governments - The American Negro Academy, Occasional Papers No. 16 • Archibald H. Grimke
... nothing of Joe's midnight visit, reckoning that it would not be long before the news of his flight got abroad. It was indeed the subject of a great buzz of talk among my schoolfellows, who flocked about me as I walked down Castle Street, demanding to hear the full story from my own lips. I could tell them nothing that they did not know, save only my leave-taking ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... explanations heard. This presumably brilliant assemblage of the financial weight and intelligence of the city appeared as solemn as owls under the pressure of a rumored impending financial crisis. Before Arneel's appearance there was a perfect buzz of minor ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... when he comes forth, the skirts of his blue coat will drop like a pent[388]-house! O, that I could see, and not be seen; how he would spaniel it, and shake himself, when he comes out of the pond! But I'll be gone; for now he'll fight with a fly, if he but buzz[389] ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... So when the buzz of conversation had stopped she read his verses to the others, holding his arm in the middle of the room, her sweet voice conveying their spirit as well as their words. And Arty stood by her, jubilant, listening ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... for people began to go, sleepy children to be carried off, and whispers grew into a buzz of conversation. In the general confusion Rose looked to see if Steve had remembered his promise to help Phebe slip away before the rush began. No, there he was putting on Kitty's cloak, quite oblivious to any other duty. Turning to ask Archie ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... sand crawls, Hums, a heaving hive, Scrapes and scrawls— Such a buzz and burst! Here just one thing's not alive, One that was at first— ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... door was opened no more than was necessary for the passage of a human body; and there entered at the same moment a louder buzz of talk, and the redoubtable President of the Suicide Club. The President was a man of fifty or upwards; large and rambling in his gait, with shaggy side whiskers, a bald top to his head, and a veiled ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... swords and double-pointed spears. And now not even a clear-sighted man could any longer have known noble Sarpedon, for with darts and blood and dust was he covered wholly from head to foot. And ever men thronged about the dead, as in a steading flies buzz around the full milk-pails, in the season of spring, when the milk drenches the bowls, even so thronged they about the dead. Nor ever did Zeus turn from the strong fight his shining eyes, but ever looked down on them, and ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... "high twelve" at noon, and then the kind jailer of learning's little prison-house let all her fretful captives go. The clamorous elves rushed through the doorway into the street, like a stream too big for its vent, rejoicing in their new-found freedom and the open face of day. The buzz of the little teaching mill was hushed once more, and the old dame laid her knitting down, and quietly wiped her weak and weary eyes. The daughters of music were brought low with her, but, in the last thin treble of second childhood, she trembled ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... guts stink worse than cowards in the heat of battle. Such whaleboned- doublet rascals, that owe more to laundresses and seamsters for laced linen than all their race from their great grand-father to this their reign, in clothes were ever worth. These excrements of silk worms! Oh that such flies do buzz about the beams of Majesty, like earwigs tickling a King's yielding ear with that court-organ, flattery, when a soldier must not come near the court gates twenty score, but stand for want of clothes, though he win towns, amongst the almsbasket-men! His ...
— The Noble Spanish Soldier • Thomas Dekker
... church, and I have wondered painfully ever since how so many came to be in a little place like Giromagny. There were three priests at the high altar, and nearly one for each chapel, and there was such a buzz of Masses going on, beginning and ending, that I am sure I need not have gone without my breakfast in my hurry to get one. With all this there were few people at Mass so early; nothing but these priests going in and out, and ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... stay where one was, and he agreed; he stayed. In the back room where he was sitting with the ladies of the household, coolness reigned supreme; the windows looked out upon a little garden overgrown with acacias. Multitudes of bees, wasps, and humming beetles kept up a steady, eager buzz in their thick branches, which were studded with golden blossoms; through the half-drawn curtains and the lowered blinds this never-ceasing hum made its way into the room, telling of the sultry heat in the air outside, and making ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... drive him into a violent rage. Felicite was far too supple to thwart him openly; with her light fluttering nature she did not attack obstacles in front. When she wished to obtain something from her husband, or drive him the way she thought best, she would buzz round him in her grasshopper fashion, stinging him on all sides, and returning to the charge a hundred times until he yielded almost unconsciously. He felt, moreover, that she was shrewder than he, and tolerated ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... a brief visit to W——, and quite near her, Judge Harris and her father were in earnest conversation. Astonished at the sudden apparition, her eyes followed him as he bowed to the member of the central group; and as she heard the deep, rich voice above the buzz of small talk she waited to see if he would notice her. Soon Governor G—— gave her his arm for a promenade, and she found herself, ere long, very near Maria, who was approaching with Russell. He was saying something, at which she laughed delightedly; just then his eye fell ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... invalid's chair; still others hurried ahead to confer their patronage upon the Grand Hotel Royal; but the greater part hastened back to their rooms to get something hot and bracing. From one end to the other, the place was a-buzz with wagging tongues. Why should the foreign secretary of the British Empire have chosen Weet-sur-Mer as his abiding place? Merely because he was ill and wished to rest? Bah! To believe that would be to show a mind the most ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... sewing, which this morning she chose to do in her room rather than in her favorite spot in the garden. She closed the shutters on the sunny side and sat down by the window nearest the garden, peculiarly sensible of the soft light and cool spaciousness of an inner world. The occasional buzz of a bee, the flutter of the leaves of the poplar, might have been the voice of the outer world in Southern Spain or Southern Italy, or anywhere else where ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... word was spoken, and in the silence I could hear plainly the noise made by the sailors in laying in their oars, after which there was a pause, and then plainly heard there were the tramp of men, the buzz of voices. About a dozen soldiers halted outside, and four tall, dark, handsome-looking Spanish officers were ushered in by Colonel ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... most lovely of fair forms met my eyes in that of Lady Almeria Carpenter. The countenance which most pleased me was that of the late Mrs. Baddeley.[11] The first Countess of Tyrconnel also appeared with considerable eclat. But the buzz of the room, the unceasing murmur of admiration, attended the Marchioness Townshend. I took my seat on a sofa nearly opposite to that on which she was sitting, and I observed two persons, evidently ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... our subscriptions back in the house, if you'll act treasurer and wheedle Antonio. Fairy Godmothers, Limited! It's a brainy notion. When shall you ask those kids? You bet they'll buzz ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... shock of surprise. There are storks and birds, and beetles and butterflies, and crabs and lobsters, made so cunningly of shells, that only touch convinces you they are not alive. There are bees of shell, poised on flowers of the same material—poised on wire in such a way that they seem to buzz if moved only with the tip of a feather. There is shell-work jewellery indescribable, things that Japanese girls love, enchantments in mother-of-pearl, hair-pins carven in a hundred forms, brooches, necklaces. And there are ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... a conqueror and a king; but with the eyes of a benefactor and a brother he looked on all around. The very memory of war seemed to vanish before his presence, for all there was love and gentleness. Helen drew a quick sigh, and closing her eyes, dropped against the arras. She now heard the buzz of many voices, the rolling peal of acclamations, but she distinguished nothing; her senses were in tumults; and had not Lady Ruthven seen her disorder, she would have fallen motionless to the floor. The good ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... Round Krindlesyke, as bees about a thistle! And I'm to set the peelers on my son? If he'd gone with Peter, they'd have tracked his hobnails ... It snowed that night ... The snowflakes buzz like bees About the prickling thistles in my head— Big bumblebees ... I never felt ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... witnesses and bridesmaids, Betsy Beauty and Nessy MacLeod, in large hats, with soaring black feathers, were behind me. I could hear the rustle of their rose-coloured skirts and the indistinct buzz of their whispered conversation, as well as the more audible reproofs of Aunt Bridget, who in a crinkly black silk dress and a bonnet like a half moon, was telling them to be silent and to ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... words, which produced the effect of a peal of thunder, prevailing over the orchestra, the singing and the buzz of the promenaders, the cardinal and the queen-mother looked at each ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... they thought? They took us for their Thunder Bird lighting. I'll bet they're making medicine right now, trying to appease the Bird's wrath. And say, listen here, Bland. If they do come at us, all we've got to do is start up and buzz at 'em. There ain't an Injun on earth could ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... have you been hiding yourself? I've been hunting you some time. A little cut, I suppose: never mind, my boy, you'll be better presently. Here's glorious sport on foot; don't you hear the war-cry?" At this moment a buzz of distant voices broke upon the ear like the mingled shouts of an election tumult. "There they are, old fellow: come, buckle on your armour—we must try your mettle to-night. All the university are out—a glorious row—come along, no shirking—-the togati against the town raff—remember ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... ye the captain sleepit whan he was at the castle?" he inquired across the buzz and whiz and hum of the wheel. Through the low window, betwixt the leaves of the many plants that shaded it, he could see the sun shining hot upon the bare street; but inside was soft gloom filled with ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... than an experienced business man might have contemplated with entire Christian resignation. The gazette, in the course of a few days, gave publicity to the smash of the house of Perkins, Ball & Co. There was a buzz "on 'change;" those losers by the smash were bitter in their denunciatory remarks, while those gaining by the transaction snickered in their sleeves and kept mum. Jenks heard all, and said nothing. He reasoned, that if the firm were smashed by imprudences, or through dishonest motives, they ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... closer together, and plunged into conversation. Elizabeth was left solitary a moment, behind the tea-things. The buzz of the room, the hearty laugh of the Lord Lieutenant, reached the outer ear. But every deeper sense was strained to catch a voice—a step—that must soon be here. And presently across the room, her eyes met her mother's, ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... charming nurses who, while they guard the children, amuse themselves! The pampas of America would please me if I had not the arcades of the Odeon. My soul flits away into the virgin forests and to the savannas. All is beautiful. The flies buzz in the sun. The sun has sneezed out the humming bird. Embrace ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... never shifted from the choir, where the priests slowly entered and took their places, the aged and feeble bishop going falteringly to his throne. Alixe's face was pale and sorrowful, and yet it had a dignity and self-reliance that gave it a kind of grandeur. A buzz passed through the building, yet I noted, too, with gladness that there were tears ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... not usually seen at receptions were attracted thither, I presume, from the fact that General Grant was expected to be there. He came about half-past nine. I was near the centre of the reception-room, when a stir and buzz attracted attention, and it was whispered that General Grant had arrived. The room was not full, the crowd having passed through to the East Room. I saw some men in uniform standing at the entrance, and one of them, a short, brown, dark-haired ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... "Buzz for the Bishop—here he comes!" quoted Brother Copas, and stood forth ready to deliver the Latin grace as the visitors found their ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... veritable gold-mine. Even so late as November, 1878, a Nottingham newspaper correspondent, on visiting Welbeck, was impressed with its appearance as that of the premises of "some great contractor who had an order for the building of a big village." There was the buzz of machinery, large areas were covered with bricklayers', masons' and joiners' sheds, wherein any new mechanical contrivance was put to the test. For more than eighteen years the vicinity of the house resembled ...
— The Portland Peerage Romance • Charles J. Archard
... insurmountable one. As he crossed the room some evil chance made him think of the gossip outside and of his allusion to the abstruse substance known as cacodyl. Once let a candidate's mind hit upon such an idea as this, and nothing will ever get it out of his thoughts. Tom felt his head buzz round, and he passed his hand over his forehead and through his curly yellow hair to steady himself. He felt a frenzied impulse as he sat down to inform the examiners that he knew very well what they ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to a hoss that ain't no more a hunter than that automobile,' I says, 'but can run like the buzz-wagon 'n' jump like a hunter—could you use him ...
— Blister Jones • John Taintor Foote
... not a very satisfactory explanation. I made no further inquiries, and we continued our way in silence until we arrived at the school door; there was a terrible buzz inside. Ben tapped, the door opened, and a volume of hot air burst forth, all the fresh air having been consumed in repeating the fresh lessons for the day. Ben walked up between the forms, and introduced me to the schoolmaster, whose name was Mr Thadeus O'Gallagher, ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... had done their work there was a little pause, succeeded by the slight buzz that spoke of expectation. "Miss Pynsent is going to play," Mrs. Murray said to Sydney, putting up her long-handled eyeglass and looking expectantly towards the grand piano. "Oh, now, we shall ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... and his drawer filled, Mrs Watson took him into the school-room, where the boys were at supper. Outside the door the buzz seemed prodigious, and Hugh hoped that, in such a bustle, nobody would notice him. Here he was quite mistaken. The moment he entered there was a hush, and all eyes were turned upon him, except his brother's. Phil ...
— The Crofton Boys • Harriet Martineau
... were entering the great hall. Before an immense open fireplace a group of people were gathered at tea. There was a general buzz of greeting as Cynthia entered. She was ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... greetings and enquiries, lit their pipes and strolled about together. It might have been a gathering for a horse-race or a game of hurling, but for the extreme orderliness of the throng and a note of strained expectancy in its buzz of talk; and the likeness was strengthened about nine o'clock, when, in the broad field to the south-west, half a dozen merchants began to erect their sweet-meat booths or "standings,"— always an accompaniment ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... its altars is kindled from the ashes of great men. Fame itself is immortal, but it is not begot till the breath of genius is extinguished. For fame is not popularity, the shout of the multitude, the idle buzz of fashion, the venal puff, the soothing flattery of favour or of friendship; but it is the spirit of a man surviving himself in the minds and thoughts of other men, undying and imperishable. It is the power which the intellect exercises over ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... with excitement and gladness; honey-eaters whistle and call; drongos chatter and scold the rest of the banqueters; the tiny sun-bird twitters feeble protests; bees and beetles maintain a murmurous soothful sound, a drowsy blending of hum and buzz from the rising of the sun until the ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... relative to the fire. The prospect fretted him—and it steeled his resolution to leave no stone unturned to bring the author of his troubles to book. Blast him! He'd learn that it was safer to monkey with a buzz-saw than with Simon Varr! ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... had good counsel.—A hundred knights! 'Tis politic and safe to let him keep At point a hundred knights: yes, that on every dream, Each buzz, each fancy, each complaint, dislike, He may enguard his dotage with their powers, And hold our ...
— The Tragedy of King Lear • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... her throat. Behind her on the projector a needle slammed into the red zone. Beyond the hundreds of long rows of couches a warning light flashed on the control console of Mezzanine F and its persistent buzz snared the attention of one of the ushers. He glanced at the light's location number and ran along one of the aisles till he came to the girl. He saw that the projector had shut off the feature feelie and ...
— The Premiere • Richard Sabia
... by a light that on a certain evening, every summer, rises a mile out at sea, drifts to a spot on shore, then whirls with a buzz and a glare to an old house, where it vanishes. Its first appearance was simultaneous with the departure of Jack Welch, a fisherman. He was seen one evening at work on his boat, but in the morning he was gone, nor has he since shown ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... stand aside to deliberate, there is a buzz and murmur among the people up above, and profound quiet below. Attention is divided between the gentlemen of the jury and Clifford Heath. The former are very much agitated. They look troubled, uneasy and uncomfortable. They gesticulate ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... everybody was anxious to embark under the standard of Oloffe the Dreamer, and to be among the first sharers of the promised land. A day was appointed for the grand migration, and on that day little Communipaw as in a buzz and a bustle like a hive in swarming time. Houses were turned inside out, and stripped of the venerable furniture which had come from Holland; all the community, great and small, black and white, man, woman, and child, was in commotion, forming lines from the houses to the water ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... they had been getting from Government and private speculators, saying, "What's thirty cents a day in these times for a man who has to maintain himself and his family?" (Great sensation among negroes, and a buzz, with mutterings of "that's so," etc.). Then a paymaster made a spread-eagle speech. Then Colonel Ellwell was called out by Mr. French. Then Judge Smith mounted the pulpit and explained to the negroes the meaning of preemption, how ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... chose to do in her room rather than in her favorite spot in the garden. She closed the shutters on the sunny side and sat down by the window nearest the garden, peculiarly sensible of the soft light and cool spaciousness of an inner world. The occasional buzz of a bee, the flutter of the leaves of the poplar, might have been the voice of the outer world in Southern Spain or Southern Italy, or anywhere else where ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... wondered that the clamor was not more loud and tremendous." He remembered that "one hundred and forty-six supernumerary officers were brushed off in one day, who had long been sucking the vital blood and spirit of the nation. Was it to be wondered at, if this swarm should raise a buzz about him?" Gerry fought on almost singlehanded, but he could not refute the evidence that he had invited. He lost his temper and resorted to sarcasm. If a single head of the Treasury was so desirable, why not "have a single legislator; one ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... that share the exile of the eating-houses sometimes make together a feeble buzz of conversation, but the unfriendly spirit of the place seems soon to silence them. Undoubtedly they frequent the restaurant for economy's sake. Fuel is costly, and the restaurant is cheap, and its cooking better than they could perhaps otherwise afford to have. Indeed, ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... for a few hogs rooting among the refuse heaps piled in front of the stores. It was not a pleasant sight, and it repelled Peter all the more because he was accustomed to the antiseptic look of a Northern city. He walked up to the third door from the corner, when a buzz of voices brought him to a standstill and finally persuaded ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... There was a renewed buzz of conversation at the table and the senior AEC man present got heads together with the senior intelligence man. They conferred briefly and then the ...
