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More "Humming" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Sturnella magna neglecta. Horned lark. Otocoris alpestris leucolaema. Yellow warbler. Dendroica aestiva. Western wood-pewee. Contopus richardsonii. Humming-bird. Trochilus colubris. Long-tailed chat. ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... there had been storm mutterings within the awful cave of Old Grim Barnes had never before had a depressing effect upon her hero. He had always sallied forth with airy tread, humming a tune or laughing with his eyes. What could have happened at this fateful meeting? Perhaps he had been disinherited. Rapture of raptures, he had confessed his love for some howling beauty of humble station, had been cut ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... pick it all out," declared Phronsie in a tone of determination. And wiping off the tears on the back of her fat little hand, she set to work, humming ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney
... of an hour or so, tactfully circumvented Peter into offering him the loan of a car since he had to go into New York, and intimated that he would drop back and in at the Rackstraws' dance as soon as possible, after many apologies for daring to leave at all. Then he went slowly upstairs, humming loudly as he did so. Elinor ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... interval. "Two thousand years being a second to the soul could not cause its extinction. . . . Resting by the tumulus, the spirit of the man who had been interred there was to me really alive, and very close. This was quite natural and simple as the grass waving in the wind, the bees humming, and the lark's songs. Only by the strongest effort of the mind could I understand the idea of extinction; that was supernatural, requiring a miracle; the immortality of the soul natural, like the earth. Listening to the sighing of the grass I felt ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... were within arrow flight, and the bolts from the crossbowmen pattered upon the English ship. These short thick devil's darts were everywhere humming like great wasps through the air, crashing against the bulwarks, beating upon the deck, ringing loudly on the armor of the knights, or with a soft muffled thud sinking to the ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... it," said Sebastian absently. He was humming to himself. "Listen to this!" he said eagerly. He hummed a few bars. "That's Buxtehude's—isn't it great!" His face went tumpty-tumpty with the notes, and the blue eyes shone. "But this is the one I like best—listen!" He turned over the pages rapidly. "Here ...
— Unfinished Portraits - Stories of Musicians and Artists • Jennette Lee
... arbor, stretched a wide field with a fringe of woods at its distant edge, gay with the colors of autumn. The sky was bright and blue, and fair white clouds moved slowly over its surface; the air was sunny and warm, with bumble-bees humming about some late-flowering shrubs; and, high in the air, floated two great turkey-buzzards, with a beauty of motion surpassed by no other flying thing, with never a movement of their wide-spread wings, except to ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... seat of thy glory A child of night, misfortune, and the Escurial! What if, when I were seated there, the past, Plunging its yellow hands into my soul, With hideous claws unearthed some ancestor: Some Rudolph or some Philip? Ah! I dread Lest at the humming of Imperial bees The monster sleeping in me ...
— L'Aiglon • Edmond Rostand
... instant Arlee hesitated, while her imagination fluttered about the thought like humming-birds about sweets. Already she was thinking of the story she could have to tell to her fellow travelers here and to the people at home. It was a chance, she repeated to herself, in a thousand, and the familiar details ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... refreshments, and, after a while, left him to repose. On again repairing to the garden, every object assumed its wonted appearance. The fragrance of the orange and the jasmine was no longer lost to me. The humming birds, which swarmed round the flowering cytisus and the beautiful water-fall, once more delighted the eye and the ear. I took my usual bath, as the sun was sinking below the mountain; and, finding the Hermit still soundly ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... Not she, bless your soul! She would never have thought of such a thing. 'Twas me that studied it out, lying awake on windy nights because I knew she couldn't sleep for the roaring and whistling around the corners of the old house, and the wind humming in the chimneys and between the window-sashes like a bumblebee as big as a whale. It made her feel so lonesome and blue that many's the time I've heard her crying to herself when she thought I was sound asleep. We were going to pull down the old house, anyhow. ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... my confession, I felt easier in mind as I lay huddled under the seat, though it seemed to me that Mr. Jope took matters lightly. For the squadron ahead had resumed the singing of Tom Bowling and he sat humming a bar or two here and there with evident pleasure, and paused only to bow out of window and acknowledge the cheers of ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... two of the girls glanced round at Kathleen in amazement. She did not say anything further but left the room. When she got into the passage she hummed a little air. The teacher who had summoned her had gone on in front. Kathleen followed her at a respectful distance, and still humming "The wearing of the Green," she knocked at Miss ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... the new strength that filled her, under a pear-tree, in a pleasant patch of shadow, eating with relish from Hester's morning tray. Ann knelt not far from her in the sun, not too hot at this hour for a hardy worker, and soon her low humming rose like a bee's note from under ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... he is the fool of ideas, and leads a heavenly life. But if his eye is set on the things to be done, and not on the truth that is still-taught, and for the sake of which the things are to be done, then the voice grows faint, and at last is but a humming in ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... surrenders either fortresses or ships; who, like Thorycion,[427] the wretched collector of tolls, sends prohibited goods from Aegina to Epidaurus, such as oar-leathers, sailcloth and pitch, and who secures a subsidy for a hostile fleet,[428] or soils the statues of Hecat,[429] while he is humming some dithyramb. Away from here, the orator who nibbles at the salary of the poets, because he has been scouted in the ancient solemnities of Dionysus; to all such I say, and I repeat, and I say it again for the third time, "Make way for the choruses ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... something more at hand. A flutter scarcely recognizable, as of the wings of awaking delight, would stir her little heart with a sensation of physical presence and motion; she would find herself giving an involuntary skip as she walked along, and now and then humming a bit of a psalm tune. A hidden well was throbbing in the child's bosom. Its waters had been frozen by the winter; and the spring, which sets all things springing, had made it flow and swell afresh, soon to break bubbling forth. But her ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... She laughed, patted Lucia's full-blown cheek. "Not quite yet." And she went on in to tea, humming to herself gayly; she did not understand her own ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... Carnival's coming, Oh Thomas Moore, The Carnival's coming, Oh Thomas Moore, Masking and humming, Fifing and drumming, Guitarring and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 474 - Vol. XVII. No. 474., Supplementary Number • Various
... beautiful gray dress, with the deep black lace flounces, which she wore at my Lord Comandine's on the night of the private theatricals, would have done any man good. To hear her sing any of my little ballads, "Knowest Thou the Willow-tree?" for instance, or "The Rose upon my Balcony," or "The Humming of the Honey-bee," (far superior in MY judgment, and in that of SOME GOOD JUDGES likewise, to that humbug Clarence Bulbul's ballads,)—to hear her, I say, sing these, was to be in a sort of small Elysium. Dear, dear little Fanny Dixon! she was like a little chirping bird ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... He was almost humming the words, and it dawned upon him that the other reminded him of the trade wind, of the Northeast Trade, steady, and cool, and strong. He was equable, he was to be relied upon, and withal there was a certain bafflement ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... the hatch. But the cockpit of the Follow Me remained empty and the entrance to the cabin was closed. Wink, his revolver ready, had returned to his post and watched grimly while the Adventurer, her engine fairly humming, slowly wore down the distance that separated her from ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... tribes by which they are inhabited. Our residence on the island of Wakenaam had been truly a tropical one. During the night, the tree frogs, crickets, razor-grinders, reptiles, and insects of every kind, kept up a continued concert. At sunrise, when the flowers unfolded themselves, the humming birds, with the metallic lustre glittering on their wings, passed rapidly from blossom to blossom. The bright yellow and black mocking-birds flew from their pendant nests, accompanied by their neighbours, the wild bees, which construct their earthen hives on the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 578 - Vol. XX, No. 578. Saturday, December 1, 1832 • Various
... no one in the little salon, no one upstairs; Madame Pyat was away for the day, nursing a daughter-in-law. In all the house and garden there was not a sound or sign of life but the cat asleep on the stone step of the kitchen, and the bees humming ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... temple. One might expect to see Buddha squatting on the embroidered counterpane—the work of half a lifetime. When the curtains were drawn back, a huge moth flew out of the darkness, and spun and wheeled round the room with an awful humming noise, and to the superstitious mind might have suggested a human soul embodied in this phantasmal greyness, with power of sound in such ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... riding serenely by the side of the great ship, looking for all the world like a humming bird under the wings of an ostrich, and uttered a little ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... humming a plaintive air; Saveliitch, sound asleep, swayed from side to side; our kibitka was gliding rapidly over the winter road. I saw in the distance a village well known to my eyes, with its palisade and church spire on the steep bank of the river Iaik. ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin
... "Higher! Lift!" whispered the boatswain, fiercely.—"He won't go," stammered one of the men, shakily, and both appeared ready to drop everything. Mr. Baker waited, burying his face in the book, and shuffling his feet nervously. All the men looked profoundly disturbed; from their midst a faint humming noise spread out—growing louder.... "Jimmy!" cried Belfast in a wailing tone, and there was a second ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... no desire to exchange the noisy, wholesome family life of the Martels for the silent, somber grandeur of the Bartletts. His affections had taken root in the shabby little brown house that always seemed to be humming gaily to itself. When the piano was not being played, the violin or guitar was. There were bursts of laughter, snatches of song, and young people going and coming through doors that never ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... apt pupil to Timothy's friendly instructions when he had come home from college and passed on his acquirements in the art terpsichorean. The lessons had taken place in the central, biggest space in the barn, as she had said, with Timothy humming an accompaniment until breathless, and then she taking up the tune in her turn. This little taste of the joys of dancing had made her long for more. She failed to see how anything that made for such pure and unadulterated ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... I snapped as I hurried to the instrument. "Dival, take those reports." I gestured towards the two attention signals that were glowing and softly humming and thrust my head into the shelter of the television instrument's ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... Horrible!" she cried as she sank into the nearest chair, and clapped her hands to her ears. But she could not shut it out. Still she heard the humming of the whip and the cruel sound of the falling blows. Mechanically she counted them, unconsciously almost, and at twenty she heard them cease. Was it over? Was he dead, this poor unfortunate? Moved by a curiosity that was greater than her loathing, she rose and ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... through the bolted door that communicated with the adjoining bed-chamber, the business of a sleuth seemed to comprise going to bed. Lanyard, shaving and dressing, could distinctly hear a tuneless voice contentedly humming "Sally in our Alley," a rendition punctuated by one heavy thump and then another and then by a heartfelt sigh of relief—as Roddy kicked off his boots—and followed by the tapping of a pipe against grate-bars, the squeal of a window lowered for ventilation, ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... laughs I had at the care he took of his lily-white hands, and the jokes we cracked upon his girl-like manners, voice, and conversation. The boatswain, who was in his watch, assured me that he rarely gave an order without humming it out to a tune of some ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... human race. When the great god Tezcatlipoca decreed that the waters should retire, Tezpi sent a vulture from the bark. The bird, feeding on the carcasses with which the earth was laden, did not return. Tezpi sent out other birds, of which the humming-bird only came back with a leafy branch in its beak. Then Tezpi, seeing that the country began to vegetate, left his bark on ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... can, then sits up and begs," sang Cora helping herself to that portion of the fare, and keeping time with the humming toast. ...
— The Motor Girls On Cedar Lake - The Hermit of Fern Island • Margaret Penrose
... lesser and earthly sweetness, and the blessed light of the sun will dim and all but extinguish the deceitful gleams that tempt us into the swamps where we shall be drowned. Turn away, then, from these things; cleave to Jesus Christ; and though in ourselves we may be as weak as a humming-bird before a snake, or a rabbit before a tiger, He will give us strength, and the light of His face shining down upon us will fix our eyes and make us insensible to the fascinations of the sorcerers. So we shall not need to dread the question, 'Who hath bewitched you?' but ourselves challenge ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... drawing-room in search of Mr Gwynne, humming a little Scotch air, the refrain of which is 'and troth I'll wed ye a,' a thing he has often wished he ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... Humming a bar of a Genoese barcarole, Muriel ran up stairs to join her governess; but Salome turned and followed the master of the house to the ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... coming, hear the humming Of the bumble bees; Life is waking, buds are breaking, Love ...
