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More "Rustle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... advantage of a wild chase that had carried them rather a longer distance than usual, I took a sharp turn and strolled away quite by myself. I heard the excited cries die away in the distance, and then for some few moments the forest silence was broken only by the rustle of the breeze through the grass, and the sudden scream of a startled jay. Doves went happily from tree to tree and I never put my gun up. I had heard a very familiar sound, and wanted to be assured that my ears were not deceived. No, I was right; I could hear the cuckoo, calling through ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... Moktader saw in the palace of Bagdad a tree with eighteen branches, some of gold, some of silver, and on them were gold and silver birds, and the leaves of the tree were of gold and silver. By means of machinery, the leaves were made to rustle and the birds to sing. Mirkhond speaks also of a tree of gold and precious stones in the city of Sultanieh, in the interior of which were conduits through which flowed drinks of different kinds. Clavijo describes a somewhat similar tree at ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... be placed in the thickest of danger. When he falls, they find on his breast a withered spray from the pear-tree under which Perrine had first plighted troth. On these simple lines the music builds up a drama. From the opening shimmer and rustle of the garden, through the Gregorian chant that solemnizes the drawing of the lots, and is interrupted by the youth's start of joy at his own luck (an abrupt glissando); through his sturdy resolve to go to war in his friend's place, on through ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... from the sleepy gulfs, but she will rise Often before me in the twilight shade, Holding a bunch of poppies and a blade Of springing wheat: prostrate my body lies Before her on the turf, the while she ties A fillet of the weed about my head; And in the gaps of sleep I seem to hear A gentle rustle like the stir of corn, And words like odours thronging to my ear: "Lie still, beloved—still until the morn; Lie still with me upon this rolling sphere— Still till the judgment; thou art faint ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... were much in that cosy mountain village: the children capered by his side all day; he smelt the woods and flowers; he heard the leaves rustle on the poplar's crest; and had merely to think of a certain room in the tumble-down old Citadelle for a wave of courage and high anticipation to sweep over him like a sea. A new feeling of harmony was taking ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... along the edge of the meadow. Already the cattle were heard to low wildly in the pastures and along the highways, restlessly running to and fro, as if in apprehension of the withering of the grass and of the approach of winter. Our thoughts, too, began to rustle. ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... at his elbow, there was the rustle of silk; and a beautiful figure, all in black velvet, towered above him, then crowded past him, and sank into the empty seat at his side. He was too startled to speak—and Miss Anita Flagg seemed to understand that and to wish to give him time; for, without ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... could hear the rustle of her dress as she moved, probably to lessen the distance between them. "You are honest with me?" she urged. "You do agree with Mr. Packard ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... port and sherry with the sweet biscuits stood always on the sideboard; and the fire had often to be low in the grate that my father's tall hat might shine resplendent and my mother's black silk rustle on Sundays. ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... Applicant No. 179. The superintendent did not look up as Rachel came in. He scribbled busily on a pad of paper at his desk, thus observing rules one and two in the proper conduct of superintendents when interviewing applicants. Rachel Wiletzky, standing by his desk, did not cough or wriggle or rustle her skirts or sag on one hip. A sense of her quiet penetrated the superintendent's subconsciousness. He glanced up hurriedly over his left shoulder. Then he laid down his pencil and sat up slowly. His ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... stole upon her and when she woke again the night was really there. Through the scattered tree-tops she could see the stars shining; close at her feet was the same gentle purring of the little stream, and overhead the soft rustle of pine needles moving lightly in the breeze. But what had wakened her? Something had, she knew. Some sound other than that of the brook or the pines. Queenie too, had heard. She had got to her feet and ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... is sung, and sung again, and then the programmes rustle, as the audience looks to see who has the rashness ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various
... a fine morning that Mr. Bernard, ushered in by Mr. Peckham, made his appearance in the great schoolroom of the Apollinean Institute. A general rustle ran all round the seats when the handsome young man was introduced. The principal carried him to the desk of the young lady English assistant, Miss Darley by name, and introduced ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Trot, "I think you're better than you were before, for you are fresh and sweet all through and rustle beautifully when ...