— A Filbert Is a Nut • Rick Raphael
... "ruffiani," mingled with foreigners who had come from the hotels and from the ships in the harbor, and whose demeanor was partly curious and partly suspicious, as of one who longs to probe the psychology of a thief while safely guarding his pockets. The buzz of voices, the tramp of feet, gained a peculiar and vivid sonorousness from the high and vaulted roof; and in the warm air, under the large and winking electric lights, the perpetually moving figures looked strangely capricious, ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... combat. We swayed, shoving, kicking, wrestling. His hold around my middle shut off the Erentz circulation; the warning buzz rang in my ears to mingle with the rasp of his curses. I flung him off, and my tiny Erentz motors recovered. He staggered away, but in a great leap came at ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... past, the by-gone past. The breeze that passes through the open window and fans the brow, might be mistaken for the same playful zephyr that sported with our own silken locks in childhood, as we stood before this same open window. The monotonous hum of the school-room seems the same and the drowsy buzz of the summer fly as it floats on azure wings brings to the ear a well remembered sound, and we press our hand tightly upon our eyes and try to think we are living over again years that are passed. It will not do, there is a change—we must acknowledge that change. The teacher who so long ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... sunken eyes never left his, watching, wistful, patient. And at last the boy bent forward and rested his elbows on his knees and dropped his face in both hands. Time ebbed away in silence; there was no sound in the ward save the blue flies' buzz or the slight movement of some wounded man ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... seated himself the silence was again broken by a rising buzz of conversation. This was proving really a very interesting show, this trial. It must go on yet a ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... forgotten in this struggle for the common preservation, and above the buzz of general intense discussion there rose always the voice of some speaker with ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... appearance as he stood at the Bar. Members, at first disposed to regard the whole matter as a joke, cheered Maclure when he came in at a half-trot; laughed when the Bar pulled out, difficulty arose about making both ends meet . . . Bursts of laughter and buzz of conversation in all parts of the House; general aspect more like appearance at theatre on Boxing Night, when audience waits for curtain to rise on new pantomime. Only the Speaker grave, even solemn; his voice ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... In the midst of her teaching, and preparations for her wedding, she had planned a lovely dress for Maria. It was unquestionable but the realization of her own loveliness, and her new attire had an alleviating influence upon Maria. There was a faint buzz of admiration for her when she entered the church. She looked as if enveloped in a soft gray cloud. Ida had planned a dress of some gray stuff, and a soft gray hat, tied under her chin with wide ribbons, and a long gray plume ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the fact, and permit them to appear in the robes of maturity. About that time the young males of the neighbourhood became aware, each in his private heart, of an adoration cherished for one or other of the beautiful twins from early boyhood. Would-be lovers began to buzz about like flies when fruit ripens. If any one of these youths had any doubt about the intensity and immutability of his passion, it vanished when the girls announced official womanhood by appearing at church in the costume of their seniors. Some students ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... the attention of the House for the remainder of the afternoon, and when the Speaker rose to retire a buzz of conversation ensued on the stirring topics to be brought up at the evening's sitting. Two of these topics related to matters which, at the period, convulsed the community, and threatened to overthrow the fabric of society in the colony, if not the Constitution itself. One was the case of ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... past the sound of its progress resolved into three. Treble, tenor, and bass notes were to be found therein. The general ricochet of the whole over pits and prominences had the gravest pitch of the chime. Next there could be heard the baritone buzz of a holly tree. Below these in force, above them in pitch, a dwindled voice strove hard at a husky tune, which was the peculiar local sound alluded to. Thinner and less immediately traceable than the other two, it was far more ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... at about 7.30 o'clock on the range, after having fired my practice shots to make my sighting sure, and now with time to wait before my rapid-fire test. Imagine the usual confusion, the heavy rapping of the shots, the calling over of names, and the buzz and laughter of the men waiting near me. A perfect morning, the dew just burning off, a little breeze from the lake, and not a ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... she had taken off her crown, and it was lying on the top of a lovely red mushroom. I poked the mushroom with my parasol, and instantly felt on my face a faint puff of air, and heard a hum no louder than the buzz of an ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... was satisfied, then began the buzz of conversation to arise, then the gleemen tuned their harps to sing the praises of Norman warriors; nor did the toasts linger, nor was the drinking ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... please hold on. I can convince you—[a loud buzz-uzz-uzz]. Engaged! Who is she calling up now? [Represses the button and calls] The Chief Secretary. Say I want to see him again, just ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... and winning big ever's going to suit me. I saw that when I was awful young. I sort of looked out on life and it seemed to me that most people spent their lives like flies, flying around a while without any purpose, trying to buzz in the sun if they could, and by and by dropping off the ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... Spelling Bee has never wholly died out in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Each year readers of certain small-town papers will find numerous news-titles headed something like this: "The Bees Will Buzz," and under them an urgent invitation to attend a Spelling Bee at a certain rural schoolhouse. "A Good Time Promised"—"Classes for All"—"Come One, Come All"—the advertisements never fail. Many persons ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... The same buzz of excitement as before, while the judges take notes, the same throbbing of music through the din; but something is different. A little crowd presses close about some object, near the column. Carl has ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... domestic appointments were to her husband's mind. He was sensitive to degrees of heat and cold, and luxurious in the matter of lighting, and he had a fine nose for plumbing. If he had not occupied himself so much with these details, he was the sort of man to have thought Mrs. Pasmer, with her buzz of activities and pretences, rather a tedious little woman. He had some delicate tastes, if not refined interests, and was expensively fond of certain sorts of bric-a-brac: he spent a great deal of time in packing ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the ironmasters are standing out in the street (where they always hold high change), making such an iron hum and buzz, that they confuse me horribly. In addition, there is a bellman announcing something—not the readings, I beg to say—and there is an excavation being made in the centre of the open place, for a statue, or a pump, or a lamp-post, or something ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... twenty-six. He placed the maximum on twenty-nine, the carres, chevaux, the column, colour and last dozen. He felt Violet's fingers clutching his arm. There was a little buzz of excitement all round the table as the ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... in which you may hear the sound of the wheels of machinery and the buzz of business, they tell us that should the Lord suddenly come it would paralyze all industry, put an end to commerce and to trade, overthrow all progress, make worthless every high endeavour for the ...
— Why I Preach the Second Coming • Isaac Massey Haldeman
... suddenly goes out like a candle; all lights are put out and the street suddenly empty. After that, at intervals, only motorcyclists buzz through and regiments tramp past going back to billets. They sound more warlike than anything. Such a lot are ...
— Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front, 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... dado carrying wires safely embedded in a non-conducting substance, or in the form of a carpet threaded with conducting wire. Both heating and cooling apparatus could be installed in the shape of a motor to replace the punkah man and the present buzz-wheel fan, and to give fresh air without the opening of windows which leads to half our housekeeping miseries. O woman, how can you resist the thought of a clean, cool house, sans dust, sans flies and mosquitoes, sans the intolerable street-noise, with abundance of fresh filtered air at the ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards
... as I've heard say, Said to their Queen one sultry day, "Please your Majesty's high position, The hive is full and the weather is warm, We rather think, with a due submission, The time has come when we ought to swarm." Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz. Up spake their Queen and thus spake she - "This is a matter that rests with me, Who dares opinions thus to form? I'LL tell you when it is time to ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... the story of another, and a more successful special train than Adair's. No sooner was the care-free young director safely on his way to meet the delays so painstakingly prearranged for him than the wires began to buzz with a cipher message of warning to Penfield. A precious half-hour was lost in ascertaining that the wire connection to the end-of-track was temporarily out of commission; but during that half-hour Mr. North had held his chin in his hand to ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... and thought which Hegel terms metaphysics, which by preference busied themselves by enquiring into things as given and established quantities, and the vestiges of which still buzz in the heads of people, had at that time great historical justification. Things had first to be examined, before it was possible to examine processes; man must first know what a thing was before he could examine the preceding changes in it. And so it ...
— Feuerbach: The roots of the socialist philosophy • Frederick Engels
... suddenly as though some great impulse had come to him and hurry into the cloakroom. He inherited the chairmanship of the railroad committee, and all employees came to him for their railroad passes; so he was the god of the blue-bottle flies of politics that feed on legislatures, and buzz pompously about the capitol doing nothing, at three dollars a day. In that session Handy was for the "peepul." He patronised the State Shippers' Association, and told their committee that he would give ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... the amazing part of the story. The doors to the offices on both sides were open at the time. There were lots of people in each office. There was the usual click of typewriters, and the buzz of the ticker, and the hum of conversation. We have any number of witnesses of the whole affair, but as far as any of them knows no shot was fired, no smoke was seen, no noise was heard, nor was any weapon ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... loud buzz of conversation when the court adjourned. After asking Chippenfield and Rolfe to wait for him, Crewe made his way to Mr. Walters, and, after a few whispered words with that gentleman, Mr. Mathers, his junior, and Mr. Salter, ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... as you do, though they do not study in just the same way. You would be surprised if you were to step into a Korean schoolroom. All the boys sit upon the floor with their legs curled up beneath them. Instead of the quiet, silent scholars, you would hear a loud and deafening buzz. All the pupils study out loud. They not only do their studying aloud, but they talk very loud, as if each one were trying to make ...
— Our Little Korean Cousin • H. Lee M. Pike
... prayed so wildly, so passionately in his soul now. It was only a step further—just another one—and the police, coming out of the Mole's, had not reached the gate yet. Just another step—and then a bullet, straying from the fight down there along the lane, drummed past his ear in an angry buzz—and the form beside him lurched heavily, stumbled, and pitched forward. And, with a low, broken cry, Jimmie Dale swung out a supporting arm, and pushing the shed door open with his elbow, gained the interior, and lowered ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... military science, and a series of guerilla skirmishes, wherein all the chances are with the alert and light-armed enemy. Any personage who goes to war with boys is bound to be beaten, for he may threaten and attack, but he can hardly ever hurt them, and never possibly can conquer them; and they will buzz round him like wasps, will sting him and then be off, will put him to shame before the public, will tease him on his most sensitive side, will lie in wait for him in unexpected places with an ingenuity ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... Monedula signata,—as large as a hornet, is particularly useful in carrying off the teasing flies, the bloodthirsty motucas, which buzz round the voyager on the Amazon when at anchor near a sand-bank. Bates was rather startled by seeing one fly directly at his face, on which it had espied a motuca, and which it carried off, holding it tightly to ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... Welbury, when this piece of news was fairly in circulation in the town, could be compared to nothing but the buzz of a bee hive at swarming time. A letter which was received by the Littles, a few days later, from Dr. Williams himself, did not at first allay the buzzing. He wrote, simply: "You will be much surprised ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... himself together with a sharp effort and entered into the conversation that had begun again to buzz round him. Moreover, he entered into it with keen pleasure, for the Brothers—there were perhaps a dozen of them in the little room—treated him with a charm of manner that speedily made him feel one of themselves. This, again, was a very subtle delight to him. He felt that he ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... pretty well—Carlis and Paddington and their crew—for when I stepped out of the express elevator, there was no one in sight that I remember but the boy who was with me. I pressed the button of the local, which was just beside the express—there was a buzz and whirring hum as if the elevator had ascended, and the door opened. As I stepped over its threshold, I felt a violent blow and terrific pain on the back of my head, and seemed to fall into limitless space. That was all I knew until I woke up in the hospital where Mr. Blaine had taken me after ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... theatrical pieces, the anecdotes of the day, which form the common talk among all the idlers of the capital, must furnish them with subjects in working up which little delay can be brooked. These vaudevilles are like the gnats that buzz about in a summer evening; they often sting, but they fly merrily about so long as the sun of opportunity shines upon them. A piece like the Despair of Jocrisse, which, after a lapse of years, may be still occasionally ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... in the afternoon, and I was trying to decide what would be the best time to visit the Armat house. The monkeys had not ceased to worry me dreadfully, and I had begun to think that when bees buzz around their hives they must certainly say something interesting to each other. Then a note was brought to me from Mary. I tore it ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... of these Provinces, and oblige to your service the well-affected people, who know that there is no surety for themselves, their wives and children, but under the protection of your Majesty's favour. Perhaps, however, the favourers of Vorstius and Arminius will buzz into the ears of their associates that your Majesty would make a party in these Provinces by maintaining the truth of religion and also by gaining unto you the affections of their chief commander. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... sounded the signal for release from the day's toil. The workers in the factory, a small army of men and women, boys and girls, poured forth from the doorways of the huge buildings, swarmed up the street, laughing and chattering, and dispersed to their several homes. The buzz and jarring of the machinery have ceased and silence fills the place. Even the offices are deserted, with the exception of one from which issues the steady ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... murmur soft Its evening psalms, when fragrant lilies Pointed up the way her Christ had gone, God called the wife and mother home, And bade him wait. Oh! why is it so hard for Man to wait? to sit with folded hands, Apart, amid the busy throng, And hear the buzz and hum of toil around; To see men reap and bind the golden sheaves Of earthly fruits, while he looks idly on, And knows he may not join, But only wait till God has said, "Enough!" ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... of priests that I found in the church, and I have wondered painfully ever since how so many came to be in a little place like Giromagny. There were three priests at the high altar, and nearly one for each chapel, and there was such a buzz of Masses going on, beginning and ending, that I am sure I need not have gone without my breakfast in my hurry to get one. With all this there were few people at Mass so early; nothing but these priests going in and out, and continual little bells. I am still ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... difficult, but between the louder explosions Peter concentrated his senses on listening. In a minute he heard something new, a faint buzz ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... colored editor make the experiment and tell afterward what happened to him hot on the heels of his article. He may not be able to enlighten the public but the associated press dispatch will give the grim facts relating to the end of that editor, who undertook to monkey with the buzz saw of the freedom of the press in a ...
— The Ballotless Victim of One-Party Governments - The American Negro Academy, Occasional Papers No. 16 • Archibald H. Grimke
... was in a traveling suit, but Rose was radiant in robe and train and orange wreath, and a buzz of admiration at her exquisite beauty followed her all the way to ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... plagues of Egypt were a joke to it. We spend our lives in murdering hecatombs of creeping and jumping things, and vehemently slapping our own faces with intent to kill the flying ones that incessantly buzz about one. It is rather a deplorable existence, and reminds me of one of the most unpleasant circles in Dante's "Hell," which I don't think could have been much worse. My father began his work on Monday last with ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... nose-breadth escape. If a hundredth part of the providential deliverances told in Ladysmith were true, it was a miracle that anybody in the place was alive after the first quarter of an hour. A day of this and you are a nerveless semi-corpse, twitching at a fly-buzz, a misery to yourself and a ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... do plainly see This busy world and I shall ne'er agree. The very honey of all earthly joy Does of all meats the soonest cloy; And they, methinks, deserve my pity Who for it can endure the stings, The crowd and buzz and murmurings, Of this ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... length of time. At the end of these reflections I fell back, wondering, again asking if I were really destined to watch by my mother's death-bed. That day I seemed to become a sheer mentality, a sort of buzz of thought, and I could think of myself only as of a fly climbing a glass dome. It seemed to me that I was like a fly climbing and falling back, buzzing, and climbing again. "Never," I said to myself, "have I been more than ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... quotes the Finance Minister, taking another look out of the window at the War Cloud. "'Money comes from the Soil,'" and he push-buttons a buzz-bell over ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... morning there was a buzz of excitement in the Doane home for old ladies. Word had got around that Drusilla had been left a fortune and was going away. Some of the ladies were plainly envious and said spiteful, catty things, while others were glad that at least one of their number would be able to leave behind the "home"—the ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper
... the place abounded with rattlesnakes—the rattlesnakes' nest, it might have been named. Wherever we brushed among the bushes, our passage woke their angry buzz. One dwelt habitually in the wood-pile, and sometimes, when we came for firewood, thrust up his small head between two logs, and hissed at the intrusion. The rattle has a legendary credit; it is said to be awe-inspiring, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... has ever slept in that house, or taken bite or sup in it for at least twenty years. And as for his behaviour to everybody round about—well, I can tell you all about that whenever you want to know! However, now they've stormed him—they've smoked him out like a wasp's nest. My goodness—he did buzz! Undershaw found a man badly hurt, lying on the road by the bridge—bicycle accident—run over too, I believe—and carried him into the Tower, willy-nilly!" The speaker chuckled. "Melrose was away. Old Dixon said they ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... bright and early the following morning but, for the first hour, failed to hook any of the fish that struck. Then the hook was snatched and instantly a silver, twisting body shot ten feet up in the air. As it fell back in the water, the reel began to buzz and Ned's fingers were burned where the line touched them. Again and again the great fish leaped high in the air, while the line ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... ewes for his beauty. A year later, when Jesus came down from the hills, he was met with cries of: how fares it with Caesar? Does he tire on the hills? When will the ewes begin to drop their lambs? A buzz of talk began at once in the cenoby when the news arrived that Caesar's lambs were appearing, but the brethren could not conceal their disappointment that they should look like the lambs they had seen before. We expected the ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... they built it, high into the air. And now they use this building built by them. The sky scraper houses an army of ten thousand men. All day they clamber up and down its core like insects in a giant tree. They buzz and buzz, ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... been bidden to the party who had not yet arrived, and Helen Dayton could not refrain from occasionally glancing toward the door, with the hope of seeing the delinquent. The buzz of conversation and light laughter seemed at its height, when ...
— Randy and Her Friends • Amy Brooks
... among them of that enemy of all repose and ruffler of even tempers—the Mosquito. At the Sandwich Islands and at two or three of the Society group, there are now thriving colonies of these insects, who promise ere long to supplant altogether the aboriginal sand-flies. They sting, buzz, and torment, from one end of the year to the other, and by incessantly exasperating the natives materially obstruct the ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... that Claudia could read those verses to the end, their import—to me, at least—was so obvious. But Ideala continued unmoved; and when the little buzz of friendly criticism had subsided, she remarked, with ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... know I feel as if I'd been monkeying with a buzz-saw," same [Transcriber's note: ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... stirring; there is not a merciful shred of cloud in all the brilliant firmament; there is not a living creature visible in any direction whither one searches the blank level that stretches its monotonous miles on every hand; there is not a sound, not a sigh, not a whisper, not a buzz, or a whir of wings, or distant pipe of bird; not even a sob from the lost souls that ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... little alcove, or reception room and Craig placed a chair for her. Farther down the corridor I could see the office, and beyond a large main dining-room from which strains of music came and now and then the buzz of conversation and laughter from gay parties ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... her sitting there and turned away. Migul slid the door open, letting in the hum and buzz of the machinery outside. But I saw that the attending Robots had all vanished. There was no ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... entered into a lively little war of words with a yellow-haired young person near the door. Anna picked up an ancient magazine, and began to turn over the pages in a leisurely way. The conversation which her entrance had interrupted began to buzz again all around her. A quarter of an hour passed. Then the inner door opened abruptly. A tall, clean-shaven man came out and walked rapidly through the room, exchanging greetings right and left, but evidently anxious to avoid being detained. Mr. Earles himself stood upon the threshold ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... his expense, and, finally, after you have romped and dallied with him through his many happy excursions you will close the book with a feeling that it has done you good to have known him, lazy and blundering though he is, for he is indeed the best natured fellow, and he is so anxious to buzz into everything that attracts his attention that you find you have learned a great many things you never before dreamed of about the ...
— The Tale of Cuffy Bear • Arthur Scott Bailey
... accompanied them to the depot, West having a golf engagement which he could not break. And when good-by had been said, and the long train had disappeared from sight, Joel returned to college on foot, over the long bridge spanning the river, busy with craft, past the factories noisy with the buzz of wheels and the clang of iron, and on along the far-stretching avenue until the tower of the dining hall loomed above the tops of the autumn branches, entering the yard just as the two ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... the clamor was not more loud and tremendous." He remembered that "one hundred and forty-six supernumerary officers were brushed off in one day, who had long been sucking the vital blood and spirit of the nation. Was it to be wondered at, if this swarm should raise a buzz about him?" Gerry fought on almost singlehanded, but he could not refute the evidence that he had invited. He lost his temper and resorted to sarcasm. If a single head of the Treasury was so desirable, why not "have a single legislator; one man to make all ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... through the crowd like a pile-driver, and Frona followed easily in the lee of his bulk. The tenderfeet watched them reverently, for to them they were as Northland divinities. The buzz of ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... end, is a trio on the 'chamecen', long and monotonous, that the geishas perform as a rapid pizzicato on the highest strings, very sharply struck. It sounds like the very quintessence, the paraphrase, the exasperation, if I may so call it, of the eternal buzz of insects, which issues from the trees, old roofs, old walls, from everything in fact, and which is the foundation of ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... buzz of comment that Miss Cramp looked up again. Julia Semple had seemed half stunned for the moment. Then she wheeled on Ruth and said, ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... the new scoutmaster, and they spoke together quietly, while a buzz of excited talk rose among the scouts. Who would be honored by the first chance? Every scout there wanted to ...