— The Last West and Paolo's Virginia • G. B. Warren
... right here. The tank is kept supplied by two tubes which lead into it, and each of which joins a small pump operated by a fan which is right here on each side of the fuselage where the onrush of wind will keep it humming as ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... tub for her Monday morning siesta. She was humming a strange tune over the cascade like another Minnehaha. And from the behavior of the dining-room chandelier and the plates on the sideboard she was ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... appetite. She seemed acutely sensitive to the perceptions of the moment. The shade of the cedars was cool. And out on the desert she could see the dark smoky veils of heat lifting. The breeze carried a dry odor of sand and grass. She heard bees humming by. And all around the great isolated monuments stood up, red tops against the blue sky. It was a silent, dreaming, impressive place, where she ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... pronounced with drowsy solemnity; "Solomon was wise; and Jack's wise. Jack goes to sleep, when the liquor's done. Take away the bottle, before the overseer comes in. If any man says I am not sober, that man lies. The Rhine wine has a way of humming in one's head. That's all, Mr. Overseer—that's all. Do I see the sun rising, up there in the skylight? I wish you good-night; ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... same time commencing to pull the feathers out of one myself. The poor doctor looked as though he was wishing he had made a specialty of dementia, and stood like a goose, looking at the chicken. Charlie soon became very restless—went inside the tent, and then came out, humming all the time. Finally he gave in, and coming over to us, fairly snatched the birds from me and said, "Me flixee him," and carried the whole bunch back of his tent where we could not see him. Since that evening Charlie has been the most delighted one in camp when ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... laughed and went on. The house seemed strangely quiet to him, though he could hear Winnie humming in the kitchen and appetizing odors promised a dinner on time. In the upstairs hall, Rosemary tip-toed to meet him, her eyes ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... Mass in the small, ugly chapel down beyant near Ballybrosna. Some people, it is true, said that she was "just a fairy of a crathur, and too little for anythin'," and she was, no doubt, diminutive in size. Nor had she any brilliancy of colouring to make amends in a humming-bird's fashion for the insignificance of her proportions, resembling rather, with her dark eyes and hair, one of those filmy white blossoms which look the paler and frailer for their knots of ebon ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... workmen, the rumble of the artillery as it was placed in position, the measured tread of the battalions as they shifted their places or marched off under Thornton,—all these and the thousand other sounds of warlike preparation were softened and blended by the distance into one continuous humming murmur, which struck on the ears of the American sentries with ominous foreboding for the morrow. By midnight Jackson had risen and was getting every thing in readiness to hurl back the blow that he rightly judged ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... at your feet. The ricochets are in the majority, for with the vast number of intervening walls and trees and the sloping Chinese roofs which pen us in on all sides, the nickel, iron and lead of Mannlicher and Mauser rifles and Tower muskets are soon converted into mere discordant humming-birds, whose greatest inconvenience is their sound. Never have I heard such a humming as these ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... dreamily at the humming-birds hovering over the honeysuckle; "and if we should, everything would be different. Bless dear old Bell's heart! What a lovely summer she must be having! I wonder what ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... yet been done?" Newman repeated the words, unconscious of their comical effect. He had lost the sense of what the marquis was saying; M. de Bellegarde's superior style was a mere humming in his ears. All that he understood, in his deep and simple indignation, was that the matter was not a violent joke, and that the people before him were perfectly serious. "Do you suppose I can take this?" ...
— The American • Henry James
... as he sat on the bench in our garden and fanned himself with his hat, "now that you have got the old town geared up and jogging along smoothly with your almost boylike energy, let's forget all about 'em and get ready a really humming Scout-Campfire ceremonial for the second night of commencement. I have got one gruesome idea I will be ready to tell you about to-morrow. We needn't let in Roxy or the Dumpling or the other Kittens until it is all fixed, for they will be frozen ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... tiny switch that brought his filament points trembling together under the atmospheric pressure so far underground. A tiny spark danced and throbbed through the tiny glass tube before him, beginning to buzz as it started the circuit of increasing coils, and soon humming and vibrating as the helium and vacuum tubes swelled it to full power. Spark after spark, increased almost beyond imagination, followed one after another. The Miner ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... French battery commander, yesterday. He was cantering a showy chestnut mare over the turf, humming a tune aloud. He looked very fit and very much in love with the world. I asked him what he meant by it. He replied that he couldn't help it; everybody was combining to make him happy; his C.O. had fallen down a gun-pit and broken a leg; he had won two hundred francs from his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 23, 1917 • Various
... My watch is wound, a key is in my pocket, And the sky is darkened as I descend the stair. There are shadows across the windows, clouds in heaven, And a god among the stars; and I will go Thinking of him as I might think of daybreak And humming a tune ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... light something similar to the light of the glow-worm, only more red and brilliant, danced around me like sparks from a smith's anvil when he is beating a bar of red-hot iron. These creatures flutter about with a humming noise, and frequently settle in large swarms upon branches of trees, giving them the semblance of so many pieces of timber taken newly out of a fire. When viewed by daylight they are in no way remarkable for their elegance, resembling in the shape of the body a long beetle which ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... had come the night when he had hardly forborne to throw the whole thing into the fire; and the next morning he had begun the planning of the new Romilly. It had been on that morning that Mrs. Barrett, overhearing him humming a brief phrase that the dripping of a tap the night before had suggested, had informed him that he was singing some air he had never in his life heard before, called "The ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... know, or if you do not know I hope you will learn, that it is always those who are busiest at their work that can be merriest in their hours of leisure. Nothing gives us such an appetite for enjoyment as hearty work. So Amy tripped on, humming a cheerful hymn, while poor Kitty kept on saying over and over again the words of her hymn, and vainly trying to stop her ears from hearing and her eyes from seeing all the pleasant sights and sounds around her. But the birds were so busy singing, and ...
— Amy Harrison - or Heavenly Seed and Heavenly Dew • Amy Harrison
... some confirmation of this strange instinct his eyes fell on the small blue envelope which had been placed on the mantelpiece by his servant. It was addressed to himself. Fortunately, whilst he was opening it, Brigit's attention was still riveted on the old song which she was humming over at the piano. She spoke to him three times before ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... her in the pride of young womanhood, lovely and fitted to be loved, the sharer of my confidence, and one capable of entering into all my plans of life. How often that day did the murmuring of a brook or the humming of a bee become blended in my imagination with the song, the laugh, the call, or the prayers of that beloved sister whose spirit had ascended to heaven, and who was no more to mingle in my ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... had a "hockey stick" play round her ankles in recess, because she got above a fellow in the class. I guess she never had him twitch off her best cap, and toss it in a mud-puddle. I guess she never had to give her humming-top to quiet the baby, and had the paint all sucked off. I guess she never saved up all her coppers a whole winter to buy a trumpet, and then was told she must not blow it, because it ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... blind-man's-buff, where every one tapped him in passing, leaving him puzzled and ignorant as to whither they had gone and from what point they would come next. The bullets sounded like rustling silk, or like humming-birds on a warm summer's day, or like the wind as it is imitated on the stage of a theatre. Any one who has stood behind the scenes when a storm is progressing on the stage, knows the little wheel wound with silk that brushes against ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... promiscuously at all the great men of history, including, in our own country, Washington and Jefferson as well as Burr. In England, when Gladstone was more than seventy years of age, he once stopped to ask a question of a woman in the street. Within twenty-four hours the London clubs were humming with a sort of demoniac glee over the story that this aged and austere old gentleman was not above ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... fervency in midwinter. If the snow falls very fast, and promises a heavy storm he will complacently sit down allow himself to be snowed under. Approaching him at such times, he suddenly bursts out of the snow at your feet, scattering the flakes in all directions, and goes humming away through the woods like a bombshell,—a picture of native ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... manner, a strange thing occurred. Her sister seemed to have been attacked by a sudden fit of madness. She had caught up a light shawl, which she extended from hand to hand, as if she were dancing with some one, and then she proceeded to execute a slow waltz in this circumscribed space, humming the improvised music in a mystical and rhythmical manner. And what were these dark utterances that the inspired one gave forth, as she glanced from time to time at ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... self-inflicted, did Patty good, and humming a lively tune, she busied herself with arranging some fans and frills in boxes to ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... M is a semivowel and a liquid, capable of an audible, humming sound through the nose, when the mouth is closed. It is heard in map, murmur, mammon. In the old words, compt, accompt, comptroller, (for count, account, controller,) the m is sounded as n. M before ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... the letter that was to rejoice the heart of Gian Maria. He chose a favourable moment to despatch it, as he had despatched the former ones, tied about the quarrel of an arbalest, and he saw Gian Maria's signal—for which the letter had provided—that the plan would be adopted. Humming a gay measure, jubilant at the prospect of seeing himself so amply avenged, Gonzaga passed down and out into the castle gardens to join the ladies in their merry-making over a ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... parting wave of the hand he left the room, and Villiers heard him humming a tune softly to himself as he ascended the stairs to his own apartments, where, ever since he arrived, he had made it his custom to do two or three hours' steady writing every morning. For a moment or so after he ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... purpose; but her wish to converse went no further. As soon as her simple queries were answered—and answered they all were, in the fullest and kindest manner—she withdrew to her scat, and continued to work on a coarse garment that she was making for her father, sometimes humming a low melancholy ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... like this great, busy, restless, humming city, though the only home I have to offer you, I am truly sorry to say, is in a boarding-house, comfortable though it is. Remembering Aunt Ellen's beautiful home in California, which I visited fifteen years ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... we have already said, Komel lacked not for tenderness of feeling. Her heart was gentle and susceptible; but dashing now the tears from her eyes, she assumed a forced calmness, and strove to reason with herself as she said, quietly, "We shall meet again in heaven!" Humming some wild air of her native land, the slave then tried to lose herself in some trifling occupation, that she might partially ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... hastily, humming a tune in happy excitement. Her whole being was charged with happiness—for the ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... a voice, I know not whence, Thrills clearly through mine inward sense, Saying, "See where she sits at home, While thou in search of her dost roam! All summer long her ancient wheel Whirls humming by the open door, Or, when the hickory's social zeal Sets the wide chimney in a roar, Close-nestled by the tinkling hearth, It modulates the household mirth With that sweet, serious undertone Of Duty, music all her own; Still, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the piano and her slim, nervous hands wandered soundlessly a moment above the keys. Then a wailing minor melody grew beneath them—unsatisfied, asking, with now and then an ecstasy of joyous chords that only died again into the querying despair of the original theme. She broke off abruptly, humming the words ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... as she saw his eyes brighten at the sights all round him. "Yes, indeed! I've a small collection myself, but nothing like this! I study about birds every chance I get. Oh, see the humming birds! Aren't ...
— Two Little Women on a Holiday • Carolyn Wells
... in his mother's mouth than ever, Ranny drew in his lips for a whistle; but instead of whistling he said, "Poor old Humming-bird." ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... in one of the poorest streets of London, Pierre, a faithful French boy, sat humming by the bedside of his sick mother. There was no bread in the closet, and for the whole day he had not tasted food. Yet he sat humming to keep up his spirits. Still at times he thought of his loneliness and hunger, and he could scarcely keep the tears from his eyes; for he knew that ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... shoulders of the man as he stooped over on the other side of the fire to throw on more wood. Presently she knew he had thrown himself down with his head on the saddle, but she could hear him still humming softly something that sounded like a lullaby. When the firelight flared up ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... one of the poorer streets of London, little Pierre, a fatherless French boy, sat humming by the bedside of his sick mother. There was no bread in the house; and he had not tasted food all day. Yet he sat humming to keep ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... on the table with one's fingers, making various clicking, whistling, or humming sounds, massaging one's face, scratching one's chin with the cards, or waving the card one is going to play aloft in the air in Smart Alec fashion as though shouting, "I know what you are going to lead! And my card is ready!" All ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... scattered his wits, and Martin lay in the scuppers, blinking at the dancing lights before his eyes. In his ears was a great humming. Then, after a moment, the humming broke into parts and became a babel ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... leapt from her bed and looked out upon a sunny summer's day, humming with busy life, fragrant with scent of flowers, thrilling ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... desks in here, and typers humming, as Vacuum Tube Transport office workers, mobilized for this special service, processed volunteers for the company forces. Harried noncoms and junior-grade officers buzzed everywhere, failing miserably to bring order to the chaos. To the right was a door with a medical cross newly ...