— Facing the German Foe • Colonel James Fiske
... the flies buzz as in June; the country has become again, for a few hours, for a few days, for as long as this wind will blow, luminous and warm. In front of the mountains, which have assumed violent brown or sombre ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... no particular reason distinguishable from the others, Mrs. Burkhardt stepped up two shallow steps and turned a key in the center of the door, which set up a buzz on its reverse side. Her hand, where it clutched the shawl at her throat, was reddening and roughening, the knuckles pushing up high and white. Waiting, she turned her back to the wind, her ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... were asked the peculiar characteristic of a New-Yorker's speech, I should say monotone. Notice any one of our young men—you will find his conversational voice pitched in the same key. Sumner goes on at the same uniform growl, Edwards in an unvaried buzz. When I first landed in England, I was struck with the much greater variety of tone one hears in ordinary conversation. Your women, especially, seemed to me always just going to sing. And I fancied the address of the men ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... program buzzes for about 10 seconds trying to sort all the names into order." See {spin}; see also {grovel}. 2. [ETA Systems] To test a wire or printed circuit trace for continuity by applying an AC rather than DC signal. Some wire faults will pass DC tests but fail a buzz test. 3. To process an array or list in sequence, doing the same thing to each element. "This loop buzzes through the tz array looking for ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... etc., as persons expected or invited to be at the convention. The papers said: "This is one of Sam's shabbiest tricks. Not one of these persons will be present, and he knows it," etc., etc. Our arrival set a buzz going, and when I announced you and Susan and Aunt Fanny for the fall, they began to say "they guessed the thing would carry." Gov. Robinson said he could not go to the Topeka Convention, for he had a lawsuit involving ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... the lobby, where a greater excitement and buzz of talk than usual went on. Where was Dr. Svensen? The other members of the Norwegian delegation could throw no light on the question. He had dined last night at the Beau Rivage, with the British delegation; ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... crabs would write in copy-books, Such crawly, scrawly letters; The bees would have a spelling-bee And buzz among their betters; And monkeys chatter French and squeak In Greek the live-long day, To scare the class of infant lambs, Who only ...
— Zodiac Town - The Rhymes of Amos and Ann • Nancy Byrd Turner
... Sunday and we lived precarious lives in holes in the ground. Our Brigadier, a conscientious soldier of the old school, was dodging round our line of trenches, and had just reached the sector allotted to my company, which was also Gilbert's, when the distant buzz that generally means an aeroplane overhead made ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 14, 1917 • Various
... called him by name with a laugh of joy; and some turned to watch him in curiosity. It was easy to pick the wounded from those who shared in his victory, and from those who knew the frenzied finance buzz-saw only by its buzz. Bob saw none. Where could he be going? He came to the head of the street of coin and crime and crossed Broadway. His path was blocked by the fence surrounding old Trinity's churchyard. Grasping the pickets in either hand he stared at the crumbling headstones of those ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... been complimented with a buzz and an attempt to sting from my old friend S. B. Brittan, the ex-Universalist minister—the very surprisingly efficient "man Friday" of Andrew Jackson Davis, in the production of the "Revelations" of the said Davis, and also ghost-fancier ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... some evil chance made him think of the gossip outside and of his allusion to the abstruse substance known as cacodyl. Once let a candidate's mind hit upon such an idea as this, and nothing will ever get it out of his thoughts. Tom felt his head buzz round, and he passed his hand over his forehead and through his curly yellow hair to steady himself. He felt a frenzied impulse as he sat down to inform the examiners that he knew very well what they were going to ask him, and that it was ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... though a doctor of divinity, he was as reluctant as other men to be found wanting in address by a pretty woman. So he rang the bell, and bade the servant send Master Cashel Byron. Presently a door was heard to open below, and a buzz of distant voices became audible. The doctor fidgeted and tried to think of something to say, but his invention failed him: he sat in silence while the inarticulate buzz rose into a shouting of "By-ron!" "Cash!" the latter cry imitated from the summons usually ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... reminds me of the feeling you get under your belt seven minutes after you've sipped an absinthe frappe for the first time—you are liable for a good jag and don't know it," he continued enthusiastically. "Let's don't let the folks know that they are off until I get everybody in a full swing of buzz over my queen." I had never seen Tom so enthusiastic over a girl before and I didn't like it. But I decided not to let him know that, but to get to work putting out the Chester blaze in him and starting one on my ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess
... the black night. 'Maritime Calais' is left to well-earned repose; but for an hour or so only, until the returning mail arrives, when it will wake up again—a troubled and troublous nightmare sort of existence. Now for a plunge into Cimmerian night, with that dull, sustained buzz outside, as of some gigantic machinery whirling round, which seems a sort of lullaby, contrived mercifully to make the traveller drowsy and enwrap him in gentle sleep. Railway sleeping is, after all, a not unrefreshing form of slumber. There is the grateful 'nod, nod, ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... satisfied, then began the buzz of conversation to arise, then the gleemen tuned their harps to sing the praises of Norman warriors; nor did the toasts linger, nor was the drinking of ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... practice of joining us at family worship." It did not appear the thing was visible, and, like other spirits raised nearer home in these degenerate days, it was rudely ignorant, at first could only buzz, and had only learned of late to bear a part correctly in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... having carefully avoided contact with Buncombe or Mrs Handover, made an effort to absorb himself in a volume of Gregorovius, which was at present his study. The attempt was futile. Talk still seemed to buzz about him; his temples throbbed; his thoughts wandered far and wide. Driven to bed long before his accustomed hour, he heard raucous voices rending the night, bellowing in hideous antiphony from this side of the street ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... A whisper and buzz went around the courtroom when Howkan finished interpreting the affair of the canoe, and one man's voice spoke up: "That was the lost '91 mail, Peter James and Delaney bringing it in and last spoken at Le Barge by Matthews going ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... million gauze-winged creatures of night hummed against the screen, in a voice soft and low he told her in a steady stream, as he swayed her back and forth, what each sound of the night was, and how and why it was made all the way from the rumbling buzz of the June bug to the screech of the owl and the splash of the bass in the lake. All of it, as it appealed to him, was the story of steady evolution, the natural processes of reproduction, the joy of life and its battles, and the conquest ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... there, and I was watching an engine and truck going down with a white-flag flying, bringing back poor Colonel Chisholme's body for burial. Suddenly on the left from the top of a mountain side beyond a long rocky ridge I saw the orange flash of a big gun. The next moment came the familiar buzz and scream of a great shell, the crash, the squealing fragments, the dust splashing up all round us as they fell. I have never seen men and horses gallop faster than in our rapid right-wheel over the open ground towards a Kaffir kraal. I ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... With the energy of malevolence, she stammered: "There wasn't no records—there wasn't no family Bible! it's all a lie—you hear me! Your Atherly that you're so proud of was just a British bummer who was kicked outer his family in England and sent to buzz round in Americky. He honey-fogled me—Sally Magregor—out of a better family than his'n, in Kansas, and skyugled me away, but it was a straight out marriage, and I kin prove it. It was in the St. Louis papers, ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... starboard bow I saw the dim bulk and the masthead lights of a steamer approaching us. The other passengers had observed it, too, and there was a buzz of anticipation on the slanting deck. Only the inimical man opposite to me seemed to ignore the stir. He did not even turn round to look at the object which had aroused the general excitement. His eyes ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... by the incessant wing-beat of the bat, the jump of the locust, nor the buzz of the wasp, but carries it easily in any direction. It has the further merit of a music neither sullen as with the gnat kind, deep as with the bee, nor grim and threatening as with the wasp; it is as much more tuneful than they as the flute is ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... bazaar before returning, so I wish you a very happy good-night." There was a gleam of his white teeth in the lamplight, and then his long, dark petticoats, his short English cover-coat, and his red tarboosh vanished successively down the ladder. The low buzz of conversation which had been suspended by his coming ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... was opened no more than was necessary for the passage of a human body; and there entered at the same moment a louder buzz of talk, and the redoubtable President of the Suicide Club. The President was a man of fifty or upwards; large and rambling in his gait, with shaggy side whiskers, a bald top to his head, and a veiled grey eye, which now and then emitted a twinkle. His mouth, ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... your eyes and sleep.... Everything is so nice, poetic, and warm, you understand; there are no children squealing behind the wall, and you've got rid of your wife, and your conscience is clear—what more can you want? You fall asleep—and suddenly... you hear a buzz!... Gnats! [Jumps up] Gnats! Be they triply accursed Gnats! [Shakes his fist] Gnats! It's one of the plagues of Egypt, one of the tortures of the Inquisition! Buzz! It sounds so pitiful, so pathetic, as if it's begging your pardon, but the villain ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov
... impossible. The undergrowth crowded us into single file. We scarcely exchanged another word until our horses came abreast in the creek and stopped to drink. Conditions beyond were much the same until near the end of our detour, when my horse swerved abruptly and the buzz of a rattlesnake sounded almost under foot. The mare swerved, too, and hurried forward to ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... Emperor, who heard all this, could not sleep all night long, even when it grew so still that one might have heard a fly buzz; he waited for ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various
... going to. Back to headquarters an' report an' me for my motor-bike. Mr. Newton mebbe can get a car in Buffalo Center an' mebbe he can't; but no heavy old buzz-wagon can get where my ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo
... the meaning of his conduct, said quietly to him, "I am not come here to-day to hinder or make game, but to ask pardon." The other looked at him in amazement, and for a moment knew not what to say. Then, while there arose a strange buzz of surprise and excitement among the bystanders, Walter asked, "May I stand in your place for a minute, and say a few words to these people?" The good man was clearly taken quite aback by this request, ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... uninterrupted buzz fills the air; it comes from the cicadas whose monotonous note wearies the ear, and from hornets and bees of every description that keep up an incessant hum as they suck Juices from the plants or dive their antennae into the ripe fruit or perhaps into some carrion lying near. ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... it again and again, of course, even if we have never stirred from home; but that is only a reason the more for catching at any freshness that may be left in the world of photography. It is in Venice above all that we hear the small buzz of this vulgarising voice of the familiar; yet perhaps it is in Venice too that the picturesque fact has best mastered the pious secret of how to wait for us. Even the classic Salute waits like some great lady on the threshold of her saloon. She is ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... no one was dancing, and for one fleeting moment, every one, or nearly every one, seemed to have ceased talking. Into this strange silence, through the open windows, there floated the clear call of the whippoorwill,—only one, for the buzz and clamor and clatter of many voices surged up again instantly, and the violins began to scrape and screech themselves into tune, and no one seemed to have noticed either the silence or the whippoorwill. But I could not for ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... day in August she received a letter from her mother telling her to come at once if she "would see sister before she died." At noon that day when sickened by the hot air of the cafe, and when the clatter of dishes, the buzz of conversation, the orders shouted through the slide seemed but a hideous accompaniment to her tormented thoughts, she was suddenly startled by hearing the name of her native town, and realized that one of her regular patrons was saying to her that he meant to take ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... and hurried up to his friend's room. In a minute the wireless was buzzing and presently, back came the answering buzz. Georgie sat ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... schoolroom you can tell when spring is here. How pleasant the air feels as it blows in through the window! It seems to kiss us with its warm breath. You can hear the birds chirping as if they were happy. Perhaps a bee will buzz into the room. Many of the children will bring to school the dainty little spring flowers, anemones, blood ...
— Where We Live - A Home Geography • Emilie Van Beil Jacobs
... was a moment's hush in the room. Jim watched the patch of blue with unseeing eyes. As Uncle Denny started back to his seat there rose an angry buzz, but the Secretary raised ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... to zay as there wur no bwones bruk—ugh, ugh," put in Simon, who spoke his native tongue with a buzz, imported from farther west, "but a couldn't zay wether or no there warn't som ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... and walrus whiskers that emitted a rasping Bueno after every play. There was talk of Paris and possible new volumes of verse, homage to Walt Whitman, Maragall, questioning about Emily Dickinson. About us was a smell of old horsehair sofas, a buzz of the poignant musty ennui of old towns left centuries ago high and dry on the beach of history. The group grew. Talk of painting: Zuloaga had not come yet, the Zubiaurre brothers had abandoned their Basque coast towns, ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... Captain Keymis admitted a private interview between Cobham and Raleigh during Count Aremberg's stay in London, were then read. In the discussion on these documents the court and the prisoner fell to actual wrangling; in the buzz of voices it was hard to tell what was said, until a certain impression was at last made by Coke, who screamed out that Raleigh 'had a Spanish heart and was a spider of hell.' This produced a lull, and thereupon followed an irrelevant dispute as to whether or no Raleigh had once had in his possession ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... started, left the station twilight, plunged into the tunnel of gloom and made the dip under the Hudson River. People felt their ears buzz and smother. Wise ones swallowed hard. The train came back to the surface and the sunlight, and ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... January 14th. On the same day, Gordon's name began once more to buzz along the wires in secret questions and answers to and from ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... fuel. You must be a steam-engine, and move some majestic fabric at the rate of thirty miles an hour along the broad waters of the nineteenth century. None of your pendulum machines for me! I should, to be sure, turn away my head if I should hear you tick, and mark the quarters of hours; but the buzz and whiz of a good large life-endangerer would be music to mine ears. Oh, no! sure there is no danger of your requiring to be set down quite on a level, kept in a still place, and wound up every eight days. Oh no, no! you are not one ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... began to arrive about nine o'clock, the ladies in large numbers, and the room was soon abreeze with a buzz of conversation and the rustle of gayly- colored ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... eery combat. We swayed, shoving, kicking, wrestling. His hold around my middle shut off the Erentz circulation; the warning buzz rang in my ears to mingle with the rasp of his curses. I flung him off, and my tiny Erentz motors recovered. He staggered away, but in a great leap ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... the first to awaken. He listened, but could hear no sound except the buzz of insects, and he knew, by the light which came in from the upper part of the entrance, that the sun was ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... the hall. Grodman had been honored with a seat on the platform, which was accessible by steps on the right and left, but he kept his eye on Denzil. The picture of the poor idealist hung on the wall behind Grodman's head, covered by its curtain of brown holland. There was a subdued buzz of excitement about the hall, which swelled into cheers every now and again as some gentleman known to fame or Bow took his place upon the platform. It was occupied by several local M. P.'s of varying politics, a number of other Parliamentary ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... along slowly; Shafto, doubled up in a cramped position on a machan, felt painfully stiff and was obliged to deny himself the comfort of a cigarette. There was no sound beyond the bleat of the victim—unwittingly summoning its executioner, the buzz of myriads of insects, the bass booming of frogs and the stealthy, mysterious movements of night birds and small animals. Then by degrees the moon waned and the stars faded—though the sky was still light. It was about three o'clock in the morning and Shafto was beginning to ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... an altogether uninteresting proceeding. And so the game went on, our guns coming into action in grand style. We got in for rather a warm rifle fire once; we galloped up, dismounted, and advanced to the top of a kopje which was covered with rather long grass. Buzz-buzz-buzz went the busy bullets seeking unwilling billets. They came very close there, snipping the grass tops close beside us. Here there were casualties in several of the other companies. One of our fellows ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... sat in the other room, talking to Jastro, a buzz of voices came from the hall through the thin pine panels of the door. All day long a sixty-mile gale had twisted the snow of the lane into whirling, fantastic columns and rattled the windows of Franco-Belgian Hall. But ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... shivered, and leant over the fire to breathe a drier air, bantering the ladies for their admiration, and declaring that Mrs. Ferrars had taken the moan of an imprisoned house-dog for the nightingale, which he disdainfully imitated with buzz, zizz, and guggle, assuring her she had had no loss; but he looked rather white and chilled. Sophy whispered something to her papa, who rang the bell, and ordered in wine and ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... clatter of dishes and a buzz of conversation, abounding in rough jests and repartee. The boys took their part in frank, good fellowship and were hearty in their praises of the hard riding they had seen that morning. The ranchmen deprecated ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... there I was at eight o'clock of a Wednesday evening in a restaurant full of the usual lights and buzz and glitter, among women in soft-hued gowns, and men in their hideous substitute for the same. Across the table sat my one-time guardian, dear old Peter Dunstan,—Dunny to me since the night when I first came ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... signata,—as large as a hornet, is particularly useful in carrying off the teasing flies, the bloodthirsty motucas, which buzz round the voyager on the Amazon when at anchor near a sand-bank. Bates was rather startled by seeing one fly directly at his face, on which it had espied a motuca, and which it carried off, holding ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... want that hank'cher, and you'd better believe—I want it quick. I found it, and I'm gwine to give it up; and you have got no right to jeppardy my life, if you are fool enough to resk your own stiff neck. Gim'me that hank'cher! Fantods is played out. I would ruther play leap frog over a buzz-saw than—than—pester and rile Marse Alfred, and have the ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... than back flitted the bevy of girls again into the study, until the small room was full to overflowing. It was like seeing a company of fat bumble-bees, their portly bodies resplendent in black and gold, buzz heavily out of a room, and a gay flight of pale-blue and lemon butterflies flit back in their places. All the daughters fell upon their father, Margaret, Bridget, Isabel, Sarah, Mary, and Susanna; there ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... cross the street. I heard something buzz like a bee, and then I took a long, pleasant ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... company, and then there was a buzz of secular talk, general rapture being expressed at the stolidness of Ezekiel's demeanor. Cups of tea were passed round by the lovely Leah, and the secrets of the paper bags were brought to light. Ephraim Phillips talked horses with Sam Levine, and old Hyams quarrelled ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... very cruel, dear Buzz," said little Hum; "let us take him to our Queen, and she will tell us how to show our anger for the wicked deeds he did. See how bitterly he weeps; be kind to him, he will not ...
— Flower Fables • Louisa May Alcott
... public interest in the course of affairs in Paris. Evidently the struggle had been much more savage than Ostrog had represented it. All the mechanisms were discoursing upon that topic, and the repetition of the people made the huge hive buzz with such phrases as "Lynched policemen," "Women burnt alive," "Fuzzy Wuzzy." "But does the Master allow such things?" asked a man near him. "Is this the beginning of the ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... their series of performances at Blankbury. The Chairman of the Banquet is a middle-aged Peer, who is a regular attendant at first nights, and occupies a subordinate office in the Ministry. The Guest of the Evening has not yet arrived. A buzz of conversation fills the air. The Secretary of the Banquet, an actor, is anxiously hurrying about with a list, on which ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 1, 1890 • Various
... smallest weight to any of the insinuations which it seems people have thought worth while to launch at some member or members of your government with respect to my mission.' Though Mr. Gladstone was never by any means unconscious of the hum and buzz of paltriness and malice that often surrounds conspicuous public men, nobody was ever more regally indifferent. Graham predicted that though Gladstone would always be the first man in the House of Commons, he would not again be what he was before the Ionian business. ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... members, unstrung his nerves, heart and frame fainted into weakness, a dew cold as death covered his temples, and his head fell wearily upon his breast—the walls, the floors, the ceilings, the men, the burning urns, danced, reeled, and tottered in wild confusion before him. The murmuring voices, the buzz of sound, the swell of the triumphant music, the strange words of the foreign bride, mingled and boomed like the roar of the sea in the ears of the swooning man—and so ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... Army seemed at stake. Had mere business, such as the voting of over L50,000,000 for upkeep of Navy, been to the fore, benches would have been half empty. As it was, they were thronged. Over the crowded assembly hurtled that indescribable buzz of excitement that presages eventful action. The PREMIER and LEADER OF OPPOSITION appearing on the scene were severally greeted with strident cheers from their followers. PRINCE ARTHUR, the Dropped Pilot, at urgent entreaty returning to the old ship in time of emergency, enjoyed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 1, 1914 • Various
... throw more emotion into his singing than his acting), while, although it was after dinner, the room was hushed until the last notes had died away, and when he rose at length with a laughing plea of exhaustion, he was instantly surrounded by a buzz of genuine gratitude. Mark heard all this, and the last remnants of his dislike and distrust vanished; it seemed impossible that this man, with the sympathetic voice, and the personal charm which was felt by most of those present, could be capable of finding pleasure in working on a child's terrors. ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... rascals, that owe more to laundresses and seamsters for laced linen than all their race from their great grand-father to this their reign, in clothes were ever worth. These excrements of silk worms! Oh that such flies do buzz about the beams of Majesty, like earwigs tickling a King's yielding ear with that court-organ, flattery, when a soldier must not come near the court gates twenty score, but stand for want of clothes, though he win towns, amongst the almsbasket-men! ...
— The Noble Spanish Soldier • Thomas Dekker
... sank within me on the following forenoon, when Sandy Whamond walked, with a queer twitching face, into the front pew under a glare of eyes from the body of the kirk and the laft. An amazed buzz went round the church, followed by a pursing up of lips and hurried whisperings. Evidently Sandy had been driven to it against his own judgment. The scene is still vivid before me: the minister suspecting no guile, and omitting the admonitory stage out ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... relished, that one young gentleman has consumed the head and shoulders of Madame Alboni, under a delusion of her being sugar, and not "plaster of parish," as Mrs. Brown afterwards said it was. The little fellows soon get very mirthful on the ginger-wine; keeping up a continual buzz, like a colony of bees, sadly itching to be at something—a wish that is not to be realized at once, for little Miss Newsoince is going to do that eternal tattoo, the "Rataplan:"—yes, there she is, in Tom's ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... cried out, 'is it not the common report? Do not all men know it? Do not the butchers sing of it in the shambles, and the bot-flies buzz of it one to the other? I tell you it is spread from here into Almain, where the very ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... he slowly droops to the conviction that 'they could not cast him out.' The malicious scorn in the eyes of the Scribes, those hostile critics who 'knew that it would be so,' helps to produce the failure which they anticipated. The curious crowd buzz about them, and in the midst of it all stand the little knot of baffled disciples, possessors of power which seems to leave them when they need it most, with the unavailing spells dying half spoken on their lips, and their faint ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... point the thoughts of men heavenward; no church bell rings out its merry festal peals, or tolls the march to the grave; no sundial marks the succession of the hours which pass by unheeded all, save those of morning, noon, and evening; and in no public school-house is heard the low buzz of children conning their tasks. But the mollah calls to prayers from the minaret of a humble mosque; and in a dark corner illumined by aslant rays from a small high window in a wall, teaches to some half a dozen urchins the strange ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... The larks are so multitudinous that no distinct song can be caught, and amidst the confused melody comes the note of the thrush and the blackbird. A constant under-running accompaniment is just audible in the hum of innumerable insects and the sharp buzz of flies darting past the ear. Only those who live in the open air and watch the fields and sea from hour to hour and day to day know what they are and what they mean. The chance visitor, or he who looks now and then, never understands ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... the third night, the telephone beside her pillow gave a buzz, more terrifying than a shout of fire, an earthquake, a knife at the throat. Brantome was speaking. Parr had returned to the house in Greenwich Village. Lawrence Teck had sailed secretly, that ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... an interesting bustle, a buzz of comment, a craning of necks—flattery accepted by the young women with ostensible unconcern, a cliche of their caste. As they had entered in a humour keyed to the highest pitch of gaiety consistent with good breeding, so with more half-stifled laughter they settled into chairs well apart from ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... Busy "B" is dead, No more we'll hear him buzz a-wing, Nor picture with a smiling dread The pungent terrors of his sting. As Io's gadfly was this "B" To Sentiment and to Pretence. Oh, Property! Ah, Liberty! Fallen in your supreme defence! Gone is the friend that in a phrase The "Common ...
— Punch Volume 102, May 28, 1892 - or the London Charivari • Various
... wherever he went. He heard Sir Geoffrey ask if the man was really dead, and the affirmative answer of the keeper. The wood seemed to him to have become suddenly alive with faces. There was the trampling of myriad feet, and the low buzz of voices. A great copper-breasted pheasant came beating through ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... as the public taste remained in that direction. The uncouth dance, its accompaniment, might be seen in its full perfection on market nights in any great thoroughfare; and the words of the song might be heard, piercing above all the din and buzz of the ever-moving multitude. He, the calm observer, who during the hey-day popularity ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... thrice lovely! when at length the soldier Returns home into life; when he becomes A fellow-man among his fellow-men. The colors are unfurled, the cavalcade Mashals, and now the buzz is hushed, and hark! Now the soft peace-march beats, home, brothers, home! The caps and helmet are all garlanded With green boughs, the last plundering of the fields. The city gates fly open of themselves, They need no longer the petard to tear them. The ramparts are all filled with men and ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... he seen by his men than there was a loud buzz of voices, and he learned what a change had taken place between them, for instead of being welcomed back with sidelong glances and a half meaning look, the soldiers saluted him with a loud cheer, in which sentries and ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... game. I got to. Nothing but winning and winning big ever's going to suit me. I saw that when I was awful young. I sort of looked out on life and it seemed to me that most people spent their lives like flies, flying around a while without any purpose, trying to buzz in the sun if they could, and by and by ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... good saying he's wrong.'... Ha! Funny days.... Jolly nice chap, though, old Puzzlehead was.... Yes, I met him.... Fact, I run into him occasionally. We do a mild amount of business with his firm. I buzz down there about once a year. Tidborough. He's changed, of course. So have you, you know. That Vandyke beard, what? Ha! Old Sabre's not done anything outrageous like that. Real thing I seemed to notice about him when I bumped into him yesterday was that he didn't look very ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... Juniors to the middle, and Seniors to the rear. Ingred and Nora, motioned by Miss Giles to a bench about three-quarters down the room, took their seats and talked quietly with their nearest neighbors. A general buzz of conversation, constantly restrained by mistresses, kept rising and then falling again to subdued whispers. In a short time the hall was full, Miss Perry had opened the piano, and the choir leaders had ranged themselves round her. In dead silence all the ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... and factories and smoke-stained chimneys. Here, she stopped. An acquaintance would hardly have recognized her, her ruddy cheeks had grown so pale. But she trotted on to the great building on the corner from whence came a low, incessant buzz. She went into the first door and ran against Carl Olsen. "Carl, I got to see Mr. Lossing," said ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet
... was announced with considerable trepidation, in a very audible whisper, to Adorni and the Landgrave. The buzz of agitation attracted instant attention; the whisper was loud enough to catch the ears of several; the news went rapidly kindling through the room that the company was too many by one: all the ladies trembled, their ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... day a woman couldn't coax him off. He's on his rounds now with his tail in his mouth Snatched right and left across the silver pulleys. Everything goes the same without me there. You can hear the small buzz saws whine, the big saw Caterwaul to the hills around the village As they both bite the wood. It's all our music. One ought as a good villager to like it. No doubt it has a sort of prosperous sound, And it's our life." "Yes, when it's not our death." "You make that sound as if it wasn't so With everything. ...
— North of Boston • Robert Frost
... while intending purchasers were arriving; they came on horse, and afoot, and in conveyances of every sort and kind, and the tread of their feet, and the buzz of their voices awoke unwonted echoes in the old place. And still they came, from far and near, until some hundred odd people were ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... rather than in her favorite spot in the garden. She closed the shutters on the sunny side and sat down by the window nearest the garden, peculiarly sensible of the soft light and cool spaciousness of an inner world. The occasional buzz of a bee, the flutter of the leaves of the poplar, might have been the voice of the outer world in Southern Spain or Southern Italy, or anywhere else where the air ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... anecdotes of the day, which form the common talk among all the idlers of the capital, must furnish them with subjects in working up which little delay can be brooked. These vaudevilles are like the gnats that buzz about in a summer evening; they often sting, but they fly merrily about so long as the sun of opportunity shines upon them. A piece like the Despair of Jocrisse, which, after a lapse of years, may be still occasionally ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... near the Fountain Head as possible, I first of all called in at St James's, where I found the whole outward Room in a Buzz of Politics. The Speculations were but very indifferent towards the Door, but grew finer as you advanced to the upper end of the Room, and were so very much improved by a Knot of Theorists, who sat in ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... set matters right with Noble he had been unhappy and his condition had been bad; now he was happy, but his condition was worse. In truth, he was much, much too happy; nothing rational remained in his mind. No elfin orchestra seemed to buzz in his ears as he went down the street, but a loud, triumphing brass band. His unathletic chest was inflated; he heaved up with joy; and a little child, playing on the next corner, turned and followed him for some distance, trying ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... our shanty. The peculiar delight of a mosquito is to arrive just at the moment when you are falling off to sleep, properly fatigued with your day's work. You hear a long, threatening boom, which finally ends with a sharp jerk, like buzz-z-z-z-z-z-zup. Then you wait in anxious expectancy for what you well know will come next. It does come, a sharp prick on some part where you least expected it. You slap angrily at the place, and hurt yourself, but not the mosquito. O no! he is gone before ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... would be discovered. But he suddenly drew himself straight and stood motionless. At the same instant there came a confused murmuring sound through the little window far above my head. It was the rattle of oars and the buzz of many voices. Then there was a crash upon the door upstairs, and a terrible voice roared: "Open! Open in the name ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... watching her, some couple enjoying her confusion. To make matters worse, she presently discovered that she was the only woman in the Chamber; and she conceived the notion that she had no right to be there at that hour. At the thought her cheeks burned, her eyes dropped; the room seemed to buzz with her name, with gross words and jests, and ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... A louder buzz rose from the table, and the heads (without relaxing their upward vigilance) seemed to merge, and flow together, like an attentive flood, toward the upper end of the horse-shoe, where all the threads of Margaret Ransom's consciousness were suddenly ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... Their buzz bomb, a low-altitude semi-guided missile, was just the beginning. Even the devastating V-2, which soared high into the stratosphere before falling on England, was just a step in their tremendous space program. If the Nazis could have hung on a year or two more, the war might have ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe
... the man to make other men fall before him. Industry alone never does that, and certainly not that sort of industry which breaks down once in every six months. But come, Mr. Parker's champagne makes my head buzz: let us take a walk up the river; Twisleton's idea of going to dinner requires far too much pluck ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... motioned me to the cushion on his right and the doctor to his left. Eighteen other guests now reclined upon their cushions to left and right, so that we were all arranged in a direct line, facing the lower terrace whence came the feminine buzz. Directly opposite each of us was an ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... for thy sins must have met with such fair Irrationals; fascinating, with their lively eyes, with their quick snappish fancies; distinguished in the higher circles, in Fashion, even in Literature; they hum and buzz there, on graceful film-wings:—searching, nevertheless, with the wonderfullest skill for honey; untamable as ...
— What Great Men Have Said About Women - Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 77 • Various
... reading, curiously enough, the Bible. I have begun, in these later days, to take a growing interest in that great and ancient book. Suddenly, a distinct tremor shook the house, and there came a faint and distant, whirring buzz, that grew rapidly into a far, muffled screaming. It reminded me, in a queer, gigantic way, of the noise that a clock makes, when the catch is released, and it is allowed to run down. The sound appeared to come from some remote height—somewhere up in the night. There was ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... turned his back on Mr. Trimm and fumbled at the side pocket of his ill-hanging coat. Something inside of Mr. Trimm gave the least little jump, and the question that had ticked away so busily all those months began to buzz, buzz in his ears; but it was only a handkerchief the man was getting out. Doubtless he was going ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... chaps had cleared out the front line and was off down the communication trenches to the support. What with machine-guns rattlin' and bombs a-goin' off down the trench and Fritz's barrage all over the shop the row was that awful we had to buzz every single word. ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... and very hastily went up the hall to the high table, and bending his knee so as just to touch in passing the fifth step and the tenth, or last, presented it to the prior with comments. Instantly a dozen knowing eyes were fixed on it, and a buzz of voices was heard; and soon Gerard saw the prior point more than once, and the monk came back, looking as proud as Punch, with a savoury crustade ryal, or game pie gravied and spiced, for Gerard, and a silver grace cup full of rich pimentum. This latter ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... They buzz around thee also with their praise: obtrusiveness, is their praise. They want to be close to thy skin ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... as to be startling, fell upon the hot and crowded room; then, as Sir Stephen grasped his son's hand, a din of voices arose, an excited buzz of congratulations and good wishes. Stafford faced them all, his face pale and set, his lips curved with a forced smile, his eyes flashing, but lit with a sombre fire. There was a smile on his lips, a false amiability ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... she again faced Hsiao Hung. "My dear girl," she smiled, "what a trouble you've been put to! But you speak decently, and unlike the others who keep on buzz-buzz-buzz, like mosquitoes! You're not aware, sister-in-law, that I actually dread uttering a word to any of the girls outside the few servant-girls and matrons in my own immediate service; for they invariably ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... brother. "It's a chap I met last night; he's just out of a convalescent home, and a bit down on his luck." His voice died away in a complicated jumble of whir and buzz, the bell rang frantically, and Norah, like thousands of other people, murmured her opinion of the telephone and ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... of wasps about my ears. The French fops, here, all buzz and swarm around her; each making love to her, with all the shrugs, grimaces, and ready made raptures of which he is master; and to which I am obliged patiently to listen, or shew myself an ass. These fellows ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... it down on the floor. With a whizz and a buzz the auto darted across the store, bringing up with a bang against the low part of ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue Keeping Store • Laura Lee Hope
... the natives do not distinguish the Wollunqua from the rest of their actually existing totems, as we do: they have never beheld him with their bodily eyes, yet to them he is just as real as the kangaroos which they see hopping along the sands, as the flies which buzz about their heads in the sunshine, or as the cockatoos which flap screaming past in the thickets. How real this belief in the mythical snake is with these savages, was brought vividly home to Messrs. Spencer and Gillen when they visited, in company with some natives, ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... mute-mazed, at nature's chance, With a rapid finger circled round, Fixed to the first poor inch of ground To fight from, where his foot was found; Whose ear but a minute since lay free To the wide camp's buzz and gossipry— Summoned, a solitary man To end his life where his life began, From the safe glad rear, to the dreadful van! Soul of mine, hadst thou caught and held By the hem of ...
— Christmas Eve • Robert Browning
... of my own breath, Echoes, ripples, buzz'd whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine, My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing of blood and air through my lungs, The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and dark-color'd sea-rocks, and ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... approbation of the Lady de Tilly, who had, in truth, contributed part of it. Le Gardeur said he was a poor fly whom they were resolved to catch and pin to the wall of a chateau en Espagne, but he would enter the web without a buzz of opposition on condition that Pierre would join him. So it ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... pass out of the hands of the last of the family, and into the possession of the government, by whom it was to be turned over to the Department of Police. Moreover—and Piotr's emphasis on the word brought a sharp stillness in place of the rising buzz of comment—instead of a place in Moscow, Monsieur le Prince had bought his mother's former country-house at Klin, whither he intended to remove immediately, there to pass at least the summer, retaining as many of his present household as cared to remain with him. (Here a smile, at the idea ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... or buzz in the ears, causing them to ache with stress and strain; silences dull and sad as a wad of wool; silences as searching as the odour of musk—as soothing as the perfume of violets. The crisp silence ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... come up higher towards us. From the rigging to leeward there came suddenly a buzz ...
— The Ghost Pirates • William Hope Hodgson
... misadventure be not buzz'd abroad, Where 't may breed mutiny and mischief. Say We've left the captain waiting our return, Safe with the other three; meantime, choose out Some certain trusty fellows, who will swear Bravely to find their ...
— The Indian Princess - La Belle Sauvage • James Nelson Barker
... who regret this, who associate national greatness with the whirr and buzz of many wheels, the smoke of factories and with large dividends; and others, again, who wish that our simple minds were illuminated by the culture and wisdom of our neighbours. But I raise the standard of idealism, to try everything by it, every custom, every thought ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... I am not finish. I say I see this type on my window, making a few faces. But what then? Does he buzz off when I shout a cry, and leave me peaceable? Not on your life. He remain planted there, not giving any damns, and sit regarding me like a cat watching a duck. He make faces against me and again he make faces against me, and the more I command that he should get to hell out of here, the ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... running amuck inside. The water-wheel was turning swiftly and the millstone was whirling like a buzz saw. After every few seconds we could hear it graze down against the nether stone with an ugly sound; and then there would fly up a powerful ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... day there was a grand talolo, or ceremony of gift giving. My mother, as guest of honor, sat just inside the guest house, on a pile of mats, with the rest of us in a semi-circle around her, all facing the sea. There was a hum and buzz of excitement in the village, and we could catch glimpses of fine headdresses and old women scurrying about with mats and flowers. Soon the procession appeared, led by the manaia in full costume, dancing and twirling his head knife, and accompanied ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... There was a buzz of excitement among the Masons and those of their friends who had heard about the runaways over the appearance of Sallie and Celia when they came on the screen. As the party reached the lobby after the end of the last reel, Walter expressed his opinion ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... blight of the indictment was over him again. Hammer away, and scream away, and buzz away with all your might, you noises of the playhouse; let us not hear John Barclay hastening across the bridge just before the early winter sunset comes, that he may intercept the Index and the Banner in ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... the length of a month—until the darkness came; and then, with the realisation of the fact that I was so much nearer to a hideous fate, the hours seemed suddenly to have sped with lightning swiftness. The excited buzz and bustle of preparation pervaded the town all day, and every day, while night again became a pandemonium of barbarous sounds—for the tom-tom and flageolet concerts had been resumed with tenfold virulence since my incarceration—and ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... gin-twist. Another knock on the table produces a momentary silence, and a little man starts off with an extempore song, where the conviviality of the landlord, and the goodness of his suppers, are duly chronicled. The hairdresser hears a confused buzz of admiration, and even attempts to join in it, but thinks it, at last, time to go. He goes, and narrowly escapes making the acquaintance of Mr Jardine, from his extraordinary propensity to brush ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... could he and his little bride proclaim their secret that would not do violence to their own taste or set a buzz of gossip going? That the horrid lips of gossip should so much as breathe the name of his Virginia—that Mrs. Grundy should dare shrug her decorous shoulders, if ever so slightly, at mention of that sacred name—. The bare ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... wore at last the coveted emblem of the "pledged" girl; and when an Alpha Kappa girl chanced to come near her with a casual remark, she seemed to hear a significant hush among the other girls, followed by an equally significant buzz of whispered comment when the fraternity member moved away again. This atmosphere would have made no impression on a nature either more sturdily philosophic, or more unimaginative than Sylvia's (Judith, for instance, was not ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... rising from the floor to the ceiling were already packed, and the novice as he entered saw vague curving lines of faces in front of him, and heard the deep buzz of a hundred voices, and sounds of laughter from somewhere up above him. His companion spied an opening on the second bench, and they ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Wasp recognizes instantly, from the proud bearing of the substituted Mantis, that she is no longer embracing and carrying off an inoffensive carcase. Her hovering, hitherto silent, develops a buzz, perhaps to overawe the victim; her flight becomes an extremely rapid oscillation, always behind the quarry. It is as who should say the quick movement of a pendulum swinging without a wire to hang from. The Mantis, ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... Pine's trunk contained records which I found interesting. One of these in particular aroused my imagination. I was sawing off a section of this lower portion when the saw, with a buzz-z-z-z, suddenly jumped. The object struck was harder than the saw. I wondered what it could be, and, cutting the wood carefully away, laid bare a flint arrowhead. Close to this one I found another, and then with care I counted the rings of growth to find ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... harbour of Piraeus, twinkled in the lively air. From one gate of the city the women came forth in procession to the fountain; from another, a band of sumptuous horsemen sallied out, and threw their wanton javelins in the invigorating sky, as they galloped over the plain. The voice of birds, the buzz of beauteous insects, the breath of fragrant flowers, the quivering note of the nightingale, the pattering call of the grasshopper, and the perfume of the violet, shrinking from the embrace of the twilight breeze, filled the purple air with ...
— The Rise of Iskander • Benjamin Disraeli
... on, and still met more flocks the farther I went. The air was literally filled with pigeons. The light of noonday became dim as during an eclipse. The continued buzz of wings over me had a tendency to ...