— Mercenary • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... little while Charmian came in, still humming the air of her song, and not troubling even to glance in ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... hand, and with a few more light parting words took his graceful presence out of the room, and went down the stairs humming a tune as ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... ye quaff with me, my lads, And it's will ye quaff with me? It is a draught of nut-brown ale I offer unto ye. All humming in the tankard, lads, It cheers the heart forlorn; Oh! here's a friend to everyone, 'Tis ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... drowsy parlour, the humming afternoon coming in at the door, 'the blue fly' singing on the hot pane, dreaming all kinds of gauzy-winged dreams, while my body absorbed ham sandwiches and some excellent ale. Of course I did not ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... shout at the same time, and I would if I could trust this pullet in the skillet to either you or Dabney whilst I did it. The Lord wouldn't listen to no shoutin' from a cook whose chicken was frying black while she did her praisin'," and as she spoke Mammy began a low humming, swaying from table to stove with a rhythm in the swing of her fat body that had a certain dignified beauty to it. It was crude emotion, and I knew it, but I felt it work in my own body as I let the significance of what she had told me about the lessening amount of whiskey ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... places where everybody meets everybody, and where lazy hours can be conveniently lounged away, the exhibitions in some sort supply in the afternoon what the Opera and parties do in the evenings. Nearly all through the summer-day, they are crowded with a softly-rustling, humming, buzzing crowd, coming and going perhaps, taking little heed of the nominal attraction, but sauntering from room to room, or ensconcing themselves in colonies or clusters of chairs, and lounging vacantly in cool lobbies. At energetic sight-seers, who are labouring away, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... from the wings, soon to give place, when the curtain rises, to the brilliant light from the theatre, Cardailhac in black coat and white cravat, his hat cocked over one ear, casts a last glance over the arrangement of the scenery, hastens the workmen, compliments the ingenue, humming a tune the while, radiant and superb. To see him, no one would ever suspect the terrible anxieties by which his mind is beset. As he was involved with all the others in the Nabob's downfall, in which his ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... the ball. But the Frenchmen snatched that honour from us, for as I was descending from the poop to the quarter-deck after having hoisted the ensign, I saw a jet of flame and a cloud of smoke burst from the stranger's port side, and immediately afterwards a heavy shot flew humming high over our mastheads. Almost immediately afterward three of our starboard main-deck guns spoke simultaneously, and, as the smoke from them swept away ahead of us, I heard the captain of the aftermost ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... Ben was there, Humming a song upon the old black settle, "Or leave a kiss within the cup And I'll not ask for wine," But meanwhile, he drank malmsey. [Footnote: ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... render the Turkish trenches untenable. Twice, whilst their six precious mortars have been firing, I have stood for half an hour with Birdie, watching and drinking in encouragement. About one bomb a minute was the rate of fire and as it buzzed over our own trenches like a monstrous humming bird all the naked Anzacs laughed. Then, such an explosion and a sort of long drawn out ei-ei-ei-ei cry of horror from the Turks. It was fine,—a real corpse-reviving performance and now the W.O. have let the stock run out, because ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... shone coldly from the skylight of the building died out, so abruptly that the change seemed almost audible; and simultaneously she heard her husband's careless step in the long glazed passage, half conservatory, half corridor, which led from her domain to his. He came in, softly humming an air from a comic opera, and then paused, peering into the darkness for an instant before he distinguished his wife's shape in dusky relief against ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... field-glasses from the case at his belt and focused them upon the sky. The enemy came, a graceful V-shaped flight of monstrous geese, throbbing and humming, and the wandering patrols above changed direction ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... derelictions of the souls they are appointed to guard. Helen did not observe them; giddy and selfish, she derived amusement from that which was luring her soul further away from God; and, while May wept over her peril, she thought only of the transient and fleeting enjoyments of the present. Gayly humming the Tarantula, she ran down to the kitchen, where she got breakfast, or, rather claimed the reputation of getting it, by assisting May, who was really the practical cause of its ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... on the Tennessee; hark, Bluebird, listen! Was that a bugle note far up the bend, Where the murk waters flush and the white bars glisten, Or dove cooing dove into love notes that blend? And Wood Thrush, sweet, tell me,—that throbbing and humming, Is it march at the double quick or wild bees that hum? And that rumble that shakes like an earthquake coming— Tell me, O Hermit Thrush, ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... back: the humming clatter of the engine ceased; and the aeroplane swooped down as gracefully as a bird, alighting gently on ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... brow, and Pleasure rolls his eye, While Innocence, from out the budding lip Darts her young smiles along his rounded cheek. Grief hath not dimm'd the brightness of his form, Love and Affection o'er him spread their wings, And Nature, like a nurse, attends him with Her sweetest looks. The humming bee will bound From out the flower, nor sting his baby hand; The birds sing to him from the sunny tree; And suppliantly the fierce-eyed mastiff fawn Beneath his feet, to court the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 336 Saturday, October 18, 1828 • Various
... moment of delay while with fingers that slightly trembled, Mr. Schwab selected an amazing green cap and lit his cigar; and then the car swept forward, singing and humming happily, and scattering the autumn leaves. The young lady leaned toward him with a book in a leather cover. She placed her finger on a twisting red line that trickled through ...
— The Scarlet Car • Richard Harding Davis
... the flight of birds! The falcon soars above the clouds, and remains in the air for many hours without any sign of exertion. The swallow, the lark, and other species, sail long distances with little effort. Others, like the sparrow and the humming-bird, have a fluttering flight. Some, as the owl, fly without any noise; and some, like the ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... was humming and ticking like a watch with insect-noises: otherwise the deadly silence held. There were red-winged grasshoppers and great green-gray locust-looking crickets which ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... shelter over the ore platform at the mill. This year the snow was late, but there was no counting on that. And I blinked as I went out of the white November sunshine into Macartney's new tunnel, and the candlelight of his humming stope. One glance around told me Dudley was right, and the man knew his business; and it was the same over at the mill. It seemed to me superintendent was a mild name for Macartney, and general manager would ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... my own thoughts. I could thereafter only listen, breathless, straining my senses to catch some natural sound, however faint. Far away in the dim distance, in some blue pasture, a cow was lowing, and the recurring sound passed me like the humming flight of an insect, then fainter still, like an imagined sound, until it ceased. A withered leaf fell from the tree-top; I heard it fluttering downwards, touching other leaves in its fall until the silent grass ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... the table. Jacob was helping himself to jam; the postman was talking to Rebecca in the kitchen; there was a bee humming at the yellow flower which nodded at the open window. They were all alive, that is to say, while poor Mr. Floyd was ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... it was St. Patrick's Day," she said to herself. "Nobody could possibly mistake me now for a Unionist. I'm labelled 'Home Rule' as plainly as can be." Then, hastily pinning on her hat before the mirror, she ran downstairs, humming under her breath: ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... to joke him out of his delusion; till Granice, mistrustful of their motives, began to dread the reappearance of Dr. Stell, and set a guard on his lips. But the words he kept back engendered others and still others in his brain. His inner self became a humming factory of arguments, and he spent long hours reciting and writing down elaborate statements of his crime, which he constantly retouched and developed. Then gradually his activity languished under the lack of an audience, the sense of being buried beneath deepening drifts ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... made a jest of every thing, even of the misfortunes which pinched him the sharpest, when told of the desertion of his comrades, amused himself by humming the words of a ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... nuts,' he explained when he returned. 'She says she's coming in to dessert.' He sat down, humming the old tune to himself, and till Miss Vidal Benzaguen entered, he held us speechless with tales of the ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... make the chief impression upon the hearers. Give them but one or two round and harmonious periods in a speech, which they will retain and repeat, and they will go home as well satisfied as people do from an opera, humming all the way one or two favourite tunes that have struck their ears, and were easily caught. Most people have ears, but few have judgement; tickle those ears, and, depend upon it, you will catch their judgements, such ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... large as trees on land were massed bushes of living flowers—animals rather than plants—of various colors and glowing softly in the obscurity of the ocean depth. Fish flies flew from branch to branch like a swarm of humming-birds, while swarms of marine creatures rose at our feet like ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... o'clock the town was humming with the news of the midnight duel, and there were but two opinions about it: one, that Luigi's pluck in the field was most praiseworthy and Angela's flight most scandalous; the other, that Angelo's courage in flying the field for conscience' ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to be heard on board save the footsteps of the solitary watchman who slowly paced the deck, and now and then beguiled the tedium of his vigil by humming a ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... as he watched the warlike preparations, and, glancing across to where near Haughmond Abbey floated the rebel standard, he found himself humming one of the rough old war tunes ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... men the shipmaster, indeed, who had spoken to Hester Prynne was so smitten with Pearl's aspect, that he attempted to lay hands upon her, with purpose to snatch a kiss. Finding it as impossible to touch her as to catch a humming-bird in the air, he took from his hat the gold chain that was twisted about it, and threw it to the child. Pearl immediately twined it around her neck and waist with such happy skill, that, once seen there, it became a part of her, and it ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Ruby-throated humming-birds, with breasts of burnished gold, fluttered about the garden on the terrace in front of me in dainty flight, or else poised themselves in mid-air opposite the sweet-smelling blossoms of the frangipanni, their little ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... as taut as a bowstring and the current so strong she pulled upon her anchor. All round the hull, in the blackness, the rippling current bubbled and chattered like a little mountain stream. One cut with my sea gully, and the Hispaniola would go humming down the tide. ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... discouraged; she made a personal remark next: "Excuse me—but you do look wretchedly pale." I thought she seemed to enjoy the defect in my complexion; I really believe it raised me in her estimation. "We shall get on better in time," she said; "I am beginning to like you." She walked out humming a tune. Don't you agree with me? ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... the pollen from one flower to another, and that many, especially those with tubular or zygomorphic (bilateral) flowers are perfectly incapable of self-fertilization. In a few cases snails have been known to be the conveyers of pollen, and the humming-birds are known in some cases, as for instance the trumpet-creeper (Fig. 121, A), to take the place ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell
... bank at Crocky's to-night, which he fancied he should, he would send him two or three thousand pounds; at the same time he shook him heartily by the hand, and descended the staircase of the spunging-house, humming Vive ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... some sort of mischief. But what mischief? Watching and waiting, but no longer confining my attention to the parlour, I presently espied her stealing along the passageway I have mentioned, carrying a long cloak which she rolled up and hid behind the open door. Then she came back humming a gay little song which didn't deceive me for a moment. 'Good!' thought I, 'she and that cloak will soon join company.' And they did. As we were playing the Harebell mazurka I again caught sight of her ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... had committed a crime," cried she in disdain, and then, catching her skirts up, she broke into a step dance, humming ...
— If Only etc. • Francis Clement Philips and Augustus Harris
... consciousness of her beauty, and she also lacked something else which Maria had. Lily meant no more to him—that is, her beauty meant no more to him—than a symmetrical cherry-tree in the south yard, which was a marvel of scented beauty, humming with bees every spring. He had seen that tree ever since he could remember. He always looked upon it with pleasure when it was in blossom, yet it was not to him what a new tree, standing forth unexpectedly with its complement of ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... we were busy building our nest—which is very pretty, almost as dainty as that of our neighbor the Humming Bird—she flew away to quite a distance to find some soft lining-stuff on which to lay her eggs. I had been fetching and carrying all day the lichens to put round the nest, which was hidden among the thick leaves on the bough of a tree, and was resting ...
— Birds Illustrated by Colour Photography, Vol II. No. 4, October, 1897 • Various
... His eye was open to beauty, and his ear to music. He found these, not in rare conditions, but wheresoever he went. He thought the best of music was in single strains; and he found poetic suggestion in the humming ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... had to do something, she hummed. She didn't hum very well, and her program was limited to the first two lines of "How Firm a Foundation," but she carried it off very well and often got the players to humming it along with her. She could also drum rather well with her fingers on the back of the chair of one of the players while looking over his shoulder. "How Firm a Foundation" didn't lend itself very well to drumming; so she had a little patrol that she worked ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... starve for it, Allan? The whole cycle of life goes humming around us, hour by hour. It is here, there, everywhere. I will bring a little of it into my work, or ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... an echo, in the far distance, sometimes screaming with the rage of a hurt animal close at hand. Groups of soldiers ran swiftly past me, quite silent, their heads bent. Somewhere on the high road I could hear motor-cars spluttering and humming. At irregular intervals Red Cross men would arrive with wounded, would ask in a whisper that was inhuman and isolating whether there were room on my carts. Then the body would be lifted up; there would be muttered directions, the wounded man would cry, then the other wounded would also ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... hour—certainly not less than forty minutes—before the train could be restarted. Mr. Molesworth looked at his watch. Forty minutes to explore the road: forty minutes' holiday! He laughed, pocketed the watch again, and took the road briskly, humming a song. ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the substance of his conversation with the rector, and now curled up on the low wooden seat, his small legs crossed underneath him, he was gazing dreamily out into the sweet-scented garden. The bees were droning, and the gnats humming amongst the tall hollyhocks and crimson and white roses close by; the birds were already twittering their last 'good-nights' to one another, and a soft, peaceful spell seemed to be falling on ...