— True Stories about Cats and Dogs • Eliza Lee Follen
... was a man-at-arms choked to death, by a stronger arm than Geoffrey's, and it was The Barbarian's woman who would be missing. There might be quite a buzz about that. ...
— The Barbarians • John Sentry
... wireless instrument before us began to buzz. Quickly Kennedy seized a pencil and wrote as the message that no hand of man could interfere with ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... man paused, his head bent forward, his eyes alert and searching, both hands gripping the table. There was a long silence, in which the ticking of the clock upon the wall seemed unduly loud and in which the buzz of cross-cut saws came sounding through the evening air. Yet Tarboe did ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Temple, and found the place in a buzz of excitement, over what had occurred in front of Prince's last night. I had suspected rough work on the part of the police, and here was the living evidence—men with bandages over cracked heads, men ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... Endicott's arm, in the full bravery of a well-chosen toilet, caused a buzz of admiration which followed them through the rooms; but Rose was nothing to the illuminated eyes of Mrs. Follingsbee compared with the portly form of Mrs. Van Astrachan entering beside her, and spreading over her the wings ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... before this relentless enemy within. These blood-thirsty villains began to probe eyelids, ears; in fact there was no part of one's anatomy where they did not alight; and unlike other members of their tribe that dwell farther north, who advance, buzz, sting and retreat these "Jersey Skeeters" knew no retreat. Hurriedly gaining the highway and cautiously proceeding there was seen broad grins on the faces of a detachment of soldiers in motor trucks drawn up beside the road. These boys seemed to thoroughly enjoy ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... for power, I would not, of course, unless I happened to be a public service corporation engaged in producing and selling electric power, consider for a moment wasting my time monkeying with the hydro-electric buzz-saw. Indeed, I would have to sell it, for with the juice developed here I could not hope to compete in a limited field with the established power companies. I would proceed to negotiate the sale of this by-product to the highest bidder. ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... that nature and an angry God Produced thee to the world, thou wicked sex, To be to man a plague, a chastening rod; Happy, wert thou not present to perplex. So serpent creeps along the grassy sod; So bear and ravening wolf the forest vex; Wasp, fly, and gad-fly buzz in liquid air, And the rich grain lies ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... we were anxious to join the hazy dance. The dance was hazier than usual, after that. Sixteen couples on the floor at once, with a few dozen spectators scattered around, is calculated to have its effect in a brilliantly lighted parlor, I believe. Everything seemed to buzz, at any rate. After all the modern dances had been danced several times, the people adjourned to the supper-room. I found my wardrobe out there, as usual, with the Unreliable in it. His old distemper was upon him: he was desperately hungry. I never saw a man ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... out into the traveled road, until the noises of the Hall were only a composite buzz. The squad was lounging in twos and three, talking athletics or humming under the breath march-songs from the Orpheum. "Peg" Langdon stopped at the white gate, and took off his hat to the ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... overhanging the river, which, being shallow at this spot, brawled loudly over its pebbly bed, some parts of which were dry. It was at such a distance from the city, that all the noises common to its streets were united into one buzz or hum, and the whole scene was well adapted to suggest meditations upon private matters, or the affairs of the world in general. Yet Bruin did not seem influenced by any such reflections: if one might venture a guess from the appearance of his physiognomy, one would ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... playing in the pavilion, distant cheers are audible in the direction of the tents, a shrill uproar is going on in the corner where the junior hundred yards is about to begin, and all around them is such a buzz of talking and laughing that ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... in the ground-floor bargain square. The wasps' nest had suddenly turned into a beehive. The buzz of rage had lulled to the hum of industry. Fred Thorpe, the "aisle manager," was blessed with the tact which only some secret sympathy or great natural kindness can put into a man; and it had kept him at a distance from Miss Stein that morning. He ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... leg while the other gripped his way up the balustrade until, amid a buzz of congratulation from the crowd, he tumbled all in a heap over the rail on to the balcony, where he lay for a few moments as he had fallen. Then staggering to his feet, without a glance at his opponent, he rushed, with a bellow of ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... letters as if they had been woolly spring lambs on a sunny hillside. The teacher corrected and admonished with great patience, glancing now and then toward points of danger and insurrection, whence came a suspicious buzz of whispering from behind a desk-lid or a pair of widespread large geographies. Now and then a toiling child would rise and come down the aisle, with his forefinger firm upon a puzzling word as if it were ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... similar example. We saw that there is a magical instrument—a small fish-shaped piece of thin flat wood tied to a thong—which, when whirled in the air, produces a strange noise, a compound of roar and buzz. This instrument is sacred among the natives of Australia, where it is used to call together the men, and to frighten away the women from the religious mysteries of the males. The same instrument is employed ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... The buzz of voices abated, and a bright-faced little woman, showily dressed, came forward and welcomed them with a marked accent. There were several other ladies in the room, but only one gentleman. This person, who was standing, with teacup and saucer in hand, at the farther ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... the strings again: and if Farrell made any sound at all, the buzz of them covered it. He had brought the glasses to bear ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of the violet-colored glass plate was now that of the luminescent diamond. I was about to ask Kennedy point- blank what he thought of them, when suddenly the little bell before us began to buzz feebly under the influence ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... has dealt with such a pride of spirit In all her ways of life, so that she seemed To feel like shadow, falling on the light Her own mind made, the common thoughts of men; Ay, she that to-day came down into our woe And stood among the griefs that buzz upon us, Like one who is forced aside from a bright journey To stoop in a small-room'd cottage, where loud flies Pester the inmates and the windows darken; This she, this Judith, out of her quiet pride, And out of her guarded purity, to walk Where God himself from violent whoredom could Scarcely ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... where the lyricism, which had at first only manifested itself by David's sotto voce performance of "My love's a rose without a thorn," had gradually assumed a rather deafening and complex character. Tim, thinking slightly of David's vocalization, was impelled to supersede that feeble buzz by a spirited commencement of "Three Merry Mowers," but David was not to be put down so easily, and showed himself capable of a copious crescendo, which was rendering it doubtful whether the rose would not ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... men built this enormous building. Deep they built it, deep into the ground; high they built it, high into the air. And now they use this building built by them. The sky scraper houses an army of ten thousand men. All day they clamber up and down its core like insects in a giant tree. They buzz and buzz, and ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... hopped down from the feed bin. "Look," she said, "this is the way to fly." She began to dance about, waving her arms. "This," she declared, "is the way the bees go." And she ran up and down, crying "buzz, buzz." ...
— Autumn • Robert Nathan
... names and life dates of sailors home from the sea. A wandering butterfly had drifted in and was winging its bright way about the place where the sermon had been interrupted. But the bated breath of awed amazement broke at the end of a long-held pause into a buzz of ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... going on in all the plants that cover the globe, from scattered polar lichens to crowded tropical palms, and in all the millions of animals which roam among them, and the millions of millions of insects which buzz among them:'—Then the Psalmist would have answered him, I believe,—'If you cannot, my friend, I can. And you must not make your power of thought and conception the measure of the universe, or even of other men's intellects; or say—"Because I cannot conceive a thing, therefore no man can ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... long nights I was restless for want of air, and I had no room to toss and turn. There was but one compensation; the atmosphere was so stifled that even mosquitos would not condescend to buzz in it. With all my detestation of Dr. Flint, I could hardly wish him a worse punishment, either in this world or that which is to come, than to suffer what I suffered in one single summer. Yet the laws allowed him to be out in the free air, while I, guiltless of crime, was pent up here, as the ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... norther, the perilous pull ashore, the arrival at the Tassara place, and the people he had met there. He recalled also something about silver coffee-urns and Moorish warriors, but the next thing, he was out upon the floor, and his head seemed to buzz like a beehive with inquiries concerning ...
— Ahead of the Army • W. O. Stoddard
... I lay, nor did they keep me long. A sword was passed through me from back to breast, whilst he who did it cursed me with a foul oath. The room grew dim; methought it swayed and that the walls were tottering; there was a buzz of sound in my ears, then a piercing cry in a baby voice. At the sound of it I vaguely wished for the strength to rise. As in the distance, I heard one of those butchers cry, "Haste, man; slit me that squalling bastard's throat!" And then ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... in an American theatre, attracted very general observation, and gave rise to an indefinite movement, or buzz, among the audience, which for a moment filled me with confusion, but produced no visible effect upon the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... discovered. But he suddenly drew himself straight and stood motionless. At the same instant there came a confused murmuring sound through the little window far above my head. It was the rattle of oars and the buzz of many voices. Then there was a crash upon the door upstairs, and a terrible voice roared: "Open! Open in ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... we may coin a word, nepheligenous accompaniment, such as shall gently narcotize the over-wearied brain and fold its convolutions for slumber like the leaves of a lily at nightfall. For now the over-tense nerves are all unstraining themselves, and a buzz, like that which comes over one who stops after being long jolted upon an uneasy pavement, makes the whole frame alive with a luxurious languid sense of all its inmost fibres. Our cheerfulness ran over, and the mild, pensive clerk was so magnetized by it that he came and sat down with us. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... city, and saw from afar its long streets, its brick warehouses, its white cottages, and its overshadowing trees,—all peaceful and undisturbed by flames,—it seemed, in the men's favorite phrase, "too much good," and all discipline was merged, for the moment, in a buzz of ecstasy. ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... to taste of a terrestrial couch again our seafarers went to bed early—it was still insufferably hot, and the buzz of the mosquitoes at the open windows might have passed for an audible crepitation of the temperature. "We can't stand this, you know," the young Englishmen said to each other; and they tossed about all night ...
— An International Episode • Henry James
... thoughts fixed on any one subject for any considerable length of time. At the end of these reflections I fell back, wondering, again asking if I were really destined to watch by my mother's death-bed. That day I seemed to become a sheer mentality, a sort of buzz of thought, and I could think of myself only as of a fly climbing a glass dome. It seemed to me that I was like a fly climbing and falling back, buzzing, and climbing again. "Never," I said to myself, "have I been more than a fly buzzing in a glass ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... him a world of trouble," said Mrs. Derrick kindly. "And besides, child, I'm tired seeing him buzz round you, myself. Faith, Mr. Linden would say that he ought to be ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... Mrs. Lita set away the glass, the bees upon the ceiling began to buzz in a most angry manner, and rally about the queen-bee; the south-wind cried round the palace corner; and a strange light, like the sun shining when it rains, threw a lurid glow over the graceful fairy forms. Then the door ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... don't worry so much through the day, but at night—at night, when one with infinite care has examined the inside of the mosquito-curtains to make sure none are lurking, and then, satisfied, has dived into bed and tucked the curtain carefully round, and is just going off to sleep—buzz-z-z sounds the hateful thing, and all hope of a quiet night is gone. The other night I woke and found G. springing all over her bed like a kangaroo. At first I thought she had gone mad, dog-like, with the heat, but it turned out she was ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... brought to light. The parody of new theatrical pieces, the anecdotes of the day, which form the common talk among all the idlers of the capital, must furnish them with subjects in working up which little delay can be brooked. These vaudevilles are like the gnats that buzz about in a summer evening; they often sting, but they fly merrily about so long as the sun of opportunity shines upon them. A piece like the Despair of Jocrisse, which, after a lapse of years, may be still occasionally brought out, passes justly among the ephemeral productions ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... I can only say that while reading Professor Weismann's book, I feel as I do when I read those of Mr. Darwin, and of a good many other writers on biology whom I need not name. I become like a fly in a window-pane. I see the sunshine and freedom beyond, and buzz up and down their pages, ever hopeful to get through them to the fresh air without, but ever kept back by a mysterious something, which I feel but cannot either grasp or see. It was not thus when I read Buffon, Erasmus Darwin, and Lamarck; it is not thus when I read ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... fashion then, could he and his little bride proclaim their secret that would not do violence to their own taste or set a buzz of gossip going? That the horrid lips of gossip should so much as breathe the name of his Virginia—that Mrs. Grundy should dare shrug her decorous shoulders, if ever so slightly, at mention of that sacred name—. The bare suggestion ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... now in a state of great excitement. He was hot on the scent and his brain was working like a buzz saw in an ice box. According to his reasoning, if Aline Peters' maid had done this thing there should be red paint in the hall marking her retreat, and possibly a faint stain on the stairs leading to the ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... from his classic dreams the student steals Amid the buzz of crowds, the whirl of wheels, To muse unnoticed, while around him press The meteor-forms of equipage and dress; Alone in wonder lost, he seems to stand A very stranger in ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... and enveloped him. He thought to escape their vicious attacks by paddling faster, but it was no use; they had come to stay. Trailing after him a long uneven stream, they seemed to take turns in tormenting him, and as the leaders became satiated, they fell back, allowing the rear rankers to buzz forward and renew the attack. Piang longed for a certain kind of moss that grows at the roots of trees, but his keen ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... without than go down to certain defeat before this relentless enemy within. These blood-thirsty villains began to probe eyelids, ears; in fact there was no part of one's anatomy where they did not alight; and unlike other members of their tribe that dwell farther north, who advance, buzz, sting and retreat these "Jersey Skeeters" knew no retreat. Hurriedly gaining the highway and cautiously proceeding there was seen broad grins on the faces of a detachment of soldiers in motor trucks drawn up beside the road. These ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... trouble have I had With Bandinello, and that stupid beast, The major-domo of Duke Cosimo, Francesco Ricci, and their wretched agent Gorini, who came crawling round about me Like a black spider, with his whining voice That sounded like the buzz of a mosquito! Oh, I have wept in utter desperation, And wished a thousand times I had not left My Tour do Nesle, nor e'er returned to Florence, Or thought of Perseus. What malignant falsehoods They told the Grand Duke, to impede my work, And make ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... must have staged the whole thing pretty well—Carlis and Paddington and their crew—for when I stepped out of the express elevator, there was no one in sight that I remember but the boy who was with me. I pressed the button of the local, which was just beside the express—there was a buzz and whirring hum as if the elevator had ascended, and the door opened. As I stepped over its threshold, I felt a violent blow and terrific pain on the back of my head, and seemed to fall into limitless ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... moment. He could guess, too, at the reaction of those about her when once she was dead, and they were quite out of her reach. There is always a reaction when feebler personalities have to fill the space left by a tyrant. He could realise the buzz of gossip, and the sense of courage with which servants and tradesmen would make wild, impossible stories of her wicked life. He came back from these thoughts with a certain shock when ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... for an hour, half sleepy with reaction from the fatigues of the day, smoking slowly, enjoying themselves. Everything was very peaceful—the long slant of a sunbeam through dust motes, the buzz of an early bluebottle, the half-heard activities of some of the servants in the pantry beyond, preparing for the rush of the cocktail hour. Suddenly Johnny raised his head and ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... was a buzz of excitement in the Doane home for old ladies. Word had got around that Drusilla had been left a fortune and was going away. Some of the ladies were plainly envious and said spiteful, catty things, while others were glad that at least one of their number would be able ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper
... There is a feeling of vastness, of solitude, and of dreariness in some of these great haciendas, which is oppressive. Especially about noon, when everything is still, and there is no sound except the incessant buzz of myriads of insects, I can imagine it like what the world must have ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... peremptory call on the private-telephone, "Inspector Carfon is to honour us with a call during the next few minutes. Give him a chair and a copy of The Sunday at Home, and watch the clues as they peep out of his pockets. Now buzz off." ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... taste remained in that direction. The uncouth dance, its accompaniment, might be seen in its full perfection on market nights in any great thoroughfare; and the words of the song might be heard, piercing above all the din and buzz of the ever-moving multitude. He, the calm observer, who during the hey-day ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... traitor, and seducer; A fawning, base, trepanning liar; The marks peculiar of his sire. Or, grant him but a drone at best; A drone can raise a hornet's nest. The Dean had felt their stings before; And must their malice ne'er give o'er? Still swarm and buzz about his nose? But Ireland's friends ne'er wanted foes. A patriot is a dangerous post, When wanted by his country most; Perversely comes in evil times, Where virtues are imputed crimes. His guilt ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... old fellow, have you been hiding yourself? I've been hunting you some time. A little cut, I suppose: never mind, my boy, you'll be better presently. Here's glorious sport on foot; don't you hear the war-cry?" At this moment a buzz of distant voices broke upon the ear like the mingled shouts of an election tumult. "There they are, old fellow: come, buckle on your armour—we must try your mettle to-night. All the university are ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... and kept very close to his mamma, Harry Carrington and Carrie Howard were grave and thoughtful, while Lucy and Mary seemed restless and excited, and the lesser ones full of curiosity and expectation. There was quite a little buzz all over the room as the two gentlemen and Arthur entered, but it died away instantly, and was succeeded by an almost death-like stillness, broken the next moment by the elder Mr. Dinsmore's voice, as he briefly stated his object in thus calling them together, and ...
— Holidays at Roselands • Martha Finley
... when he reached the long cross street that led to the lane of the cottage, and the buzz of the passing cars no longer disturbed the hoarse chorus of frogs. Sommers crept up the lane stealthily to the dark cottage, afraid for what he might find, chilled by the forbidding aspect of the place. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... Lisbeth eagerly seized the missive, and subjected it to the ordeal of touch. It was heavy, and contained something hard. Long pensive pressures revealed its shape on the paper. It was an arrow. 'Go!' said she to the woman, and, once alone, began, bee-like, to buzz all over it, and finally entered. It contained Margarita's Silver Arrow. 'The art of that girl!' And ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... is a trio on the chamecen, long and monotonous, that the guechas perform as a rapid pizzicato on the highest strings, very sharply struck. It sounds like the very quintescence, the paraphrase, the exasperation if I may so call it, of the eternal buzz of insects, which issues from the trees, old roofs, old walls, from everything in fact, and which is the ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... mass of English opposite told when the Ironside had landed; and as soon as it was seen whom he had chosen to accompany him as his witness, a buzz of excitement ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... of November, 1880, while working in a sawmill, a piece of board was thrown from a buzz saw and struck him in the groin, causing a wound from which he ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... valley, where the Rio Moctezuma joined its course with the Panuco, a dusty mist moved nearer along the old Spanish highway, and faintly there came the sound of clarions. An eager murmuring arose from the throng on the hillside. It swelled more confidently to a buzz as the far-away dust lifted at the ford and revealed the beaded stringing of a numerous company. The distant bugles rang clearer on the pure air. "Yes, he comes," the people cried, "There! Seest thou, hombre?—There! ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... is so far from being a quiz in a buzz wig, that he is, I think, one of the men I should most choose for an agreeable companion in a post-chaise. Whether he is prepared to undertake so formidable an expedition as you speak of, I should have some doubt, and the ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... reluctant feet that halted at every step Margaret went down the wide, shallow stairs. If any one had told her three days ago that she would go thus laggingly to resume acquaintance with a room full of young people she would have found difficulty in believing them. A buzz of talk and laughter struck loudly on her ear as she pushed the door ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... son; you'll talk or 'the boy, oh, where was he?' I'll tell you what," cried Mr. Brotherton; "you'll fool around with the buzz saw till you'll get killed. Now, look here, Grant—I'm for your revolution, and six buckets of blood. But you can't afford to lose 'em! You're dead right about the chains of slavery and all that sort of thing, but don't get too excited about it. You live down ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... steps, on the chance of finding their hostess, when a slight buzz arose, and seemed to ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... Under the boughs. The tinkle of the brook is there, And cow-bells wandering through the fern, And silver calls From waterfalls, And echoes floating through the air From happiness I know not where, And hum and drone where'er I turn Of little lives that buzz and die; And sudden lucent melodies, Like hidden strings among the trees ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... turned quickly into a little alcove, or reception room and Craig placed a chair for her. Farther down the corridor I could see the office, and beyond a large main dining-room from which strains of music came and now and then the buzz of conversation and laughter from gay parties ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... flock, in the cradle by her side. The goodwife, in linsey-woolsey short gown and red petticoat, steps lightly back and forth in calf pumps beside the great wheel, or poises gracefully to give a final twist to the long-drawn thread of wool or tow. The continuous buzz of the flax wheels, harmonizing with the spasmodic hum of the big wheel, shows that the girls are preparing a stock of linen against their wedding day. Less active, and more fitful, rattles the quill-wheel, where the younger children ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... else can I be quiet? Now there's an end Of daring, 'tis the one place my life has made Where I may try to dare in thought. I mind, When I stood in the midst of those bare women, All at once, outburst with a rising buzz, A mob of flying thoughts was wild in me: Things I might do swarmed in my brain pell-mell, Like a heap of flies kickt into humming cloud. I beat them down; and now I cannot tell For certain what they ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... the head of the stairs, ostensibly to be nearer a light, and took out his purse. While counting out the bills, he cast frequent glances down into the lower hall. The buzz of conversation came ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... the passengers that buzz on her decks, while, from quarters unseen, comes a murmur as of bees in the comb. Fine promenades, domed saloons, long galleries, sunny balconies, confidential passages, bridal chambers, state-rooms plenty ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... the lilacs and laburnums were in full bloom, the sun made golden paths everywhere. The warm air was full of fragrance, and alive with all the buzz ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... them buzz, I tell you! England will be a hornets' nest before noon to-morrow, if the Church's hand hasn't lost its cunning—and we know it hasn't. Now you write and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... over with little creatures with wings, and, as my fancy suggested, with stings,—the black eagles of Austria. How was I to carry in my pocket such a cage of imps? How was I to sleep at night in their company? Should they take it into their head to creep out of my book, and buzz round my bed, would it not give me unpleasant dreams? And yet part with them I could not. These black, impish creatures must be my ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... very satisfactory explanation. I made no further inquiries, and we continued our way in silence until we arrived at the school door; there was a terrible buzz inside. Ben tapped, the door opened, and a volume of hot air burst forth, all the fresh air having been consumed in repeating the fresh lessons for the day. Ben walked up between the forms, and introduced me to the schoolmaster, whose ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... piggledy, packed we lie, Rats in a hamper, swine in a stye, Wasps in a bottle, frogs in a sieve, Worms in a carcase, fleas in a sleeve. Hist! square shoulders, settle your thumbs And buzz ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... steady buzz of a saw and later the ringing strokes of an axe. The men had departed three hours before to be gone for a week on the horse round-up but she had not yet issued from her own quarters. The music of axe and saw was ample evidence ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... "to pull the wool over your eyes," "to talk through your hat," "to fire out," "to go back on," "to make yourself solid with," "to have a jag on," "to be loaded," "to freeze on to," "to bark up the wrong tree," "don't monkey with the buzz-saw," and "in the soup." Most slang had a bad origin. The greater part originated in the cant of thieves' Latin, but it broke away from this cant of malefactors in time and gradually evolved itself from its unsavory past until it developed into a ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... only for a little while. After the public test—after the truth of her mediumship is made manifest—I think, I hope, we will ask less of her. Perhaps it will be possible to release her altogether for a time; but for the present she is too valuable—" The sentence was lost in a buzz of inarticulate whispering, as if two or three friends were consulting. The opening and closing of lips could be heard, and a stir within the horn was curiously trivial in effect, as if a mouse were at play with ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... the snowy-covered tables were being taken rapidly by members about to dine; silent-footed waiters were hurrying to and fro, carrying out their various duties, while intermittently the sound of opening champagne bottles mingled with the buzz of conversation and ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... strode into the room I was aware of another buzz of talk. Apparently here, too, were plenty of people who knew me as the famous swordsman. The Earl moved his ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... our friend Jones here, Mr. Barnes, that you look like a more than ordinarily intelligent man and that if I had a chance to buzz with you for a quarter of an hour I could ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... before the Roman legions marched to Cowey Stakes. Their habits have not changed; their 'social' relations are the same; they have not called in the aid of machinery to enlarge their liquid, wealth, or to increase the facility of collecting it. There is a low murmur rather than a buzz along the hedgerow; but over it the hot summer breeze brings the thumping, rattling, booming sound of hollow metal striking against the ground or in contact with other metal. These ringing noises, which so little accord with the sweet-scented hay and green hedgerows, ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... the Guai, on its inner wall, opened on the comparatively quiet Giro. From the windows and door could be heard the buzz and hum of the Lungara, where everybody—men, women, children, cats and dogs—were out with every species of work and play when the sun began to decline. This was the part of the house most frequented and liked by the family. They could see their neighbors ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... these points in his mind a buzz of whispered conversation was going on between the officers around the table. At length a decision was reached, and von Liebknecht again turned his attention to ...
— Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal - or Perils of the Black Bear Patrol • G. Harvey Ralphson
... with sails, the town not less incumbered with bales, nor more free from bustle, than formerly. People walk, squeak, push, sell, buy, sing, and cry; in fact in all the quarters of the town, in every house, life seems to predominate. At night the buzz and noise cease, and nothing is heard at Mayence but the murmurings of the Rhine, and the everlasting noise of seventeen water mills, which are fixt to the piles of the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... was enlightened. It was a merry home party that night. Captain Gates and another man, a Mr. Stroud by name, had come to stay for a few days' shooting, and they certainly proved lively additions to our gathering. In the midst of a buzz of conversation and laughter, there was, as so often happens, a sudden lull, and then Kenneth from the other side of the table suddenly ...
— Dwell Deep - or Hilda Thorn's Life Story • Amy Le Feuvre
... to this. Hitherto no sound had been heard save the jingling of accouterments and the dull heavy sound of the horses' tread; but now there could be heard mingled with these the buzz of voices, and occasionally a low laugh. They were so accustomed to wet that the soaking scarcely inconvenienced them. They were out of the forest now, and felt sure of their guide; and as to the enemy, they ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... itself must have burned out the hornets' nest, and the tax-payer paid, and paid dearly. For there would have been talk of the expedition beforehand, the force would have found an enemy prepared and fortified. The hornets could sting too! Whereas Drake had burned them out before they had time to buzz. He need not have said one word in exculpation of himself, and that indeed he knew. But he had interests and ambitions of his own to serve; a hint of ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... admired, was gratifying to her, because she knew how much it pleased her husband, who was never happier or prouder than when, with Katy on his arm, he entered some crowded parlor and heard the buzz of admiration as it circled around, while Katy, simple-hearted and guileless still, smiled and blushed like a little child, wondering at the attentions lavished upon her, and attributing them mostly to her husband, whose position she thoroughly understood, marveling more and more ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... to get possession of the stock was not to him an evidence of public confidence, and an argument, therefore, in favor of such an institution, but "a mere scramble for so much public plunder." He could only see that "stock-jobbing drowns every other subject. The coffee-house is in an eternal buzz with the gamblers." "It pretty clearly appears also," he said, "in what proportions the public debt lies in the country, what sort of hands holding it, and by whom the people of the United States are to be governed." Here, perhaps, was one cause of his hostility to Hamilton's financial ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... figure of Mr. Oldbuck himself; secondly, the scarce less portly person of the Reverend Mr. Blattergowl, minister of Trotcosey, the parish in which Monkbarns and Knockwinnock were both situated. The reverend gentleman was equipped in a buzz wig, upon the top of which was an equilateral cocked hat. This was the paragon of the three yet remaining wigs of the parish, which differed, as Monkbarns used to remark, like the three degrees of comparisonSir Arthur's ramilies being the positive, his own bob-wig ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... a conservative way, but he merely trailed. He did not buzz, or throw himself at the fallen Handkerchief, or run to get the Wraps, or do any of the Stuff that marks the true ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... in clouds with snap and buzz, and out of the luxurious stagnant marshes comes the ever-thickening chorus of the toads, while above them the kildees and the snipe shuttle to and fro in sounding flight. The blackbirds on the cat-tails sway and swing, uttering through lifted throats their liquid gurgle, ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... becomes of vast moment to a Pharaoh, whose ears are dinned with the buzz of myriad winged plagues, mingled with angry cries from malcontent and fly-pestered subjects; or to the summer traveller in northern lands, where they oppose a stronger barrier to his explorations than the loftiest mountains ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... know when he sits high above the fretted boughs of an oak and his music plunges forth upon the January wind. Now when Mark was ringing the Sanctus-bell, it was with a sense of his place in the scheme of worship. If one listens to the twitter of a single linnet in open country or to the buzz of a solitary fly upon a window pane, how incredible it is that myriads of them twittering and buzzing together should be the song of April, the murmur of June. And this Sanctus-bell that tinkled so inadequately, almost so frivolously when sounded by a server in Meade Cantorum church, ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... like a pent[388]-house! O, that I could see, and not be seen; how he would spaniel it, and shake himself, when he comes out of the pond! But I'll be gone; for now he'll fight with a fly, if he but buzz[389] in ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... hall of entrance. It was full of people, and the buzz of business was heard on all sides. Ellen had for some time past seldom gone a-shopping with her mother, and had never been in this store but once or twice before. She had not the remotest idea where, or in what apartment of the building, the merino counter ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... were very cruel, dear Buzz," said little Hum; "let us take him to our Queen, and she will tell us how to show our anger for the wicked deeds he did. See how bitterly he weeps; be kind to him, he will not harm ...
— Flower Fables • Louisa May Alcott
... said seriously, under the cover of a loud buzz of talk, 'He's wasting his time, dear lady—there's ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... from his pocket; what it was Juliet could not see, but she caught the gleam of metal in the lamp-light, and in a moment a great buzz of pleasure spread through the crowd. And then it began—such music as she had never dreamed of—such music as surely was never fluted save from the pipes of Pan. A long, sweet, thrilling note like the call of a nightingale, starting far away, drawing swiftly nearer, ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... among people of his own rank in life. It did seem most singular that he should seek to place the child with her. Mrs. Walsham was not given to thinking what her neighbours would say, but she thought of the buzz of comment and astonishment which her taking the charge of this child would excite. She had been particular in keeping her little school to some extent select, and as it was now as large as she could manage unaided, she was able to make it almost a favour to the farmers' wives ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... Hudson's Bay. Potations, pottle deep, again went round; never did beverage excite greater glee, or meet with more rapturous commendation. The parties were fast advancing to that happy state which would have insured ample cause for the next day's repentance; and the bees were already beginning to buzz about their ears, when a messenger came spurring to the camp with intelligence that Wyeth's people had got entangled in one of those deep and frightful ravines, piled with immense fragments of volcanic ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... kite-string. That must be it. Some days he won't stay on. That day a woman couldn't coax him off. He's on his rounds now with his tail in his mouth Snatched right and left across the silver pulleys. Everything goes the same without me there. You can hear the small buzz saws whine, the big saw Caterwaul to the hills around the village As they both bite the wood. It's all our music. One ought as a good villager to like it. No doubt it has a sort of prosperous sound, And it's our life." "Yes, when it's not our death." "You make that sound as if it ...
— North of Boston • Robert Frost
... as bees about a thistle! And I'm to set the peelers on my son? If he'd gone with Peter, they'd have tracked his hobnails ... It snowed that night ... The snowflakes buzz like bees About the prickling thistles in my head— Big bumblebees ... I ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... fates flung him another chance—a chance that for the moment looked like no chance; looked, indeed, like a certainty of sudden death. A soft, whistling hiss sounded in the air above them, a note different from the shrill whine and buzz of bullets, the harsh rush and shriek of the shells. The next instant a dark object fell with a swoosh and thump in the bottom of the trench, rolled a little and lay still, spitting a jet of fizzing ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... hold on. I can convince you—[a loud buzz-uzz-uzz]. Engaged! Who is she calling up now? [Represses the button and calls] The Chief Secretary. Say I want to see him again, just ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... In the buzz of excitement which followed the voice of the old chairman was scarcely audible as ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... listen'd, The young cheek still bloom'd and the soft eyes still glisten'd; And her lord, when, like one of those light vivid things That glide down the gauzes of summer with wings Of rapturous radiance, unconscious she moved Through that buzz of inferior creatures, which proved Her beauty, their envy, one moment forgot, 'Mid the many charms there, the one charm that was not: And when o'er her beauty enraptured he bow'd, (As they turn'd to each other, each flush'd from the crowd,) ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... pivot mounting, traversing it like a telescope on a stand. It came round towards the fresh yellow mounds of earth which marked Herr Haase's excavations; they had an instant in which to note, faint as the whirring of a fly upon a pane, the buzz of some small mechanism within the thing. Then, not louder than a heavy stroke upon a drum, came the detonation of the buried cartridges in the first hole, and the earth above them suddenly ballooned and burst like an over-inflated ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... with the alert and light-armed enemy. Any personage who goes to war with boys is bound to be beaten, for he may threaten and attack, but he can hardly ever hurt them, and never possibly can conquer them; and they will buzz round him like wasps, will sting him and then be off, will put him to shame before the public, will tease him on his most sensitive side, will lie in wait for him in unexpected places with an ingenuity and a perseverance and a ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... in the likeness of a chubby undertaker, ready for a funeral, rather than in that of the "unmatched form and feature of blown youth"—in short, the very type and image of poor Tokely in Peter Pastoral,—his eyes and ears were on the alert to catch the look of surprise, and buzz of admiration, which he very naturally anticipated. He was a little daunted by a suppressed titter which ran round the room; but he was utterly confounded when his best and dearest friend, Mr. Peaess himself, coming ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 366 - Vol. XIII, No. 366., Saturday, April 18, 1829 • Various
... spreading holms; Books about electrocuting little seeds with ohms To sternly show them how to grow in sands, and clays, and loams, And bravely burst infinitives, like angry agronomes; Books on breeding aeroplanes and airing aerodromes, On bees that buzz in bonnets and the kind that build the combs, Made plain with pretty pictures done in crimsons, mauves, and chromes; And diagrams to baulk the brain of Mr. Sherlock Holmes. I'd set the scientists to work like superheated ...
— A Book for Kids • C. J. (Clarence Michael James) Dennis
... beyond the present moment; ever flying from the ennui of that, yet carrying it with us; eternally in pursuit of happiness, which keeps eternally before us. If death or bankruptcy happen to trip us out of the circle, it is matter for the buzz of the evening, and is completely forgotten by the next morning. In America, on the other hand, the society of your husband, the fond cares for the children, the arrangements of the house, the improvements of the grounds, fill ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... uncle saw little of the outside because of his interest in the strange machinery that was propelling them forward. The engineer pulled a lever and then there was a buzz and a whirr; another lever was turned, and the car would come to a standstill at some station. It was amazing to see such simple movements by one man control such unseen energy. From the farm to the Exposition grounds was as marvelous a change as from one world to ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... there is a compulsory school law in Germany; but perhaps to-day is a holiday; or maybe, after school hours, it is customary for these unhappy youngsters to repair to the road-sides and blister their hands with cracking flints. "Hungry as a buzz-saw" I roll into the sleepy old town of Rothenburg at six o'clock, and, repairing to the principal hotel, order supper. Several flunkeys of different degrees of usefulness come in and bow obsequiously from time to time, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... Canon's Yard when he left Bodger's Street was almost dramatic. All that penetrated there was a subdued buzz with an occasional shrill note as it might be on a penny whistle. The Yard was dark, lit only by a single lamp, and the cobbles uneven. Lights here and there set in the crooked old windows were secret and uncommunicative: the Cathedral towers seemed immensely tall against the dusk. ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... stairs, leaving the buzz of much talk behind them, for many of the hotel guests were speaking of the news ...
— The Motor Girls on Waters Blue - Or The Strange Cruise of The Tartar • Margaret Penrose
... been full of snipers perched on trees. The faithful three spread aseptics and bandaged and sewed, and generally cheered the stream of callers from the Ninth and Twelfth Regiments, Army of the King of the Belgians. In the early afternoon, the buzz of motors penetrated to the stuffy cellar, and it needed no yelping horn, squeezed by the firm hand of Smith, to bring Hilda to the surface, alert for the expedition. Two motor ambulances were puffing their ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... the unwillingness of the larger part of the audience to listen further; but an approving buzz from the elder citizens announced that the fanaticism was not without its favourers. Thus stimulated and encouraged, the orator continued; and concluded an harangue, interrupted more stormily than all that had preceded, by an exhortation ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... butterfly, forgetting his secret in his desire to touch it. The butterfly was too quick—with a snap of his wings, disdainfully mocking the idea of catching him, away he went. Guido nearly stepped on a humble-bee—buzz-zz! the bee was so alarmed he actually crept up Guido's knickers to the knee, and even then knocked himself against a wheat-ear when he started to fly. Guido kept quite still while the humble-bee was on his knee, knowing that ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... secured the approbation of the Lady de Tilly, who had, in truth, contributed part of it. Le Gardeur said he was a poor fly whom they were resolved to catch and pin to the wall of a chateau en Espagne, but he would enter the web without a buzz of opposition on condition that Pierre would join him. So it ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... must knock down all that's in your way, Because you're posting to Maecenas, eh?" This pleases me, I own; but when I get To black Esquiliae, trouble waits me yet: For other people's matters in a swarm Buzz round my head and take my ears by storm. "Sir, Roscius would be glad if you'd arrange By eight a. m. to be with him on 'Change." "Quintus, the scribes entreat you to attend A meeting of importance, as their friend." ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... sitter leaves him standing far in the night, prepared to live right on, while suns rise and set, and his "good night" has as brisk a sound as his "good morning;" and the earliest riser finds him tasting his liquors in the bar ere flies begin to buzz, with a countenance fresh as the morning star over the sanded floor,—and not as one who had watched all night for travellers. And yet, if beds be the subject of conversation, it will appear that no man has been a sounder ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... his back on Mr. Trimm and fumbled at the side pocket of his ill-hanging coat. Something inside of Mr. Trimm gave the least little jump, and the question that had ticked away so busily all those months began to buzz, buzz in his ears; but it was only a handkerchief the man was getting out. Doubtless he was going to ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... mounting the breastwork. "Captain, lave me have a squint through yer glass," and Terrence, assuming a liberty which he only could, took the glass from his hand. The screaming shell and whistling shot continued to come from the Xenophon. "Faith, thim bees buzz nicely round a fellow's ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... brim. Th' unfolding roses, and the op'ning flow'rs Imbibe the dew, and strew the varied bow'rs, Diffuse nectarious sweets around, and glow With all the colours of the show'ry bow The industrious bees their balmy toil renew, Buzz o'er the field, and sip the rosy dew. But yonder comes th'illustrious God of day, Invests the east, and gilds the etherial way; The groves rejoice, the feather'd nations sing, Echo the mountains and ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... lost in the din. The lady no more loved wasps than did her pupils. She retreated as the wasp advanced. The intruder ranged itself on the side of the girls and circled towards their instructress with malevolence in every turn and vicious intent in its buzz. ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... marked a great difference in the manner of the people in the streets. The buzz of talking and laughing was hushed, as they approached. People turned away, as if desirous of avoiding the sight of them. The priests regarded them with an insolent air. On one or two occasions they were roughly ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... with nervous tension—every faculty strained to breaking; the buzz of a fly is a roar to me. I build up these towering castles of emotion in my soul, castles ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... of the underground people. John lay there quite still from ten till twelve at night. At last it struck twelve. Immediately there was a ringing and a singing in the hills, and then a whispering and a lisping and a whiz and a buzz all about him, for the little people were now come out, some whirling round and round in the dance, and others sporting and tumbling about in the moonshine, and playing a thousand merry pranks. He felt a secret dread creep over him at this whispering and buzzing, for he could ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... without a shade of fierceness, in like manner clap-on, and even crush on their slouched hats; and stand there awaiting the issue. (Histoire Parlementaire (i. 356). Mercier, Nouveau Paris, &c.) Thick buzz among them, between majority and minority of Couvrezvous, Decrouvrez-vous (Hats off, Hats on)! To which his Majesty puts end, by taking off his ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... no more, probably realising that he meant to have his way. They talked upon indifferent topics in the midst of the general buzz of merriment ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... I should be all of a muck." Want, mole. Chiselbob, woodlouse; also called a cud-worm, and, rolled in a pill, put down the throat of a cow to promote the restoration of her cud, which she was supposed to have lost. Gowk, cuckoo. Fuzz-Buzz, traveller's joy. Palmer, caterpillar. Dish-washer, water-wagtail. Chink, chaffinch. Long-tailed caper, long-tailed tit. Yaffil, green woodpecker. "The yaffil laughed loud."—See Peacock at Home. Smellfox, ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... I am little like to forget) stood hard by the harbour-side. It was a black night, but lights were in the houses, and nearer hand in the quiet ships; there was a shining of the city on the one hand, and a buzz hung over it of many thousands walking and talking; on the other, it was dark, and the water bubbled on the sides. I spread my cloak upon a builder's stone, and made her sit there; she would have kept her hold ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... gig was rather a new experience. The way was still, starlight, and lonely, until they came out into the neighbourhood of the mills. When the lights were visible, and a certain confused buzz of still distant voices gave token of the lively state of the population in the Hollow, Hazel and her faithful attendant left the gig and went ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... and with it a buzz of excitement in the village. Windybank ventured to peep through the topmost lattice and scan the groups of excited gossips. Then he looked aloft through the great network of beams and rafters. He was tired, and his brain swam inside his head. The apex of the spire ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... companion does not cease talking, to listen, converse in a very low tone, and withdraw from the immediate vicinity of the performer. On the other hand, if you are invited to play, do not wait for quiet in the room, nor exhibit any annoyance if your most exquisite passages are drowned in the buzz of conversation. ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... together with a sharp effort and entered into the conversation that had begun again to buzz round him. Moreover, he entered into it with keen pleasure, for the Brothers—there were perhaps a dozen of them in the little room—treated him with a charm of manner that speedily made him feel one of themselves. This, again, was a very subtle ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... knew I was right!" cried Ham triumphantly. "You're the boy they called Buzz, the Human Fly. I saw you perform at Chester, and I heard later about your running away. And you helped to let a lion and a chimpanzee ...