— Teddy's Button • Amy Le Feuvre
... infuriation of sleigh-bells. They were Christina and Sophie and Sadie and Alexandra—as we soon learned. It was wonderful how welcome Gerda made them, and how quickly they were "at home." They rustled through the halls, chatting and laughing and humming. Such merry girls! Such light-hearted little charmers! Letitia stood looking at them through the crack of the drawing-room door. Perhaps it was just as well that somebody should have a ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... hark, Bluebird, listen! Was that a bugle note far up the bend, Where the murk waters flush and the white bars glisten, Or dove cooing dove into love notes that blend? And Wood Thrush, sweet, tell me,—that throbbing and humming, Is it march at the double quick or wild bees that hum? And that rumble that shakes like an earthquake coming— Tell me, O Hermit ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... industrial towns, where one sees how entirely the German nation is organized for war. Into these towns an enormous number of men have been drafted from the country to work in factories, which are humming day and night with activity to keep up the supply of all things necessary ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... Kingfisher, says Dixon, remains throughout the year, but numbers perish when the native streams are frozen. There is, perhaps, not a bird in all the ranks of the feathered gems of equatorial regions, be it ever so fair, the Humming-bird excepted, that can boast a garb so lovely as this little creature of the northland. Naturalists assert that the sun has something to do with the brilliant colors of the birds and insects of the ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II., No. 5, November 1897 - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... miles to windward in the midst of the lagoon. The noise of the Trade ran very boisterous in all parts of the island; the nearer palm-trees crashed and whistled in the gusts, those farther off contributed a humming bass like the roar of cities; and yet, to any man less absorbed, there must have risen at times over this turmoil of the winds the sharper note of the human voice from the settlement. There all was activity. Attwater, stripped to his trousers, and lending a strong ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... scouring-rush,) and the rich coarse vegetation of the veratrum, or American hellebore. In moist copses the ferns and osmundas begin to uncurl in April, opening their soft coils of spongy verdure, coated with woolly down, from which the humming-bird steals the lining ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... atmosphere,—being frequently seen, at twilight and in cloudy weather, soaring above the house-tops in quest of insects. The Whippoorwill finds his subsistence chiefly in the woods, and takes a part of it from the branches of trees, while poising himself on the wing, like a Humming-Bird. I believe he is never seen circling aloft like ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... heart sick and home sick. He stretched himself on his back and looked straight up at the blinking stars. But he was not thinking of them nor of anything but a certain spring day when the bees were humming in the clematis; when a girl was saying good bye to him. He could see her as she unclasped from her neck the locket which she fastened about his own. It was an old fashioned golden locket bearing miniatures of her father and mother with their names and the date of their marriage. It was her most ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... grey snow-swept gloom, a curious Comus—not at all like Greeks, for we had neither torches in our hands nor rose-wreaths to suspend upon a lady's door-posts. And yet I could not refrain, at this supreme moment of jollity, in the zero temperature, amid my Grisons friends, from humming to myself verses ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... rain began to fall, and has continued to pour down steadily ever since. The night is gloomy. Adjutant Wilson, in the next tent, is endeavoring to lift himself from the slough of despond by humming a ditty of true love; but the effort ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... of other days, and then lay listening to the humming noise made by the mosquitoes—wondered whether Rachel Linton was asleep or awake—whether, if she was awake, ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... the shadows of its age-old trees, grave with a certain solemnity, touched upon with tragedy, attuned to a sorrowful patience? For a moment the room and the man who made its core were blurred to Arden's vision. He walked to the window and stood there, twirling his mustachios, finally humming to himself the lines of ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... her, on departing: "You are going to see me again before long," Mercy was quite excited about it. She never asked a question of Doctor Davison, or of anybody else, about the strange surgeon, or his opinion of her case; but Ruth often heard her humming an odd little song (she often made up little tunes and put words to them herself) of which Ruth did not catch the burden for some days. When Mercy was singing it she mumbled the words, or dropped her voice to a whisper whenever anybody came near. But one morning Ruth was bringing ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... to time Andy would call the attention of his aeroplane chum to some striking feature of the landscape far below. The little Kinkaid motor was humming merrily, without ever missing a stroke, and Frank, having the utmost confidence in its steadiness now, after so many trial spins, could take a few seconds at a ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... of birds which were caged in the upper part of the building were set free by some charitably inclined person at the first alarm of fire, and at intervals they flew out. There were many valuable tropical birds, parrots, cockatoos, mockingbirds, humming-birds, etc., as well as some vultures and eagles, and one condor. Great excitement existed among the swaying crowds in the streets below as they took wing. There were confined in the same room a few serpents, which also obtained their ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... I watch thy coming, As evening shadows stretch o'er moor and dell; When the wild bee hath ceased her busy humming, And silence hangs on all things like ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... study, quite at his ease, humming a tune and casting sharp, appraising glances about him as though the thought of ownership were already in his mind. The door beyond the hall closed ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... paper and the bar with a few empty bottles behind it. He tried to count the bottles; "one, two, three..." but he was staring in the lustreless grey eyes of Bill Huggis, who lay back in his chair, blowing smoke out of his nose, now and then reaching for the cognac bottle, all the while humming faintly, under his breath: ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... goes," added the Major, "but if we heard that the society editor of the Fliegende Blaetter and half a dozen pencil strafers were touring the German front line, we'd send 'em over something that would start 'em humming a hymn of hate. If they knew I was joy riding a party of correspondents around the diggin's to-night, they might give you something to write about and cost me a platoon or two. You're ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... the kitchen, when the door was opened, had condensed on the roof and walls in the form of rime several inches thick, and Stubberud was now clearing this off with a long broom. Everything was going to be shipshape for Midwinter Eve; I could see that. We went in. Dinner was on, humming and boiling. The kitchen floor was scrubbed clean, and the linoleum with which it was covered shone gaily. It was the same in the living-room; everything was cleaned. The linoleum on the floor and the American ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... the little rollicking air that she had played at her first tea-party, had set them all to dancing and humming as on ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... She was humming, in happy unconsciousness of her state; and I was chagrined by the necessity of disclosing it: but resolutely continued, for it must ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... in the coming of the rose-red Spring, Never in the passing of the wine-red Fall, May you hear the humming of the white bee's wing Murmur o'er the meadow, ere the ...
— The White Bees • Henry Van Dyke
... will be tempting him who foyls him still, And never cease, though to his shame the more; Or as a swarm of flies in vintage time, About the wine-press where sweet moust is powr'd, Beat off; returns as oft with humming sound; Or surging waves against a solid rock, Though all to shivers dash't, the assault renew, Vain battry, and in froth or bubbles end: 20 So Satan, whom repulse upon repulse Met ever; and to shameful silence brought, Yet gives not o're ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... might again provide him with some genuine excitement. It could be simply his imagination working overtime, but it wasn't going to do any harm to find out. Mind humming with pleased though still highly skeptical speculations, Barney went back to the boat station and inquired when the party ...
— Gone Fishing • James H. Schmitz
... sake as an atonement for my sins. Now, I go! Cumberledge—your notebook. Subjective sensations, swimming in the head, light flashes before the eyes, soothing torpor, some touch of coldness, constriction of the temples, humming in the ears, a ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... the threshold of a larger hall beyond. On its right-hand doorpost was affixed a cylinder of metal repoussee with an oval piece of glass on that something like a human eye. And the big invisible bees went on humming as industriously and as sleepily ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... christened them at once as the locality suggested, one for Captain Mayne, the other for Professor Owen. Near the shore, birds also seemed more abundant. A pair of kelp-geese and a steamer duck were brought in, and one of the officers reported humming-birds flitting across the brook from which the Hassler's tanks ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... and I along, we pulled over to the island. In the thirty intervening years it must have changed greatly, for many buildings were now on it; but his memory evidently was busy and serving him well. He walked round meditatively, uttering a low, humming whistle, his hands in his pockets, his secretary and myself following. At last he reached a point where he stopped and mused for some moments, after which he went quietly and silently to the boat. Not a word passed ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... Love songs or words of pleading, Strong in his might! Helmet and armour wearing, Hies he to deeds of daring, Forth to the battle faring, Back to the fight. Sing now of ranks contending, Sing of loud voices blending, Sing of great warriors sending Death to their foes! Sing of war missiles humming, Strike into martial drumming, Sing of great victory coming, As forth he goes. Back to the battle faring, Back into deeds of daring, Back ...
— Poems of Progress • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... the next morning into the little garden to a fresh silver day, his long face looking more austere than ever in that cold light, his eyelids a little heavy. He carried one of the swords. Turnbull was in the little house behind him, demolishing the end of an early breakfast and humming a tune to himself, which could be heard through the open window. A moment or two later he leapt to his feet and came out into the sunlight, still munching toast, his own sword stuck under ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... from object to object, asking questions, not waiting for answers, seeing everything, commenting on everything while the two young men stood side by side on the hearth rug and watched her. She was like a humming-bird afraid to light. ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... thy goodness, that hath hindered thee from telling me of all that thou hast done for my garden, even to those fair and sweet everlasting flowers, the like of which I never saw before, which thou hast set in the east border, and where even now I hear the bees humming ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... been in such an awful rush," Tom admitted slowly. "Anyway, we fellows should have gotten out of here and left it to the marshals to have it all their own way. I'm afraid there is going to be a big fight to-night, and these old woods may be full of humming bullets. And I'm worried about Dick, too, going off as guide to the marshals. There were only eight of the marshals, and, even with four of our fellows, they still have to face nearly twenty of the moonshiners—-and I'll wager that the moonshiners are ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock
... heavy nor light—and here I sit long and long, envelop'd in the deep musical drone of these bees, flitting, balancing, darting to and fro about me by hundreds—big fellows with light yellow jackets, great glistening swelling bodies, stumpy heads and gauzy wings—humming their perpetual rich mellow boom. (Is there not a hint in it for a musical composition, of which it should be the back-ground? some bumble-bee symphony?) How it all nourishes, lulls me, in the way most needed; the open air, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... of what might be, and his eyes glowed bright and wide, and his mouth grew alternately grim and tender. And, that night, long after he lay asleep, Hermione's golden head was bowed above her work, but, more than once she stayed her humming sewing-machine to look at one white hand with eyes shy and wistful—the hand that had held ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... might die. In this state of mind, he met the Elephant and had a talk with him. He noticed that the great beast cocked up his ears all the time, as if he were listening for something, and he asked him why he did so. Just then a gnat came humming by, and the Elephant said, "Do you see that wretched little buzzing insect? I'm terribly afraid of its getting into my ear: if it once gets in, I'm dead and done for." The Lion's spirits rose at once when he heard this: ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... quavered Jerry; "while I was out on the bay this early morning, my lad, what all the town is humming about, goes to my home and takes everything—everything of any vally ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... queer humming noise in her head. She was incapable of calm thought. She realized now that the friend she had left in London was here in the guise of a bitter enemy. The veranda was full of people waiting for the post. The snow had banished them from links ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... of this, I went forward with as much lightheartedness as could be managed, humming a song to myself, and carefully putting aside thoughts of warmth and supper, while the dusk increased and the great forest vegetation seemed to grow ranker and closer at ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... hall, the floor of which was thickly sprinkled with sawdust; but, without pausing, Lord Claud mounted a staircase in the corner, and led Tom into a large upper room, the walls of which were adorned by rapiers with buttons at the end, where a man was sitting polishing the foils and humming a tune to himself. He rose instantly upon seeing Lord Claud, and ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... afternoon, Paris sat in the shade of a tree at the foot of Mount Ida, while his flocks were pasturing upon the hillside before him. The bees were humming lazily among the flowers; the cicadas were chirping among the leaves above his head; and now and then a bird twittered softly among the bushes behind him. All else was still, as if enjoying to the full the delicious calm ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin
... morning when he went into her office at the Works, he found the place humming with business. As he entered he met a foreman, just taking his departure with, so to speak, his tail between his legs. The man was scarlet to his forehead under the lash of his employer's tongue. It ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... bars, and perhaps the King himself tilting in the melee, while all the ladies were throned in their galleries like banks of flowers, what a magnificent spectacle! The half-empty streets below still humming with groups of gazers not able to squeeze among the throngs about the bars, but waiting the return of the splendid procession: and more and more banners and tapestries and guards of honour shining through the wide open gates of the port all the way down to Holyrood. There ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... as well known as Ephesus or York; but not one of us can tell, without humming and hawing, who it was that rebuilt the Ephesian wonder of the world, or that repaired the time- honored Minster. Equally in literature, not the weight of service done, or the power exerted, is sometimes considered chiefly—either ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... Trevor, who possessed a sweet mellow voice, and was cheering himself, as he stood at the helm, by humming a hymn, or something like one, for the words were not distinguishable in ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... and smiled toward the sea, whence rose the strange melody, away from the dark shadows where lay the noise of horses galloping, galloping on. With an effort he roused himself, bent forward, and looked steadily down the pathway, softly humming the "Song ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... another lever—there was a dull snap as a relay in the power room responded—the lights wavered—dimmed—then the generator was once more humming smoothly—working on the atmosphere of Venus! In a moment the power units were again operating, and now as they sucked a plentitude of power from the surrounding air, they produced a force that made the men cling to their holds with almost frantic force. Around them the ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... her dish towels by that time, for she wasn't much of a housekeeper, I'll say that, though as pretty as a picture, and I never looked up. She walked round the hut, humming to herself to show how calm she was, but I noticed that when her broom fell over ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... placed the note in her pocket, and accompanied him down the stairs, chatting rather gaily. At the bottom of the first flight Camillo bid her good-bye and ran down the stairs that led to the street, while the card-reader, rejoicing in her large fee, turned back to the garret, humming a barcarolle. Camillo found the tilbury waiting for him; the street was now clear. He entered and the driver whipped his horse into a ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... calculations the rhythmic cadences began to reassert themselves. He stood still, as if rooted to the spot, with fixed gaze. After a while his hands involuntarily found their way to the table drawer, from which he pulled out a much-used copy-book. He dropped into a chair with the same fixed look, humming softly to himself and every now and again shaking back his wavy hair, began writing line after line, sometimes ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... have sins upon one's conscience!" sighed the venturer. "Verily, it must preclude all pleasant thoughts." And he fell to humming ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... at another tub of flowers where a humming-bird moth was gathering honey and jabbed his stick sharply at it, taking care that the stick did not ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... however, seemed in no way to be afraid of the bold and resolute outlaw who stood in front of him, and when Robin demanded his purse he smiled and said it would be better to fight for that article and the better man should have it. Whereupon he went to the side of the road, still humming his snatch of a tune, and to the amazement of Robin and Little John, laid hold of a young oak tree and tore it up by the roots, with apparently but little exertion of his strength. Then, trimming off the branches, he ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... brought the score of the operetta to Gray Gables last night and we tried it over on the piano. The music is beautiful. It is so tuneful it lingers. I've been humming snatches of it ever since he played it for me. The 'Rebellious Princess' has some wonderful songs. That clever young man, Eric Darrow, composed the libretto and thought out the plot. It's about a princess ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... always come up at the foot!" growled Austina, whose canvas looked like a map of a humming-bird's flight done in charcoal. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... winds from the sea had lulled, and for once the house was utterly quiet—so quiet that the stillness became oppressive. Meanwhile the young girl sat in her bower of luxury, softly humming a favorite air, and very happy in thoughts of her approaching marriage. While deep in her smiling reverie, a stealthy footstep ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... you've just about got us sized up correct." He went on hammering, and humming under his breath, and thinking that, while admiration is all right in its time and place, it ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... henna-dyed hair, and miniature brown men, like blowing flower-petals in scarlet, yellow, and blue, who had swarmed up the street after the Roumis, stopped at the portals of the mosque and the sacred tomb. But there was a humming in the air like the song of bees, which floated rhythmically out from the zaouia, the school in the mosque where many boys squatted cross-legged before the aged Taleb who taught the Koran; bowing, swaying towards him, droning out the words of the Prophet, some half asleep, ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... drums and horns arose, and the laughing, chattering crowd seemed to dissolve as suddenly from the vicinity of the prison hut, leaving it plunged in an atmosphere of silence, save for the monotonous banging of the drums, the blare of the horns, and a low, humming murmur which might be that of a multitude of people conversing ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... made one feel as though he were the blind man in a game of blind-man's-buff, where every one tapped him in passing, leaving him puzzled and ignorant as to whither they had gone and from what point they would come next. The bullets sounded like rustling silk, or like humming-birds on a warm summer's day, or like the wind as it is imitated on the stage of a theatre. Any one who has stood behind the scenes when a storm is progressing on the stage, knows the little wheel wound with silk that brushes against another piece of silk, and ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... of some promised land, Molly adjusted her crutch, and over the sandy road trudged, with truculent face, to her new home, humming to herself "dah-is-a-time-a-comin, den da ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... a more violent vibration. There was a humming, throbbing, hissing sound. Suddenly the boys, and all within the projectile, felt it swaying. A moment later it began to shoot through ...
— Through Space to Mars • Roy Rockwood
... I have here almost an avenue of fine lemon-trees, in cases; humming-birds, which are a marvel and enchantment to me; and fire-flies, which are exquisite ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... tiring indeed. Nevertheless, as I got into my jacket and put on my hat in the suffocation of the cloak-room I was still under an exhilarating spell. I belonged, for time never so little, to the giant machine of which the fifth floor of Parsons' is only an infinitesimal humming, singing part. I had earned seven cents! Seven cents of the $4,000,000 paid to Lynn shoe employees were mine. I had bought the right to one piece of bread by the toil of my unskilled labour. As I fastened my tippet of common black fur and drew on my woolen gloves, the odour from ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... a lot of rabbits were in a hole together and making a humming noise, which, I believed, was a whispering they were having together, and I wanted to hear what they said, but that Ugly made such a barking I could not. I woke up, and, sure enough, Ugly was very noisy in the room below, ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... embroidery upon the winter snow. Her course is a clear, strong line, sometimes quite wayward, but generally very direct, steering for the densest, most impenetrable places,—leading you over logs and through brush, alert and expectant, till, suddenly, she bursts up a few yards from you, and goes humming through the trees,—the complete triumph of endurance and vigor. Hardy native bird, may your tracks never be fewer, or your visits to ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... veritable merry-go-round of religious and social activities. Yes, it was beginning to move, indeed, it was almost beginning to hum—another few months and it would fairly whizz, as Eli Moggridge had foreseen; and the sound of the humming and the speed of the whizzing would grow louder and louder and faster and faster, till not merely Zion Place and Zion Alley and Zion Passage and Zion Street heard it and were caught up in the infectious dance, but the very High Street itself should ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... behind? On account of the bewildering echoes he could not tell. To settle the question he kneeled down, and placed his ear against one of rails of the west bound track. It was cold and silent. Then he tried the east bound track in the same way. This rail seemed to tingle with life, and a faint, humming sound came from it. It was a perfect railroad telephone, and it informed the listener as plainly as words could have told him, that a train was ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe
... not see him, she did not hear him. The silence was profound. The only sound to be heard was the humming of the bees circling around the tall marshmallows. And on the terrace there was nothing to be seen but a little yellow dog, stretched at full length on the bare ground, seeking the coolness of the shade. He raised ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... where other people are. I don't feel the joy of the little animals playing, the freedom of the flight of birds, the ghostly plucking of the growing grass, the sweet stab of the mating lust of the wild-horned apigator, the humming of bees working to build a hive, and the sleepy stupid arrogance of the giant cabbage-eating deuxnez. I can feel nothing without the Skin I have worn ...
— Rastignac the Devil • Philip Jose Farmer
... gently on the shoulder, and humming a music-hall ballad cheerfully, started off into the garden. He had only gone a few steps when his mother called to him. He stopped. She ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... range, Goliath marvels at this strange Goodly-faced boy so proud of strength. David's clear eye measures the length; With hand thrust back, he cramps one knee, Poises a moment thoughtfully, And hurls with a long vengeful swing. The pebble, humming from the sling Like a wild bee, flies a sure line For the forehead of the Philistine; Then ... but there comes a brazen clink, And quicker than a man can think Goliath's shield parries each cast. Clang! clang! and clang! was David's ...
— Fairies and Fusiliers • Robert Graves
... Sabbath ever been the day it had been to him; to none of them was it so richly freighted with memories of wonderful sermons and solemn sacraments that were foretastes of heaven. Coming with a party of gentlemanly fellows slowly rowing up the Thames and humming some passionate recitative from an opera, he alone could recall the charmful stillness of a Scotch Sabbath, the worshiping crowds, and the evening psalm ascending from so ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... the hat show callous cruelty In decoration costing countless deaths; Carrying corpses for its ornaments; Wreath of dead humming-birds, dismembered gulls, The mother heron's breastknot, stiffened wings; Torn fragments of a ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... shields, the dull thud of blows, the wild shouts of the warriors and cries of the wounded, mingled together in a loud vibrating murmur. To Earl Sigvaldi, who lay with his ships apart at the far end of the bay, it sounded like the humming of bees about a hive. Not only at the prows, but also behind at the sterns of Olaf's compact host, did the Danes attempt to board. The Norsemen, indeed, were completely surrounded by their foemen. ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... finally procure a guide that day and made a long march on foot along scorching sandy roads, weak and tired as we were, guided only by a half-witted boy, humming and chewing wisps of straw. Then I began to realize what suffering means. My father did not speak, nor would he endure any complaints from me. I bore up against it bravely, as bravely as I could, but I began to ponder much ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... that in singing softly the mouth be well opened. The tendency will be to close it when required to sing lightly, but the tone, then, will be nothing but a humming noise. It may as well be said here that a great deal of future trouble and labor may be avoided, if, from the first, pupils are taught to keep the mouth fairly well opened, and the lips sufficiently apart to permit ...
— The Child-Voice in Singing • Francis E. Howard
... had been planned on paper in the inner room of the offices of Manderson, Colefax and Company. But they were never carried out. Blackbeard would quell the mutiny of his old self within him and go soberly down to his counting-house—humming a stave or two of "Spanish Ladies," perhaps, under his breath. Manderson would allow himself the harmless satisfaction, as soon as the time for action had gone by, of pointing out to some Rupert of the markets how a coup ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... half in shadow, rose above the huge ring like so many terraced flower-beds, dazzling with the gold lace of uniforms and the bright tints of women's dresses softened by white mantillas. Over all was a fluttering of fans, like thousands of hovering butterflies; and a hum floated up loud as the humming of a million bees, to the blue dome of sky, where English and Spanish flags ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... modest confidence restored, when in the doorway sounded a virile voice, gaily humming, and they became aware of a tall young man, red-headed, anything but handsome, flushed and perspiring from the sunny road; his open jacket showed a blue cotton shirt without waistcoat, in his hand was a shabby straw hat, and thick dust covered his boots. One would have judged ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... "Begging Tradesmen." A few things, tied to a blue handkerchief, rested on one side of his head; and a parcel of ballads, his whole stock-in-trade, lay on the other. Before the fire, warming his back, stood a short, thick-set man, humming the air of a vulgar ditty; his hands were thrust into the pockets of a velvet shooting-jacket, ornamented with large ivory buttons, such as are commonly worn by cabmen and other tap-room blackguards. His countenance was by far too dark ...