— Out with Gun and Camera • Ralph Bonehill
... artillery came into lethargic action after the American barrage had been in constant operation for thirty minutes and then the enemy's fire was only desultory. Only an occasional shell from Kulturland came our way, and even they carried a rather tired, listless buzz, as though they didn't know exactly where they ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... the extreme end of the canyon below the Cat's Paw came the crash of a track-torpedo, answered almost instantly by a second, above the break. It was the warning signal to get into the clear. There was a buzz of rapid movement among the laborers. In twos and threes and dozens, a ragged procession of lanterns and torches, they retreated, foremen urging the laggards, until only a single man at each end of the broken track ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... until the doctor rapped sharply at the wooden partition that separated the boys' from the men's quarters at the shanty, that the murmuring buzz ceased. "Look here, you two," he said; "if you don't want to sleep we do, so just be quiet. It's somewhere about one o'clock, and when getting-up time comes you'll want ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... Hebrew prophetic words fell like dew on Mary's heart. She could not interrupt. She stood listening and "comforted," till the little buzz of conversation again began, and then ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... beneath the spreading holms; Books about electrocuting little seeds with ohms To sternly show them how to grow in sands, and clays, and loams, And bravely burst infinitives, like angry agronomes; Books on breeding aeroplanes and airing aerodromes, On bees that buzz in bonnets and the kind that build the combs, Made plain with pretty pictures done in crimsons, mauves, and chromes; And diagrams to baulk the brain of Mr. Sherlock Holmes. I'd set the scientists to work like superheated gnomes, And ...
— A Book for Kids • C. J. (Clarence Michael James) Dennis
... his bedroom. He himself hid carefully under the bed and waited. The Man-eater came in late, very tired with his long walk, and flung himself on the bed, placing his sword with its shining blade by his side. Scarcely had he lain down than the mosquitos began to buzz about and bite him, and he rolled from side to side trying to catch them, which he never could do, though they always seemed to be close to his nose. He was so busy over the mosquitos that he did not hear Ciccu ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... chimneys. Here, she stopped. An acquaintance would hardly have recognized her, her ruddy cheeks had grown so pale. But she trotted on to the great building on the corner from whence came a low, incessant buzz. She went into the first door and ran against Carl Olsen. "Carl, I got to see ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet
... an expectant hush fell over the little audience when Mr. Strong took his seat after reading the weekly announcements. The organ began to play softly, necks were craned to catch a glimpse of the singer, and then a buzz of surprise filled the room. Peace, dressed all in white, and looking like a rosy cherub, had mounted to the organ loft where Faith was playing, and at the proper moment, she began to whistle a beautiful bird melody which surprised even those who had heard ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... the trees, and observed that they were teasing a Hawk about as large as themselves, which was also on the wing. Presently all three had risen above the branches, and were circling higher and higher in a slow spiral. The Crows kept constantly swooping at their enemy, with the same angry buzz, one of the two taking decidedly the lead. They seldom struck at him with their beaks, but kept lumbering against him, and flapping him with their wings, as if in a fruitless effort to capsize him; while the Hawk kept carelessly eluding the assaults, now inclining on one ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... arrested, monologues upon art and morals. I remember a mild shock of surprise when I discovered that one could use the telephone on Sunday; I did not expect it to be cut off, but I expected it to buzz more than on ordinary days, to the advancement of our national religion. Through this instrument, in fewer words than usual, and with a comparative economy of epigram, I ordered a taxi-cab to take me to the railway station. I have not a word to say in general either against ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... and forcible, affectionate and convincing. It is well known how much the intellectual character of the child depends on that of the mother, and yet girls are brought up and educated as if they were born only to buzz and flutter on the stage of life, instead of forming the character of a future generation of ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... to their seats as the musicians come stringing in. Soon there is a general tuning up—scrapings, toots, snorts, subdued screeches, raspings, and all that busy buzz-fuzz business of getting ready ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... swoop down for a close-up o' these mangrove islands, he'd be apt to pick me up, 'specially if he happens to own a pair o' glasses, which stands to reason he sure does. Huh! what a bother. Better be slow 'bout foolin' with a buzz-saw, that's all I c'n ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... exasperated me still more. I was so much excited, that I no longer recognized my own voice, raised to an extraordinary pitch, and the last words I screamed at him—I can't remember what unjust and mad remark it was—seemed to buzz indistinctly in my ears. For a moment, I thought Monsieur Petitbry's assault with violence was an accomplished fact. Pallid, with set teeth Henri ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... day of November, 1880, while working in a sawmill, a piece of board was thrown from a buzz saw and struck him in the groin, causing a wound from which ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... upper slopes of the hills, and there was a drift here and there in a corner of pasture wall in the valley; but the springtime green was beginning to hover over the wet places in the fields; the catkins silvered the golden tracery of the willow branches by the brook; there was a buzz of bees about them, and about the maples, blackened by the earlier flow of sap through the holes in the bark made by the woodpeckers' bills. Now and then the tremolo of a bluebird shook in the tender light and the keen air. At one ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the back of the hall. Grodman had been honored with a seat on the platform, which was accessible by steps on the right and left, but he kept his eye on Denzil. The picture of the poor idealist hung on the wall behind Grodman's head, covered by its curtain of brown holland. There was a subdued buzz of excitement about the hall, which swelled into cheers every now and again as some gentleman known to fame or Bow took his place upon the platform. It was occupied by several local M. P.'s of varying politics, a number of other Parliamentary ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... money at dessert. During the meal he would be full of nervous gayety, of cynical humor, and then he would announce his intention to kill himself. The girl would not fail to narrate the scene everywhere; she would repeat his last conversation, his last will and gift; all the cafes would buzz with it at night; the papers would be full ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... feathery tree-ferns are everywhere spangled with diamonds. I will rest here. I wish I could catch a few of those wondrous butterflies, or even one of those fairylike humming-birds—mere sparks of light and colour that flit and buzz from flower to flower. I wish I could—that ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... honeysuckle—and but for one, in my own house—but of this I cannot speak. It was a lonely life, growing green like the grass around it. Books and dreams were what I lived in—and domestic life only seemed to buzz gently around, like the bees about the grass. And so time passed, and passed—and afterwards, when my illness came and I seemed to stand at the edge of the world with all done, and no prospect (as appeared at ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... bees, as I've heard say, Said to their Queen one sultry day, "Please your Majesty's high position, The hive is full and the weather is warm, We rather think, with a due submission, The time has come when we ought to swarm." Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz. Up spake their Queen and thus spake she - "This is a matter that rests with me, Who dares opinions thus to form? I'LL tell you when it is time to swarm!" Buzz, ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... dinner ever I sat at. Not a health drank, scarce a word said until the cloth was taken away. Then the President, filling a glass of wine, with great formality drank to the health of every individual by name around the table. Everybody imitated him and changed glasses and such a buzz of 'health, sir,' and 'health, madam,' and 'thank you, sir,' and 'thank you, madam' never had I heard before.... The ladies sat a good while and the bottles passed about; but there was a dead silence almost. Mrs. Washington at last withdrew with ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... it, and Dodd understood and shouted something that was lost in the furious buzz of the beetles' wings as they devoured their prey. The three raced for the entrance, gained it unmolested, and closed ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... hatred, as though they wanted to attack him. Then again there were those who called him by name with a laugh of joy; and some turned to watch him in curiosity. It was easy to pick the wounded from those who shared in his victory, and from those who knew the frenzied finance buzz-saw only by its buzz. Bob saw none. Where could he be going? He came to the head of the street of coin and crime and crossed Broadway. His path was blocked by the fence surrounding old Trinity's churchyard. Grasping the pickets in either hand he stared at the crumbling headstones of those guardsmen ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... several months in each year; then, spinning out its centrifugal force, flew into minute fragments and scattered to extreme ends of the land. The smaller one—the inner circle—revolved sedately in its accustomed grooves, moving no whit faster for the buzz of the monster that surrounded and half hid it for so long; and when that spun itself to pieces moved on as undisturbed ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... man stepped from the room, a gasp of astonishment escaped from the company, and the two jokers, with frightened faces, broke into a shrill, nervous laughter. Then a buzz of talk went round; the fiddlers struck up again; the callers shouted; the dancers stamped, and bowed, and swung their partners ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... still wearing the triple star, crossed quickly to a phone panel in the speaker's stand at one side of the stage. He jerked out an instrument. The buzz of excited whispering that had swept the audience gave place to utter silence. Each quiet, incisive word that Chet spoke was clearly heard. He gave his ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... agreed; he stayed. In the back room where he was sitting with the ladies of the household, coolness reigned supreme; the windows looked out upon a little garden overgrown with acacias. Multitudes of bees, wasps, and humming beetles kept up a steady, eager buzz in their thick branches, which were studded with golden blossoms; through the half-drawn curtains and the lowered blinds this never-ceasing hum made its way into the room, telling of the sultry heat in the air outside, and making the cool of the closed and snug ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... days such books 'swarm and buzz about one:' 'flap them away,' says Chesterfield, 'they have no sting.' The earl directed the whole force of his mind to oratory, and became the finest speaker of his time. Writing to Sir Horace Mann, about the Hanoverian debate (in 1743, Dec. 15), Walpole praising the speeches of Lords Halifax and ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... peace of Canon's Yard when he left Bodger's Street was almost dramatic. All that penetrated there was a subdued buzz with an occasional shrill note as it might be on a penny whistle. The Yard was dark, lit only by a single lamp, and the cobbles uneven. Lights here and there set in the crooked old windows were secret and uncommunicative: the Cathedral towers seemed immensely ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... and it seemed very luxurious after we had set up our cots, tables, chairs, and bath tub; but the house was in the center of the town and the high walls shut out every breath of pure air. The barred windows opened on a street hardly six feet wide, and while we were preparing for bed there was a buzz of subdued whispers outside. We switched on a powerful electric flashlight and there stood at least forty men, women and children gazing at us with rapt attention, but they melted away before the blinding glare like snow ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... get a luggage lurry, an' they had to wheel it up an' daan th' haase floor i' ther turns, callin aght "By leave!" An' them 'at could manage to run ovver one o' th' tother's tooas, an' goa on as if nowt wor, gate one gooid mark, but him at could run buzz agean a chap an' fell him wor th' next on th' list for a guard. It used to be warm wark boath for him at wor wheelin' an' for tothers, but they wor all on 'em bent o' bein' porters, soa they tew'd at it, detarmined to maister all th' ins an' aghts abaat it. Whether all ther trouble will ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... another nest of wasps about my ears. The French fops, here, all buzz and swarm around her; each making love to her, with all the shrugs, grimaces, and ready made raptures of which he is master; and to which I am obliged patiently to listen, or shew myself an ass. These fellows submit to every ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... signal came for the officers to seat themselves. Then, after orders had been given to the attentive Filipino boys, who served as mess attendants, a buzz of conversation ran around ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... in the lobby, where a greater excitement and buzz of talk than usual went on. Where was Dr. Svensen? The other members of the Norwegian delegation could throw no light on the question. He had dined last night at the Beau Rivage, with the British delegation; he had left that hotel soon after eleven, ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... expecting you," she said. There was no time to buzz the colonel; Poe was already ...
— The Foreign Hand Tie • Gordon Randall Garrett
... could stand half an hour without law!! The very honest would turn thieves if not protected, and there would be a go. Besides, this great crime is like a trunk railway, other little crimes run into it and out of it; lies buzz about it like these Australian flies—drat you! Drunkenness precedes and follows it, and perjury rushes to ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... he and I were pulling away in the direction of the ice, I in the bow and he aft, rowing fisherman fashion, face forward. The schooner had backed her yards on the fore when she was within a mile of the berg, and we had not far to row. Our four arms made the fat little jolly-boat buzz over the wrinkled surface of the green, cold water. The wreck—if a wreck she could be called—lay with her decks sloping seawards upon an inclined shelf or beach of ice, with a mass of rugged, abrupt stuff behind her, and vast coagulated lumps heaped like a Stonehenge at her bows and at her ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... flies buzz as in June; the country has become again, for a few hours, for a few days, for as long as this wind will blow, luminous and warm. In front of the mountains, which have assumed violent brown or sombre ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... the orator resumed his seat. The great assembly seemed spell-bound, and some seconds elapsed before the buzz of conversation was heard. John Adams turned to a friend, Judge Iredell, who happened to sit next to him, as if looking for sympathy in his own ...
— Revolutionary Heroes, And Other Historical Papers • James Parton
... the Army seemed at stake. Had mere business, such as the voting of over L50,000,000 for upkeep of Navy, been to the fore, benches would have been half empty. As it was, they were thronged. Over the crowded assembly hurtled that indescribable buzz of excitement that presages eventful action. The PREMIER and LEADER OF OPPOSITION appearing on the scene were severally greeted with strident cheers from their followers. PRINCE ARTHUR, the Dropped Pilot, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 1, 1914 • Various
... towards midnight, to meet whom the head-waiter himself came hurrying from the further end of the room, and whose arrival created a little buzz of interest. The woman who formed the central figure of the little group had for two years known no rival either at Court or in Society. She was the most beautiful woman in England, beautiful too with all the ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to the head of the stairs, ostensibly to be nearer a light, and took out his purse. While counting out the bills, he cast frequent glances down into the lower hall. The buzz of conversation came ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... I was so very sleepy that I could not recollect enough French to answer him. While he continued talking to madame, I dropped off asleep in my chair, and for long in my dreams I heard the buzz of their voices. When I was at last awoke, by feeling a hand placed on my shoulder, the smuggling ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... lady," answered the king, and a buzz of approbation ran through the hall; "and may thy noble spirit and dauntless loyalty inspire him; we shall not need a trusty follower while such as he are round us. Yet, in very deed, my youthful knight must have a lady fair for whom he tilts to-day. Come hither, Isoline; thou lookest ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... took her hands from her hips, settled her yellow handkerchief, and smiled. The silence had been broken by a sound all true Sicilians love, the buzz and the drowsy wail of the ceramella, the bagpipes which the shepherds play as they come down from the hills to the villages when the festival of the Natale is approaching. It was as yet very faint and distant, coming ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... dark, blowy night. Eight bells of the second dog watch had only been struck a few minutes before and the officers were chatting after dinner. Eric was on duty on the bridge with the second lieutenant, when the wireless sending apparatus began to buzz "S O S," "S O S," as the operator relayed a message he evidently had just received. At the same moment the shrill whistle of the speaking-tube that connects the bridge with the wireless ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... she sat on the floor at her granny's feet, her head resting against granny's knee. "I think so too," she said wistfully. Silence fell between them, broken only by the crackling of the fire within and the buzz of insects, and the calling of the birds, outside ...
— The Making of Mona • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... had taken one lewd man in his hands and cast him on the stair, they went, and the noise of their voices, raw and ungentle, filtered away. The two Boers were left at the bedside, among the bottles and the gold and the strewn clothes; and Emmanuel lay rigid, with a buzz in his throat and a spot of blood on his lips. Peter kneeled ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... bell thrice; and the sparrows, scared by the sudden tinkling, flew off with such a mighty buzz of wings that La Teuse, who had just gone back into the sacristy, came out again, grumbling; 'The little rascals! they will mess everything. I'll bet that Mademoiselle Desiree has been here again to scatter ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... broke into a loud buzz of active preparation, as the men busied themselves in bundling up blankets, carrying down camp-kettles to the lake, launching the boats, kicking up lazy comrades, stumbling over and swearing at fallen trees which were not visible in the cold, uncertain light of ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... silently, but a buzz of excitement arose outside. Many persons tried to enter the vestry, but were ordered away, and when Tosh joined his fellow-elders the people were collecting in animated groups in the square, or scattering through the wynds ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... Buckland is so far from being a quiz in a buzz wig, that he is, I think, one of the men I should most choose for an agreeable companion in a post-chaise. Whether he is prepared to undertake so formidable an expedition as you speak of, I should have some doubt, and the rather because he has usually ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... An angry buzz sounded from the log and the bees began crawling out at the end. Hinpoha fled through the woods with Sahwah close at her heels. By the time they reached camp Hinpoha's hand was swelled all out of shape. It was all she could do to repress a cry of pain. Nyoda rose quickly when she ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... short time the new beverage had captured the town, and coffee-houses had been opened in every direction. They sold many things besides coffee, and served a variety of purposes, but primarily they were temples of talk and good-fellowship. The buzz of conversation and the smoke of tobacco alike filled the rooms which were the forerunners of the club-houses ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... pulled himself together with a sharp effort and entered into the conversation that had begun again to buzz round him. Moreover, he entered into it with keen pleasure, for the Brothers—there were perhaps a dozen of them in the little room—treated him with a charm of manner that speedily made him feel one of themselves. This, again, was a very subtle delight to him. He felt that ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... was a man hidden behind whiskers and spectacles. He lived for bugs and butterflies and all insects that fly or crawl or buzz or get down your back or in the butter. He was an etymologist, or words to that effect. He spent his life seining the air for flying fish of the June-bug order, and then sticking pins through 'em and calling ...