— Sinks of London Laid Open • Unknown
... of the room so that there was a clear space left in the centre. He then took off his boots and his coat, and standing on his toes he commenced to gyrate with extraordinary rapidity. In a few moments his movements became steady and swift, and a sound came from him like the humming of a swift saw; this sound grew deeper and deeper, and at last continuous, so that the room was filled with a thrilling noise. In a quarter of an hour the movement began to noticeably slacken. In another three minutes it was quite slow. In two more minutes he grew visible ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... gloves). Did you notice the tune I was playing when you came in? (Sits down at the piano.) I heard it everywhere in Germany. (Begins to play and sing, but stops short.) But, bless my soul, here is the music! You can play it and sing it for yourself. (Goes out, humming the air.) ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... glue. Why, my dear boy, I am only living from hand to mouth. This looks, of course, all very bright and beautiful to you, and a wonderful contrast to hazy, foggy, cold old England—Heaven bless it! But fire-flies, and humming-birds, and golden sunshine, and gaily-painted blossoms are not victuals and drink, Harry; and, besides, when you set to and earn your victuals and drink, you don't know but what they will all be taken away from you. We've no laws here, my lad, worth ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... and the deep lines of matchlock men were hidden from view. After this the city thrilled and murmured worse than ever, humming like an angry hive. But the Wolfsberg kept its counsel. Not yet had deliverance arrived for the captives within ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... their dance about the mountain, the Coyote stole the fire, and ran with it down the slope of the burning mountain. When the Fire Spirits saw what he had done they streamed out after him, red and angry, with a humming sound like a swarm of bees. But the Coyote was still ahead; the sparks of the brand streamed out along his flanks, as he carried it in his mouth; and he stretched his ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... and the only comfort was that if nobody saw anything George Corvick was quite as much out of it as I. This comfort however was not sufficient, after the ladies had dispersed, to carry me in the proper manner—I mean in a spotted jacket and humming an air—into the smoking-room. I took my way in some dejection to bed; but in the passage I encountered Mr. Vereker, who had been up once more to change, coming out of his room. HE was humming an air ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James
... mob-jammed town, and emerged into the Park, where, likewise, we met a great many merry-makers, but with freer space for their gambols than in the streets. We soon found ourselves the targets for a cannonade with oranges (most of them in a decayed condition), which went humming past our ears from the vantage-ground of neighboring hillocks, sometimes hitting our sacred persons with an inelastic thump. This was one of the privileged freedoms of the time, and was nowise to be resented, except by returning the salute. Many persons ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... before,— And the pounding was not soft, But might well appall The boldest heart. Cool and calm, Trumpet in hand, Up in the cock-loft, Where 't was the hottest of all, Our brave old Commodore Took his stand, And played his part, Humming over some ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... "We're just humming along!" he shouted, as he noticed how the tree-tops seemed to be constantly shifting, owing to the ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne
... tongue that talks, these lungs that shout, These thews that hustle us about, This brain that fills the skull with schemes, And its humming hive ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman
... landmarks were slipping behind them. Tucson was out of sight, had they thought to look for it. And all this while the sturdy motor was humming its song of force triumphant. Subsequently it stuttered faintly in expressing itself. Triumph was there, but it was not so joyously sure of itself. Bland glided, cocking an anxious ear to listen while he slowed the motor. It was there, the stutter—more pronounced ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... listened for some time to his friend humming "The Love Song of Har Dyal" again! and not until Frank was silent did he doze off. An hour later he woke up suddenly, bathed in perspiration and devoured by mosquitoes; for the punkahs were still—the coolie had gone to sleep. He called to the man and aroused him, then ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... them for nourishment. Vittoria's horizon was within five feet of her. She saw neither splendid earth nor ancient heaven; nothing save a breach to be stepped over in defiance of foes and (what was harder to brave) of friends. Some wayward activity of old associations set her humming a quaint English tune, by which she was brought to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... melody from the instruments, but the boys' voices, humming lightly as they enter, gradually evolve a little dance song. There are no words but the lilt up and down of the boys' ...
— Hymen • Hilda Doolittle
... undeviating straight line. Just opposite the farm were the last outlying huts of the village, and from there onwards it lay untenanted. But before many minutes were passed, the quiet of the autumn noon began to be overscored by distant humming, faint at first, and then quickly growing louder, and he saw far away a little brown speck coming swiftly towards him. It turned out to be a dispatch-rider, mounted on a motor-bicycle, who with a hoot of his horn roared westward through the village. Immediately ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... He left the house, humming a little tune. On the second step he paused, as he was in the habit of doing, and surveyed the Precincts—the houses with their shining knockers, their old-fashioned bow-windows and overhanging portals, the Cathedral Green, and the towering front of the Cathedral itself. He was, ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... suspect the existence of those feelings which, like the morning glory, shrink from the rays of the sun. They were too delicate for inspection. They were like the wing of the butterfly or the plumage of the humming-bird, which cannot be handled without being tarnished. Hence, though longing to enter the house as in his school-boy days, were it only to catch for a moment the sounds of Faith's voice or a glimpse ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... He went out humming. Chrissie took up a book and sat down, utterly ignoring the woebegone figure which stood the regulation three yards from her, twisting ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... hears humming Where war-trumpets call, "I wait, Love, thy coming Wi' carbine and ball, And bandsmen a-drumming Thee, charger ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... while carrying little Selina downstairs, that she put her foot into the string of James's humming-top, and tumbled down all the stone stairs. She managed to save Selina—dear old Judy!—but she hurt her back most dreadfully, and she can't ever be well again, so papa gives her an allowance. She writes cheerfully, but we should ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the car swung east by south; the cold-jet rotors began humming and then the hot-jets were cut in. The car turned from the fort and the mountains and shot away over the foothills toward the coastal plain. Below were forests, yellow-green with new foliage of the second growing season of the equatorial ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... and began to fan herself gently with the brim. Here, in the shade, bees were humming; from the house came faint notes of a piano—Fanny practising a ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... considerable lake about one hundred and fifty miles west of the point of junction. The two rivers, about the place of their confluence, are bordered by immense prairies covered with herbage, but destitute of trees. The point itself was ornamented with wild flowers of every hue, in which innumerable humming-birds were ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... a little distance from the house and Henrietta had to rouse herself from the state between waking and sleeping, thought and imagery, in which she had passed the journey. The jarring of the brake shocked her into a recognition of facts and the gentle humming of the engine reminded her that life had to go on as before. The persistent sound, regular, not loud, controlled, was like existence in Nelson Lodge; one wearied of it, yet one would weary more of accidents breaking the healthy beating of the engine: ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... shot like so many humming-tops, through the rigging far above their heads; for the ill-constructed ports of those days prevented the guns from hulling an enemy who was to windward, ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... on his heel and went downstairs humming a tune. I remained with Mrs. Housekeeper who carried out his instructions zealously. I can feel the soreness on my scalp to ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... Elgar returned, at noon. She heard the cab that brought him. He lingered in the hall, opened the library door; then came to the drawing-room, humming an air. His look was as different as could be from that she had last seen on his face; he came towards her with his pleasantest smile, and first kissed her hand, then embraced her ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... as he thought of other days, and then lay listening to the humming noise made by the mosquitoes—wondered whether Rachel Linton was asleep or awake—whether, if she was awake, ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... been in far happier situations than that—lying bent nearly double across the yard of an enemy's ship on a black night, but at the moment, so sincerely rejoiced was I to be off that sagging rope, I felt like humming a tune. Yet I contented myself with sliding along the smooth spar until I discovered a firm strand of rope beneath my feet, ventured then to stand upright, and clung for support to the cloth of the sail. ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... upon the table. Jacob was helping himself to jam; the postman was talking to Rebecca in the kitchen; there was a bee humming at the yellow flower which nodded at the open window. They were all alive, that is to say, while poor Mr. Floyd was ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... in my head grows worse; it is a humming sound. It distracts me; twice I have failed to hear the captain and have ...
— The Angels of Mons • Arthur Machen
... for a rendezvous, Foster surmised from this that secrecy was important, but after all there was nothing to indicate that the matter had anything to do with him. As he went back he heard a musical humming in the tops of the pines and a lump of wet snow, slipping from a branch, struck his face. The humming grew louder until the wood was filled with sound, and he began to feel clammy and hot. A warm Chinook wind from the Pacific was sweeping up the ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... science. You also—but you will forgive me. I have held on to life for your sake as an atonement for my sins. Now, I go! Cumberledge—your notebook. Subjective sensations, swimming in the head, light flashes before the eyes, soothing torpor, some touch of coldness, constriction of the temples, humming in the ears, a sense ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... through a large hall, the floor of which was thickly sprinkled with sawdust; but, without pausing, Lord Claud mounted a staircase in the corner, and led Tom into a large upper room, the walls of which were adorned by rapiers with buttons at the end, where a man was sitting polishing the foils and humming a tune to himself. He rose instantly upon seeing Lord Claud, and made ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... purpose, it will change houses, and then, secured by a gold or silver chain, roams about the wearer, waving its red and blue claws in a warlike manner. Birds are, perhaps, more commonly used as natural ornaments than any other, and a cloak of the skins of humming birds is one of the most magnificent objects to be imagined. One, of a rare species, was once sold in Europe for $5,000. Single birds are often worth $700 or $800. A cloak of the skin of the great auk would bring $8,000 or $10,000. Some of the most beautiful pheasants ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... as to the cause of the handsome corollas of the trumpet creeper (Tecoma radicans) being so often split and torn has been accounted for in various ways in published notes on the subject. Humming birds and ants have been blamed, the humming birds being such constant visitors of these flowers that it really seemed as though they must be the authors of the mischief. I have often watched them when they appeared as though they were ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... the now unwonted sight of a silver dollar, and he soon had me through the most secret recesses of the sanctuary. The only things I saw worthy of admiration were some pictures, made from down or the feathers of the humming-bird, by which a richness of color was imparted to the pictures that could not ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... in childbirth,' kept humming in his brain from his ancient Hebrew lore. He did not remember what they were, except that one was the omission of the wife to throw into the fire the lump of dough from the Sabbath bread. But these neglects could not be visited on a ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... was growing, and we could see some way into the mist which still hung densely over the river, and now—ah! there it was. From the other side of the hill, a thousand yards or more from the laager, came a faint humming sound. It grew and grew till it gathered to a chant—the awful war chant of the Zulus. Soon I could catch the words. ...
— Allan's Wife • H. Rider Haggard
... the magic of business, and when you behold roaring towns and humming wharves, when you read of raging battles, you see and read of the work of a comparatively small number of men, gentlemen who wear frock coats, who have never handled a bale, or carried a gun, or steered a ship with their ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... he would not permit himself to be announced, but walked tiptoe upstairs and gently opening the drawing-room door, entered the room. Standing by the piano, turning over the leaves of some music, and merrily humming an air, was a young girl of extremely petite and delicate form. Her complexion was strikingly fair; and the rich curls of dark auburn that fell in clusters on her shoulders, made it still more dazzling by the contrast presented. Her eyes were grey, inclining to black; her features small, and ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... by the sun in mounting splendor; the sweet scent of drying grass and fern filled her lungs; the birds' choral thrilled her with the loveliness of life. A little Southern song trembled on her lips, and her hushed voice murmuring was soft as the wild bees' humming: ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... he trouble me with his Verses for? Often when I am to go to Market he has never a Penny of Money to give me, and yet he's a humming of Verses. ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... never knew a man so quick in unpacking, getting into bed, and going to sleep. He hasn't far to go, or else Morpheus must have caught him up, en route, and hypnotised him. I hear him singing and humming for two minutes; I hear him calling out to me, "All right? Are you all right?" and, once again invoking the spirit of Mark Tapley, I throw all the joviality I can into my reply as I say, through the wall, "Quite, thanks. Jolly! Good-night!" But my reply is wasted on him; he has turned a deaf ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 5, 1891 • Various
... away; but at that they whirled yet more quickly, and he lost his footing, and fell, and was dragged up; and then he too must dance, or be haled along the ground. My eyes grew dizzy with watching, while the drum and the chant dulled into a humming in ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... 'they have a new language in Cheltenham: nothing's like travelling to enlarge the mind.' "And the birds," said I, aloud, "are neither humming ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... ran along the side of a purling brook under the shadow of the great trees that skirted the forest, and Edith ambled leisurely along, low humming to herself some pretty song or listening to the merry carols of the birds or noticing the speckled fish that gamboled through the dark, glimmering stream or reverting to the subject of her ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... listless and dejected, powerless and repining; but gaiety expanded her butterfly's wings, lit up their gold-dust and bright spots, made her flash like a gem, and flush like a flower. At all ordinary diet and plain beverage she would pout; but she fed on creams and ices like a humming-bird on honey-paste: sweet wine was her element, and sweet cake her daily bread. Ginevra lived her full life in a ball-room; ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... being strangely bright since Henchard's avowal of shame for a past action. The quivering of the partition to its core presented denoted that Donald Farfrae had again rung his bell, no doubt to have his supper removed; for humming a tune, and walking up and down, he seemed to be attracted by the lively bursts of conversation and melody from the general company below. He sauntered out upon the ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... immovable figure as before, fixed against the tower. Spike was turning angrily to chide his Mexican friend for deranging his aim, when the report of an answering musket came back like an echo. Every eye was turned toward the figure, but it moved not. Then the humming sound of an advancing ball was heard, and a bullet passed, whistling hoarsely, through the rigging, and fell some distance to windward. Every head disappeared below the bulwarks. Even Spike was so far astonished as to spring in upon deck, and, for a single instant, not a man ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... beauty; we point out the laws of the rise and fall of the waves, and of the strong under-currents. We strive by poetic speech to open their ears to the voices of the sea which in our very blood run through the veins from generation to generation, and, humming and singing, echo in ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... forth their various ditties with which Nature has furnished them, to the shame of art." Refreshed and exhilarated by the pure country air, we can fancy Walton returning homeward to his Chancery Lane shop, humming to himself that fine old song of Marlowe's which the milkmaid sung to him as he sat under the honeysuckle-hedge ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... hot, the sky was blue, and the air was full of the humming and buzzing of bees and flies. A white butterfly flitted by, but soon went away over ...
— Chambers's Elementary Science Readers - Book I • Various
... solemnity, touched upon with tragedy, attuned to a sorrowful patience? For a moment the room and the man who made its core were blurred to Arden's vision. He walked to the window and stood there, twirling his mustachios, finally humming to himself ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... telegraph office smiling joyously and humming under his breath the air of "Bonnie Dundee." "I did n't ask him to come," he said to himself, "and if he wants to now, that's his affair. Well, I reckon he ain't any more likely to have daylight let through him ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... Angel would grow tired of the stuffy room and long for the forbidden dangers and delights of Tenement sidewalks. Then, often, with nothing else to do, she would catch up her tiny skirts and whirl herself into the dance Norma had taught her, in and out among the furniture crowding the room, humming little broken snatches of music for herself, bending, swaying, her bright eyes full of laughter as they met Mary's tired ones, her curls bobbing, until breathless, hot and weary she would drop on the floor and fall asleep, her head pillowed on ...
— The Angel of the Tenement • George Madden Martin
... me or love me or are indifferent to me. I don't know where other people are. I don't feel the joy of the little animals playing, the freedom of the flight of birds, the ghostly plucking of the growing grass, the sweet stab of the mating lust of the wild-horned apigator, the humming of bees working to build a hive, and the sleepy stupid arrogance of the giant cabbage-eating deuxnez. I can feel nothing without the Skin I have worn so ...
— Rastignac the Devil • Philip Jose Farmer
... asked the other angrily, though his annoyance did not seem to communicate itself to the chisel he held in his hand, and which continued its work as delicately as though its master were humming a pastoral. "Why softly? An apoplexy on your softness! The papers speak as loudly as they please—why should I hold my tongue? ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... the distant humming of the bull-roarer, at whatever distance, he knows that the mysteries of his god are in full swing, and he hurries forward in haste, leaving his work or his pleasure, and running, naked as he stands, to take his share in the worship, lest the anger of heaven ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... course is a clear, strong line, sometimes quite wayward, but generally very direct, steering for the densest, most impenetrable places,—leading you over logs and through brush, alert and expectant, till, suddenly, she bursts up a few yards from you, and goes humming through the trees,—the complete triumph of endurance and vigor. Hardy native bird, may your tracks never be fewer, or your visits to ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... old-fashioned city in those days, with a marked character. Every house had its garden, in which vines twined over arbours, and the magnolia, honeysuckle, and rose spread rich perfume of summer nights, and where the humming-bird rested, and scarlet tanager or oriole with the yellow and blue bird flitted in sunshine or in shade. Then swallows darted at noon over the broad streets, and the mighty sturgeon was so abundant in the Delaware that one could hardly remain a minute on ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... a sudden fit of madness. She had caught up a light shawl, which she extended from hand to hand, as if she were dancing with some one, and then she proceeded to execute a slow waltz in this circumscribed space, humming the improvised music in a mystical and rhythmical manner. And what were these dark utterances that the inspired one gave forth, as she glanced from time to time at her sister ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... her net was off, and all the pretty black curls lay about her shoulders as one hand idly pulled them out, while the other rested on the red shawl, as if she loved its glowing color and soft texture. She was humming to herself the little song of the dove and the donjon, and something in the plaintive voice, the solitary figure, went straight to ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... finger on her lips and shook her head. There would be plenty of time to talk by-and-by, for convalescence would be a tedious business; in the meantime there was absolute need of perfect rest. Miss Goldthwaite brought her sewing, and sat down in the window seat, humming a scrap of song, the outcome of the gladness of her heart. Lucy lay still in a state of dreamy happiness, listening to the twittering of the birds mingling with Carrie's song, and watching the gay April sunbeams dancing among her golden curls. By-and-by ...
— Thankful Rest • Annie S. Swan
... again and Dick heard ahead a slight humming sound which presently grew into a roar. He was puzzled at first, but soon divined the cause. The creek, or rather little river, much increased in volume by the tributary brooks, made a great increase of speed in its current. Dick saw before him a rising ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... Saint James Street. All India was present to the eye of his mind, from the halls where suitors laid gold and perfumes at the feet of the sovereign, to the wild moor where the gipsy camp was pitched; from the bazar, humming like a beehive with the crowd of buyers and sellers, to the jungle where the lonely courier shakes his bunch of iron rings to scare away the hyenas. He had just as lively an idea of the insurrection at Benares as of Lord George Gordon's riots, and of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... one another; but they are as affectionate toward men (and especially toward me, as I pet them) as our own home dogs. At this moment a large hound and a small half-breed bull-dog, both of whom were quite badly wounded this morning by a cougar, are shoving their noses into my lap to be petted, and humming defiance to one another. They are on excellent terms with the ranch cat and kittens. The three chief fighting dogs, who do not follow the trail, are the most affectionate of all, and, moreover, they climb trees! Yesterday we got a big lynx in the top of a pinon tree—a low, spreading ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... piazza, in the heat of the day, busy or half busy with a book, a sound of humming-bird's wings now and then fell on my ear, and, as I looked toward the honeysuckle vine, I began after a while to remark that the visitor was invariably a female. I watched her probe the scarlet tubes and dart away, and then returned to my page. She might have a nest somewhere ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... mill pond above. He never would have been able to discover just what the shadows were if one of them had not paused a moment while halfway to the top of the falling water. It poised itself for one brief instant, as a humming-bird poises over a flower, but during that fraction of time the little boy was able to see that what he thought was a shadow was really a fish going from the water below to the mill pond above. The child could hardly believe his eyes, and for a little while it seemed that the whole world was ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... many beautiful things to hear,—the birds singing and the bees humming; and so many beautiful things to see,—the flowers and butterflies and green grass! And after a while he came to a wood, where every tree wore a green dress; and through the wood, under the shade of the trees, flowed ...
— Mother Stories • Maud Lindsay
... ecstasies of admiration and wonder as they heard of the dark brown atives, the curious expedients by which barter was carried on; also of cruel Spaniards, and of savage fishes, with all the marvels of flying-fish, corals, palm-trees, humming birds—all that is lesson work to our modern youth, but was the most brilliant of living fairy tales at this Elizabethan period. Humfrey and Diccon were ready to rush off to voyage that instant, and even little Ned cried imitatively ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... possibilities in twentieth-century warfare; and it was Daylight, rejecting, accepting, and elaborating, who planned the campaigns and prosecuted them. With the Pacific coast from Peugeot Sound to Panama, buzzing and humming, and with San Francisco furiously about his ears, the two big steamship companies had all the appearance of winning. It looked as if Burning Daylight was being beaten slowly to his knees. And then he struck—at the steamship companies, at San Francisco, ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... they were all humming about Dama Ecciva, interrupting each other with excited questions; for Dama Ecciva had been, if possible, more mysterious and tantalizing than ever since these rumors had been afloat—which was a sign that she could tell something if she would. "So, my pretty friends!" she answered ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... Maumbry entered his wife's drawing-room, filled with hired furniture, she thought he was somebody else, for he had not come upstairs humming the most catching air afloat in musical circles or ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... afterward dubbed. Mr. Laudersdale had returned to New York that morning, and his wife had not been met since. Now, at about five o'clock, her white robe floated past the door, and she was seen moving up and down the long piazza and humming a faint little tune to herself. Just then a flock of young women, married and single, fluttered through door and windows to join her; and just then Mrs. Laudersdale stepped down from the end of the piazza and floated up the garden-path ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... and they were all in the breakfast-room, and no Prince Bulbo as yet. The urn was hissing and humming: the muffins were smoking—such a heap of muffins! the eggs were done, there was a pot of raspberry jam, and coffee, and a beautiful chicken and tongue on the side-table. Marmitonio the cook brought in the sausages. ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray
... gods, nor will They wake for the humming of thy prayers which lie in the dust upon Pegana's floor, and over Them Sniracte, the spider of the worlds, hath woven a web of mist. And the squealing of the sacrifice maketh no music in ears ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... middle of the field, and looked back. He was out of sight now of the scene of the tragedy. Nothing was to be seen or heard but the low, musical sounds of the late summer afternoon—the beat of a reaping-machine, the humming of insects, the distant call of a pigeon, the far-away bark of a farmhouse dog. The shooting had ceased. By this time they must all know, he reflected. He lit a cigarette, and inhaled the smoke without the slightest apprehension of what ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... field-kitchen wagon had arrived this morning, a shell had exploded in the road and it was all over with the kitchen-wagon. How long ago that seemed! And the bees keep on humming. Bang! that hit the sergeant right in the middle of the forehead. Is this never going to stop? Never? You chew sand, you breathe sand, burning dry sand, which passes through your intestines like fire. And then that horrible, faint, sickening feeling in the stomach when ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... dense brambles and young trees, and shadowed by lofty mountains. The wild pine-apples by the roadside were very fair to see; they were not quite ripe, but tinted of the most delicate red. Beautiful humming-birds flashed through the air like "winged jewels," and studded the dense foliage ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... intently as he passed. In another minute he had descended, and was welcomed by the landlord, who stood on the pavement. Clara meanwhile had taken up a book, but before she had read a page, her sister skipped into the parlour again, humming ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... some music for it. Then he practises at singing it, and then he sings it. The man of genius, on the other hand, whether he be a great one or a very little one, is known by the fact that he has a song sent to him. He sings it. He has a habit of humming it over afterwards. His humming it over afterwards is his analysis. It is the ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... gathered up his hat and stick. "Just rushed in to say Hello, and got to run right away again. I tell you, March, things are humming. I'm after those fellows with a sharp stick all the while to keep them from loafing on my house, and at the same time I'm just bubbling over with ideas about 'The Lone Hand—wish we could call it that!—that I want to talk up ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... snush-box lids, in opening and shutting, made more noise than their tongues. Bows and cringes of the newest mode were here exchanged 'twixt friend and friend with wonderful exactness. They made a humming like so many hornets in a country chimney, not with their talking, but with their whispering over their new Minuets and Bories, with the hands in their pockets, if only freed from their snush-box. We now began to be thoughtful of a pipe of tobacco, whereupon we ventured to call for some instruments ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... vein, which imparts a winning warmth and cordiality to their demeanor. Socially they are the most charming people in the world. Also in this respect Albrecht is typical, and the songs in which he gives vent to his lyrical moods have such a rapturous melody that they keep humming in the brain long after the reader has closed the book. It almost follows as a psychological necessity that a man so richly endowed with the gift of speech is feeble and halting in action. Like Tourgueneff's "Rudin," who suffered from the same malady, he gains by the brilliancy ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... in old times to the shades of heroes. This mound stood in the midst of a camp. Lances were stacked in front of the tents, and golden shields hung from masts, amidst boughs of laurel and wreaths of oak. On the stage all was silence, but a murmur like the humming of bees in a hive rose from the vast hemicycle filled with spectators. All their faces, reddened by the reflection from the purple awning which waved above them, turned with attentive curiosity towards the large, silent stage, with its tomb and tents. ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... plates against the walls, Her sunlit, sanded floor, The brass-bound wedding chest that held Her linen's snowy store, The very wheel whose humming died,— Seemed only chains ...