— Options • O. Henry
... you can tell when spring is here. How pleasant the air feels as it blows in through the window! It seems to kiss us with its warm breath. You can hear the birds chirping as if they were happy. Perhaps a bee will buzz into the room. Many of the children will bring to school the dainty little spring flowers, anemones, blood ...
— Where We Live - A Home Geography • Emilie Van Beil Jacobs
... thirty little ugly insects crawling about it, which doubtless think their fly to be the bluest, grandest, merriest, most important animal in the universe, and are convinced that the world would be at an end if it ceased to buzz.—S.S. ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... got downstairs it was evident there was a great spread. Two red-plushed footmen stood on guard in the entrance, helping the arrivers out of their wraps, while a buzz of conversation sounded through the partially opened drawing-room door, as Mr. Plummey stood, handle in hand, to announce the names of the guests. Our friends, having the entree, of course passed in as at home, and mingled ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... Gaston heard another door open, and though still in total darkness, perceived that they had gained a wider space. "The passage from the hall to the chapel," whispered the Knight, and feeling by the wall, they crept along, until a buzz of voices reached their ears, and light gleamed beneath a heavy dark curtain which closed the passage. Pausing for an instant, they heard a voice tremulous with fear and eagerness: "It was himself! tall plume, bright armour! the very crosslet ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... party was not less cordial than had been that of the others, and presently all were seated and a buzz of conversation ensued. ...
— Elsie at Home • Martha Finley
... butterfly was inclined to settle on it. Guido put up his hand to catch the butterfly, forgetting his secret in his desire to touch it. The butterfly was too quick—with a snap of his wings, disdainfully mocking the idea of catching him, away he went. Guido nearly stepped on a humble-bee—buzz-zz! the bee was so alarmed he actually crept up Guido's knickers to the knee, and even then knocked himself against a wheat-ear when he started to fly. Guido kept quite still while the humble-bee was on his knee, knowing that he should not be stung if he did not move. ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... to sip its bloom Shall buzz about that glorious tire And, having sipped, shall feel ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 11, 1914 • Various
... pains about the matter; and the consequence was, that all who knew them well had no doubt of their honesty; but many, who knew nothing of them, concluded that the agent must be in the right and the children in the wrong. The buzz of scandal went on for some time without reaching their ears, because they lived very retiredly. But one day, when Mary went to sell some stockings of Peggy's knitting at the neighbouring fair, the man to ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... glancing questioningly at one another. A great many more, too, poured out every second from the forecastle, made curious by the noise. Maclean grasped the crank firmly and gave them every scrap of his attention. There woke an increasing buzz of shouts and cries astern. It culminated presently in the crack of a revolver, a shriek of pain, and a wild British cheer. Then all over the din a loud, insistent whistle shrilled. The sailors forward rushed for their stacked arms, and formed in ranks with the ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... tempers—the Mosquito. At the Sandwich Islands and at two or three of the Society group, there are now thriving colonies of these insects, who promise ere long to supplant altogether the aboriginal sand-flies. They sting, buzz, and torment, from one end of the year to the other, and by incessantly exasperating the natives materially obstruct the benevolent ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... occupying trenches, off and on, for a matter of two months, and have settled down to an unexhilarating but salutary routine. Each dawn we "stand to arms," and peer morosely over the parapet, watching the grey grass turn slowly to green, while snipers' bullets buzz over our heads. Each forenoon we cleanse our dew-rusted weapons, and build up with sandbags what the persevering Teuton has thrown down. Each afternoon we creep unostentatiously into subterranean burrows, while our respective gunners, from a safe position in the ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... he still keep ticking? Why does his round white face Stare at me over the books and ink, And mock at my disgrace? Why does that thrush call, 'Dunce, dunce, dunce!'? Why does that bluebottle buzz? Why does the sun so silent shine? — And what do I care if ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... thing pretty well—Carlis and Paddington and their crew—for when I stepped out of the express elevator, there was no one in sight that I remember but the boy who was with me. I pressed the button of the local, which was just beside the express—there was a buzz and whirring hum as if the elevator had ascended, and the door opened. As I stepped over its threshold, I felt a violent blow and terrific pain on the back of my head, and seemed to fall into limitless ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... it," the Signor announced in a wondering whisper. A little buzz rose, filled the air for a moment and then sank into silence again. Mrs. Lazarus was without her orange because she had to wear mittens now, and that made peeling the thing difficult. "I'm sure," she said, in a voice like that of a ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... around; we know the voice. And when the secretary has computed the rate, if you listen closely you can almost hear the buzz of multiplications and additions which is going on in each man's head as he calculates exactly how much the addition will mean to him in taxes on his farm, his daughter's piano ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... church when the preacher's praying. As for listening, I don't know, but maybe we listen for the sounds that we are so used to hearing at home, the rustle of leaves, the song of a bird, but all we ever hear out here in the daytime is now and then the buzz of a rattler's tail. We don't always shoot 'em because we sort of hate to make so much noise. I reckon that isn't much of an ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders on the Great American Desert • Jessie Graham Flower
... hall which Marjorie and Mary entered had little of the atmosphere supposed to pervade a hall of learning. A loud buzz of conversation greeted their ears. It came from the groups of girls collected in various parts of the hall, who were making the most of their opportunities to talk until called to order. Marjorie gave one swift ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... degrees of heat and cold, and luxurious in the matter of lighting, and he had a fine nose for plumbing. If he had not occupied himself so much with these details, he was the sort of man to have thought Mrs. Pasmer, with her buzz of activities and pretences, rather a tedious little woman. He had some delicate tastes, if not refined interests, and was expensively fond of certain sorts of bric-a-brac: he spent a great deal of time in packing and unpacking it, and he had cases stored ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the presence of a masked figure which had arrested the attention of no single individual before. And the rumor of this new presence having spread itself whisperingly around, there arose at length from the whole company a buzz, or murmur, expressive of disapprobation and surprise—then, finally, of terror, ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... had made might be retrieved by their energetic wills. He heard the bands of music playing in the distance. The merry chimes floated over the water, and bade him good speed. He thought that he could even discern the buzz of enjoyment, and the shout of anticipated triumph. He took out the last letter which Marguerite had written to him, and pressed it to his heart; that day, he thought, was to see them united never to be ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... People were shouting, talking, laughing, waving hats and handkerchiefs. The whole world seemed a buzz of merriment, and out of the very thick of it, Toby's voice, small and tense, ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... reached and their advice or explanations heard. This presumably brilliant assemblage of the financial weight and intelligence of the city appeared as solemn as owls under the pressure of a rumored impending financial crisis. Before Arneel's appearance there was a perfect buzz of ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... red button, the one which should turn him around, and the blue button, which should make him walk into the living room. She heard the little buzz of mechanical life as Pascal began to move. But he did not go into the other room! He was holding a chair for her, and she sat down rather heavily. A sudden rush of pleasure reddened her cheeks. ...
— Weak on Square Roots • Russell Burton
... hot day! 'Twas an evenin' meetin'! All the missionaries to th' Indians were givin' experiences. One got up an' he wanted th' dear sisters to raise a little money to build a fence; a fence, y' understand? An' another got up an' wanted th' dear sisters t' have a sewin' bee, gossip buzz, A call 'em, to raise a little money for the Lord t' build a school. Losh! A stood it long as A could! Then A jumped up! 'Twas a hot night, an' A'd ripped off m' coat! A'm no sure my collar hadn't slumped t' a jelly, too! Says I, 'If ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... stood with him, talking of I know not what, the arrival of the lieutenant-governor was announced. A buzz of whispering ran round the hall. In the succeeding silence that dignitary walked toward us, a space clearing about him as he did so. The mayor advanced to meet him, and I ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... main passage brought them to the door, from which issued a buzz of voices. His host had prepared him to expect company, and on stepping inside this door he saw it in the shape of some twenty-five or thirty men, all in the garb of monks of the same order as ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... carding the wool into fleecy rolls, seated next the fire; for, as the ballad says, "she was old and saw right dimly." The mother, stepping as lightly as one of her girls, spins the rolls into woollen yarn on the great wheel. The oldest daughter sits at the clock-reel, whose continuous buzz and occasional click mingles with the humming rise and fall of the wool-wheel, and the irritating scratch, scratch, of the cards. A little girl at a small wheel is filling quills with woollen yarn for the loom, not a ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... air is filled with insect sounds, ranging from the murmur of invisible gnats and midges, to the impetuous whirring of the great Libellulae, large almost as swallows, and hawking high in air for their food. Swift butterflies glance by, moths flutter, flies buzz, grasshoppers and katydids pipe their shrill notes, sharp as the edges of the sunbeams. Busy bees go humming past, straight as arrows, express-freight-trains from one blossoming copse to another. Showy wasps of many species fume uselessly about, in gallant uniforms, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... Gratz Brown, E. C. Stanton, Anna Dickinson, Lucy Stone, etc., as persons expected or invited to be at the convention. The papers said: "This is one of Sam's shabbiest tricks. Not one of these persons will be present, and he knows it," etc., etc. Our arrival set a buzz going, and when I announced you and Susan and Aunt Fanny for the fall, they began to say "they guessed the thing would carry." Gov. Robinson said he could not go to the Topeka Convention, for he had a lawsuit ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... fear of the old dragon, all were still as mice, so that you might have heard the flies buzz about the inkstand. I then stood up, wretched as I was, and stretched out my arms over my amazed and faint-hearted people and spake, "Can ye thus crucify me together with my poor child? Have I deserved this at your hands? Speak, then; alas, will none ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... The faint buzz that had floated over the school-room at our entrance died away, and the interrupted lessons were resumed. By degrees I recovered my coolness, and ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... time the buzz of voices was temporarily broken by the crash of the piano, but always before the end of each performance it rose again, and steadily swelled in volume. In truth, the excellence of the performance ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... back in his seat in a dazed fashion. All round him were applauding men and women ... and he could not applaud. There was a buzz of admiring talk, and he could hear the words "wonderful" and "magnificent" ... and he had not been moved at all. The great voice had not caused him to feel any thrill or emotion whatever. It was wonderful, indeed, but that was all that it was. There was ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... goodwife, in linsey-woolsey short gown and red petticoat, steps lightly back and forth in calf pumps beside the great wheel, or poises gracefully to give a final twist to the long-drawn thread of wool or tow. The continuous buzz of the flax wheels, harmonizing with the spasmodic hum of the big wheel, shows that the girls are preparing a stock of linen against their wedding day. Less active, and more fitful, rattles the quill-wheel, where the younger children are ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... instinct of the brute the intellect of man, and the genius of woman. I can understand that those little spiders, Mademoiselle de Belor, Mademoiselle de Trans, and others, after working so long at their webs without catching a fly, without so much as hearing a buzz, should be furious; I can even forgive their spiteful speeches. But that you, who can marry your daughter when you please, you, who are rich and titled, you who have nothing of the provincial about ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... Hum-a-bum buzz! As I went over Tipple-tine I met a flock of bonny swine; Some yellow-nacked, some yellow backed! They were the very bonniest swine That e'er ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter
... Then he told Kitty she was looking very pretty that evening, and presented Shtcherbatsky to Karenin. In a moment he had so kneaded together the social dough that the drawing room became very lively, and there was a merry buzz of voices. Konstantin Levin was the only person who had not arrived. But this was so much the better, as going into the dining room, Stepan Arkadyevitch found to his horror that the port and sherry had been procured from Depre, ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... can be found, it is soon filled by tottering babies and mischievous children. The country-women come with their large dangling earrings of thin gold, wearing pink tulips or lemon-buds in their black hair. A low buzz of gossiping and mutual recognition keeps the air alive. The whole service seems a holiday—a general enjoyment of gala dresses and friendly greetings, very different from the silence, immobility, and noli me tangere aspect of an English congregation. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... a breathless silence pervaded the spectators, who by their eager looks evinced the absorbing interest they took in the soul-stirring spectacle. Anon, a band of martial instruments struck up;—a general buzz arose on every side, and, amidst the overwhelming din that prevailed throughout the circus, the picadores and the rest of their party made their entrance into the arena. First came the picadores, with their horses blindfold, wearing enormous ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... the saloon. A buzz of talk up and down the long room promptly died away as again the eyes of many men travelled his way. It struck him that they had all been talking of him; he knew that they must have marked those signs ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... jerks. Mr. Beaver's services were invaluable in such cases as this when gossip was to be repeated, for his stuttering compelled him to leave just enough unsaid to make his news the more startling. He was seen slowly pumping his way from group to group, and there followed in his wake the buzz ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... sinking back in the tonneau. "I said 'old man'. Singular case, and that lets Siddons out rather neatly. Hum. I'll bet a cookie he knows more about flying than I do—or anyone else, for that matter. Well, we'll see. I wonder what sort of outfit Buzz drew." ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... "Santa Klaus doesn't buzz," said the Chintz Imp. "He comes down flop! Once in your aunt's time, I knew him nearly stick in the chimney. He had too many things in his sack. You should have heard how he struggled, it was like thunder! Everyone said how high ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... jungle—the rustling of millions of leaves—the buzz of insects—the voices of the birds and monkeys seemed blended into a strangely soothing purr, as though he lay apart, far from the myriad life whose sounds came to him only as a ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... girl!" a woman's voice said. There had come a sudden lull in the buzz of talk, and the exclamation reached the ears of many more than his for whom it ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... away over the brim of the world. "S.O.S.," it ran, "S.O.S." There followed half inarticulate fragments of a latitude. That evening about sundown we ran into the shreds of some ocean conversation about boats' crews, and about someone who was still absent—just that broken fragment in the buzz of the wireless conversation which runs around the world. A big Australian transport, we knew, was some twelve hours away from us upon the waters. Could it be about her that these personages of the ocean were calling one to another? Days afterwards we heard that it had not been an Australian ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... act closed amid great applause, several recalls of smiling and bowing actors followed, and then, during the wait, came a great buzz of talk. Robert shook himself ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... by moment they expected their own hiding-place to be known, and that they would be engaged fighting for their lives with their relentless foes; but the hours wore on, and though they could hear the buzz of many voices, and sometimes dark shadowy forms could be made out away on the plain, the fugitives were in dense shadow, and remained unmolested till ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... from its narrow-passionate friendships) is usually apt to be acrid and watery and sour in its judgment and creeds—it has the quality of any other unripe fruit: it is middle age that is just and tolerant, that has found room enough in the world for itself and all human flies to buzz out their lives good-humoredly together. It is youth who can see a tangible devil at work in every party or sect opposed to its own, whose enemy is always a villain, and who finds treachery and falsehood in the friend who is occasionally bored or indifferent: ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... cannot stand this anny longer. I'm that nairvous I can't hear a fly buzz widout hot streaks chasin' up and down me spine like little red snakes. And man, luk at yersilf. Why, ye're hairy as a go-at and yer eyes are loike two white onions. I say ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... had been told again and again was mere fancy. With a self-control that was unlike her, an unnatural product of her unnatural state, she locked her jaws together that she might not scream this once. And in the eery stillness that followed the effort, which had made her ears buzz and her temples throb, she heard quite sanely Florence's denial of some charge her twin had ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... half-grown boys noisily fared at another table; the Mexicans hung listless and phlegmatic about their wares. And it was still. The night hum of the city crowded to the wall of dark buildings surrounding the Plaza, and subsided to an indefinite buzz through which sharply perforated the crackle of the languid fires and the rattle of fork and spoon. A sedative wind blew from the southeast. The starless firmament pressed down upon the earth ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... built it, deep into the ground; high they built it, high into the air. And now they use this building built by them. The sky scraper houses an army of ten thousand men. All day they clamber up and down its core like insects in a giant tree. They buzz and buzz, and ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... children grow older they have tops to spin that whistle as good a whistle, and buzzers to buzz that buzz as good a buzz, and music balls to roll, and music carts to pull, that emit sounds as much to their satisfaction, as anything that ministered to the childish tastes of our grandfathers; and these become as much a part of their business and their life as if they were living, talking ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland
... altar, and began to fidget with the fastenings of his rich robes. And they made a lane for us up to the west door; then I put on my helm and we began to go up the nave, then suddenly the singing of the monks and all stopped. I heard a clinking and a buzz of voices in the choir. I turned, and saw that the bright noon sun was shining on the gold of the priest's vestments, as they lay on the floor, and on the mail that the ...
— The Hollow Land • William Morris
... a platform behind the speaker sat a grey-haired man in spectacles, and Lemuel knew that he was in the court-room, and that this must be the judge. He could not see much of the room over the top of the railing, but there was a buzz of voices and a stir of feet beyond, that made him think the place was full. But full or empty, it was the same to him; his shame could not be greater or less. He waited apathetically while the clerk read off the charges against ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... murmur of voices in the street. Jumping up, his feet struck a cold tiled floor which sent a chill over him. Peering through the curtain, he discovered a crowd of people looking up at his room and a buzz of voices was heard all about the house. Not remembering where he was, he pulled a bell cord and the summons was answered by the landlady, who greeted him kindly and hoped he felt better. She also informed him that two gentlemen were below ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... You pipe this through copper wire to whatever devices you have, and they can't be very many. You say you talk across the country. I'll bet you don't talk at all but send little clicks, dots and dashes.... I'm right aren't I?" The foot shuffling and rising buzz from the adepts was a sure sign that he was hitting close. "I have an idea for you, I think I'll invent the telephone. Instead of the old clikkety-clack how would you like to really talk across the country? Speak ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... so foolishly weak, and there was such a pain in my head as I began to remember it all once more, that I could not ask any more questions. Presently my head began to buzz and the pain in it to get worse, and then for a week I had a fever that came near to taking me off. But I pulled through"—he squeezed his wife's hand, that again had been laid in his—"and in three weeks I was back with the regiment again. It was all due to my having ...
— For The Honor Of France - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... d'Aubigne, lacked neither charm nor grace. He even assumed, when he wished, an excellent manner; but this cavalier, his own master from his childhood, knew no other law but his own pleasures and desires. He had made people talk about him in his earliest youth; he awoke the same buzz of scandal now that he was fifty. Madame de Maintenon, hoping to reform him, and wishing to constrain him to beget them an heir, made him consent to the bonds of marriage. She had just discovered a very pretty heiress of very good family, when he married secretly the daughter ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... a man had the art of the second sight for seeing lies, as they have in Scotland for seeing spirits, how admirably he might entertain himself in this town; to observe the different shapes, sizes, and colours, of those swarms of lies which buzz about the heads of some people, like flies about a horse's ears in summer: or those legions hovering every afternoon in Popes-head Alley[6], enough to darken the air; or over a club of discontented ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... sorry," said, quite humble, the busy droning bee, "The noise is just my bumble, and natural, you see. And if I didn't buzz so I'm sure that you'll agree I'd only be a big fly, and not ...
— Policeman Bluejay • L. Frank Baum
... I was going I heard a loud buzz above my head, and something hit me in the face. It was a beetle, whirring about in the air, and as I turned to leave poor Robin the beetle sat down on him, on the middle of his red breast, and by still hearing the buzzing, ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... trembling a little, but she said that she had been too anxious about me, in my absence, to think of herself, which was perhaps a good thing. I noticed, when I joined them in the garden, after the roar had changed again to a buzz, that Dierdre stood close to Brian, and that his hand was on her shoulder, her hand on Sirius's beautiful head. Yet I felt too strangely happy to be jealous. I suppose it must have been through my prayer—or the ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
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