— The Dreamers - And Other Poems • Theodosia Garrison
... brace of fat does, With humming strong liquor likewise; They lov'd what was good; so, in the green-wood This pretty ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... the Queen" and the other wasn't. But when music is broken into independent rhythms, irregular and oddly related phrases, it is only the person exceptionally endowed who can remember it without prolonged study. The very first audience who heard Rigoletto came away humming "Donna e mobile." And the very last audience who heard Pelleas et Melisande came away humming—"Donna e mobile." It is the law. Needless to say, I enjoyed Pelleas et Melisande, but I cannot whistle it. What I recall is a mood, a picture, a vague ecstasy, ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... of ornaments, I can answer for it, for I have seen a good deal of their work—they had not then their equals in the world. They made the most beautiful dresses out of the feathers of birds—parrots, humming birds, and such like, which fill the forests in hot countries. And what was more, their country abounded in gold and jewels, and they knew how to work them, just as well as we do. They could work gold into the likeness ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... his vanity. I was really ruffled, and the only comfort was that if nobody saw anything George Corvick was quite as much out of it as I. This comfort however was not sufficient, after the ladies had dispersed, to carry me in the proper manner—I mean in a spotted jacket and humming an air—into the smoking-room. I took my way in some dejection to bed; but in the passage I encountered Mr. Vereker, who had been up once more to change, coming out of his room. HE was humming an air and had on a spotted jacket, and as soon as he saw me ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James
... 3d. At 5 A.M. we saw three hands who had left us the day before on board the Humming Bird privateer, who had been enticed by some of the owners to leave us by making of them drunk. About 10 we saw their canoe going ashore with our hands in her, also Joseph Ferrow, whom we had brought ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... in the rock, is safe. The storm passes and the sun comes out, the air is the sweeter and the richer for the rain, like verses with a rhyme; there will be more honey in the flowers. Humble he is, but wild; always in the field, the wood; always by the banks and thickets; always wild and humming to his flowers. Therefore I like the humble-bee, being, at heart at least, for ever roaming among the woodlands and the hills and by the brooks. In such quick summer storms the lightning gives the impression of being far more dangerous than the zigzag paths traced on the autumn sky. The ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... thrush was whistling with a sweet voice; the golden-crowned hammer plumed his feathers. In the thicket the pheasants clucked and the bright green humming birds flitted between the leaves; sometimes on the top of the pine tree a crow, hiding itself from the heat of the sun, ...
— Sielanka: An Idyll • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... of one old gentleman is his parrot, and another chatters incessantly about his pupils. Some of the singers—the serious order of singers—are as namby-pamby off the stage as they are on it, unless revelling in "sweet sounds;" they are too fond of humming tunes, solfaing, and rehearsing graces in society; they have plenty to sing, but nothing to say for themselves; they chime the quarters like "our grandmother's clock," and at every revolution of the minute index, strike up their favourite tune. This is as bad as being half-smothered ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 272, Saturday, September 8, 1827 • Various
... men and women are working today than were working 2 years ago. The average factory work week is once again more than 40 hours; our industries are turning out more goods than ever before; and more than half of the manufacturing capacity that lay silent and wasted 100 weeks ago is humming with activity. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John F. Kennedy • John F. Kennedy
... do you, too, miss the light step of your mistress? No longer shall her little silken figure flit up and down your quiet staircases, no more deck out your silent rooms with flowers, humming the while some happy ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... chest and rubbed his fingers together, when out from between them flew Datilye, the Humming-bird. Datilye was told to make a circuit of the earth and report what he saw. He started off toward the east, circled south, west, north, and back from the east. All was well; the earth was most beautiful, very smooth, and covered with ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... things—naturally and frankly indifferent. When the first moment of stupefaction had passed, he opened his mouth to speak, looked at her, said nothing, and, turning suddenly on his heels, went out of the room humming a kind of air to which music and words were about all that ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... shortly after breakfast to transport her to where saddle-horses were waiting in the Park. Sometimes it would turn up about lunch-time and stand impatiently chugging while she changed into sport's clothes, after which it would dash away with her, humming contentedly, into the depths of the country. It was the magic-carpet which obeyed all her desires. After war-days, with their petrol shortages and restricted travel, it seemed more than ordinarily magic. It made emphatic as nothing else ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... was more at peace with the world than he had been for a long time. He felt that he would be able to look his little girl in the face again. For the first time in a week he felt at one with creation. He rode into the ranch plaza humming "Dixie." ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... above a bleak peninsula on the South Coast, and the congregation had struggled up with heads slanted sou'-west against the weather that drove up the Channel in a black fog. Now, having gained shelter, they quickly lost the glow of endeavour, and mixed in pleasing stupor the humming of the storm in the tower above, its intermittent onslaughts on the leadwork of the southern windows, and the voice of Parson Babbage lifted now and again from the chancel as if to correct the shambling pace of the choir ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... See! I can take your hand—that is the hand that gave me the red rose. You said you loved me, then; you cannot have changed already. I have not changed. What is there that would try to separate us? Only words, Gerty!—a cloud of words humming round the ears and confusing one. Oh, I have grown heart-sick of them in your letters, Gerty; until I put the letters away altogether, and I said, 'They are no more than the leaves of last autumn: when I see Gerty, and take her hand, all the words will disappear then.' Your hand is not made of ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... to the window and stood looking out again, only that, instead of the wet garden with the clumps of larkspur feathering up, she seemed to see long beds of flowers in bloom. She even heard the bees humming over them and the tumult of nesting birds. And all the time Jake Preble waited, looking at her back and wondering if after all the losses of his life he was to forfeit Mariana, who, he knew, ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... alive, without hurting them, so that the whole chase may be brought up to table; and for this secret, the Duke of Newcastle's grandson, if he can ever get a son, is to give a hundred thousand pounds. Then the delightfulness of having whole groves of humming-birds, tame tigers taught to fetch and carry, pocket spying-glasses to see all that is doing in China, with a thousand other toys, which we now look upon as impracticable, and which pert posterity would laugh ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... played a deathspell on their strings, and there arose a humming along the blade of Sacnoth as he turned the spell aside. When Leothric dropped not down, and they heard the humming of Sacnoth, the magicians arose and fled, all wailing, as they ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... vertiginosum. The vertiginous murmur in the ears, or noise in the head, is compared to the undulations of the sound of bells, or to the humming of bees. It frequently attends people about 60 years of age; and like the visual vertigo described above is owing to our hearing less perfectly from the gradual inirritability of the organ on the approach of age; and the disagreeable sensation of noise attending it is owing to the less energetic ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... practised ear the neighbourhood of an ape, a sloth, or some other of the few mammals which inhabit the great forests. Occasionally a large blue bee hums past, a brilliant butterfly flashes across the path, or a humming-bird hangs in the air over a flower like, as St. Pierre says, an emerald set in coral, but "how weak it is to say that that exquisite little being, whirring and fluttering in the air, has a head of ruby, a throat of emerald, and wings of sapphire, ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... with she was more affectionate than usual, seeming to wish with the honey of her kisses to sweeten the bitter cross which the mistress was doomed to bear. Then she hesitated. She fidgeted about the room humming. At last she said that the doctor had come at the request of Serge, who was most anxious about his wife's health. And that excellent Doctor Rigaud, who had known her from a child, had found her suffering from great weakness. He had ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... forward to have a look at the position for himself. The Platoon in front was established behind a mud bank, firing occasional shots at the enemy, who appeared to have dug himself in behind a railway cutting at least five hundred yards distant. Although bullets were humming pretty thickly through the air, the casualties on the British side so far were only two or three men slightly wounded. They had orders to "hang on" to that position until the centre and right should be sufficiently strengthened for the main attack to materialise, when they ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... cottage and sat down. Joan was by the fire with her knitting in her hand, and softly humming ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... resuming the flannel shirt, he laughed. "Thank a kind God that it 's as cold to the British as 't is to us, and there are more of them to suffer." Another moment served to don his outer clothing and boots, and to fit on his wig and sword. His toilet made, he went downstairs, humming cheerily. He turned first to the kitchen door, drawn thither by the ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... the two began to weave, and the nymphs stole nearer, coaxed by the sound of the shuttles, that seemed to be humming with delight over the two ...
— Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew • Josephine Preston Peabody
... getting tired of its job. Now and then it barked spitefully, had half a notion to stop, changed its mind, ran faster than it should, wheezed and slowed down—acting in an altogether unreasonable way. But it kept the screw humming nevertheless. ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... to the gate with her, and was saying the last good-bye, when the stillness was broken by the humming of a motor-car. In a cloud of dust, an automobile came up the road; it was upon them almost in ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... Brooke's poems. When men sing among the shell-holes they prefer a song which belittles their own heroism. Please picture to yourself a company of mud-stained scarecrows in steel-helmets, plodding their way under intermittent shelling through a battered trench, whistling and humming the following splendid sentiments from The Plea ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson
... moderately bad road became immoderately awful. At this spot some disillusioned motorist had revengefully printed on a proud sign-post the classic words: "Damn Bad Road." We were forced to believe him. And at that instant, as if to emphasize the description, millions of mosquitoes the size of humming-birds attacked us. How the Indians stood them, goodness knows, but perhaps they put up with the pests because they helped keep ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... and intelligible. Thus I passed three weeks at Nether Stowey and in the neighbourhood, generally devoting the afternoons to a delightful chat in an arbour made of bark by the poet's friend Tom Poole, sitting under two fine elm-trees, and listening to the bees humming round us, while we quaffed our flip. It was agreed, among other things, that we should make a jaunt down the Bristol Channel, as far as Lynton. We set off together on foot, Coleridge, John Chester, and I. This Chester was a native ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... distant humming in Betty's ears. Senator North had entered and taken his seat. He apparently settled himself to listen to the speech, and he looked as ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... sparkled with rain—in an oblong porcelain box that lay flat upon the casement. Her white jewelled fingers flitted in and out of the blue depths. Her small white teeth were but half eclipsed and there fluttered forth from her parted lips a low humming that keyed and blended with the organ. Her soft white dress enveloped her mould loosely; her long flowing sleeves, prefaced by rare lace, displaying her pink, round arm. She wore not the look of care; for she had thrown ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... emotion to get the better of her; the pug was undecided for some little time, but at last he went off to join her. I was presented with a gold paper saint, then my place was shown me and I was incorporated into the humming, buzzing child-beehive, which, glad of the interruption, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... And a bee humming on the hillside, hearing the voice, flew upward and stung the evil bird so it fell away into the darkness and ...
— The Story and Song of Black Roderick • Dora Sigerson
... porch she shrank away into the shadow as if she wished to be unobserved. He might easily have passed her, for it was nearly dark from the yew-tree and the row of elms that shut out, the western sky, where the sunset was just dying away. His mind, too, was occupied with other things, and he was humming over the verse of a hymn the boys had been singing—'Far from my heavenly home.' There was no drilling into them the proper rendering ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... the mountain's heart of fire sprang the first humming-bird. It is the bird of flame, for it has all the beauty of the colors of the flame, but it is gentle, and every child in all the earth loves it and is glad to see it ...
— The Book of Nature Myths • Florence Holbrook
... about one hundred and fifty kinds of birds on the island of Puerto Rico. Among these are the mocking bird, the wild canary, the sugar bird, the thrush, the humming bird, the owl, the hawk, the dove, the cuckoo, the oriole, the nightingale, and the Guinea bird. During the migrating season, many other birds fly ...
— A Little Journey to Puerto Rico - For Intermediate and Upper Grades • Marian M. George
... last, "perhaps you're not so very far off, this time. If I couldn't be an eagle, or a hawk, or a wild goose, or one of those big-horned owls that we hear every night, or a humming-bird, then I'd rather be a crow than most. A crow has got enemies, of course, but then he's got brains, so that he knows how to make a fool of most of his enemies. And he certainly does manage to get a lot of fun out of life, taking it all in all, except when the ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Fred began humming in the ridiculous way he has when be thinks that an air of unconcern may ease a situation, and of course Rustum Khan mistook the nasal noises for intentional insult. He turned on the unsuspecting Fred like a tiger. ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... their places before the long frames filled with reels, on which fine woollen threads were being wound by the revolutions of the machinery overhead. These reels whirled round so rapidly that Amy could not follow their motion, and the buzz-buzz, as of a thousand bees humming, filled her ears and confused the instructions of the girl who was to give her her first lesson in winding ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... He was humming blithely one morning as he opened his letters; outside the sky was blue and the sun shining. It was good to be alive. He opened the first letter. The sky was still blue, the ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
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