— The Scarecrow of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... straining my eyes in the effort to read the superscriptions when I seemed to hear, or, rather, feel, something rustle back of me. I paid no attention, believing that a draught from the window was moving some drapery. But in a minute or so another movement, almost imperceptible, sent a strangely disagreeable little shiver over my skin. It was so stupid ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... moment he watched neon signs blink. In the desertion he walked past Lehman's Drug Store and Otto Kramer's bar, and crossed over to pause for a nameless moment in front of Paul Hendricks' Hobby Center, which was all dark, and seemed little changed. He took to a side street, and won back the rustle of trees and the click of his ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... boys for an outing. What lessons these growing lads will imbibe from the beauty of Nature around them. How can they help but think of the Creator when they dwell so near the primal source of life. The crystal waters of the lake will teach them purity, the leaves of the trees will rustle messages of self-denial, and the majestic mountains will speak to them of endurance and courage, a religion which dwells in Nature until they, "like Moses, will see in the bushes the radiant Deity and know they are treading ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... "Now, let's rustle all the stuff off the cart," urged Dick. "Be quick about it. We want the tent up in good ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock
... morning She wears her oldest things, She doesn't make a rustle, She hasn't any rings; She says, "Good-morning, chickies, It's such a lovely day, Let's go into the garden And have ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... and their rude surprises, have I been so moved by an unexpected noise as I was then, standing with the Black Colonel in the black Pass. Partly this was because the surprise was complete, being unheralded by a rustle or a movement, but, still more, because it was the magic hour at which the womb of night moves to the birth ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... to himself, "to have my way disturbed by the words of a mere child?" And just then he heard the soft rustle of a silk dress, and, looking up, he saw the pretty face of ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... was a slight rustle in the bushes by the hedge. The branches parted. A pale boy ran up to them. He looked quickly at the sisters with his clear, intensely calm, almost dead eyes. There was something strange in the shape of his pale lips, thought Elisaveta. A motionless, ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... Ever the rustle of the advancing foam, The surges' desolate thunder, and the cry As of some lone babe in the whispering sky; Ever I peer into the restless gloom To where a ship clad dim and loftily Looms steadfast in ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... Wolf took me by the hand and led me on. Then in another moment came the sense of lights and wider spaces, the rustle of many people settling down to attention; and I knew that I was in the presence of the famous secret tribunal of the White Wolf, which had been set up in defiance of the authority of the Duke and against the laws ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... absolute noiselessness he began creeping into the mouth of the cavern. One of the embers fell apart with a soft rustle, which caused him to stop and hold his breath lest the sleepers should awake. But they did not stir, and in a minute ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... within, from the dark hall where he had stationed his men, to be exact. As he listened he was conscious that some living creature had approached the door, touched the handle, and by the swift, low rustle and the sound of hard breathing, that it had been pounced upon and seized. He scrambled out from beneath the table, snicked on the light, whirled open the door, and was in time to hear the irritable voice of Sir Horace say, testily: "Don't make an ass of yourself by your over-zealousness. ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... remaining stairs and went into the dark room at the top. At the door, which stood open, I stopped and listened. To my intense vexation, for the situation was becoming decidedly unpleasant, the pair were still coming up. In silence now, but I could hear their approaching footsteps and the rustle of the lady's dress. Unfortunately, there was no corner on the top landing where I could stand hidden, so I was forced to ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... make their living in similar fashion to yours, because they're not able to do anything better. Somebody's got to do the dirty work, and it might as well be you. You're paid for it, and you ain't got the backbone to rustle cleaner jobs." ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... seats and never stir, We allow our flowers to fade in peace, and avoid the trouble of bearing fruit. Let the starlights blazon their eternal folly, We quench our flames. Let the forest rustle and the ocean roar, We sit mute. Let the call of the flood-tide come from ...
— The Cycle of Spring • Rabindranath Tagore
... the song of birds and the rustle of leaves alone met the ear. Neither man nor beast was stirring to challenge Colonel Philibert's approach, but long ere he reached the door of the Chateau, a din of voices within, a wild medley of shouts, song, and laughter, a clatter of wine-cups, and pealing notes of violins struck ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... that he was being followed, sat down outside a cafe on his way homewards, and bade his guide leave him for a little time. Instantly there was the soft rustle of feminine skirts by his side, and a woman seated ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a rustle of garments, and a stout, pleasant-looking lady, of perhaps fifty, wearing a small cap set off with ...
— Andy Grant's Pluck • Horatio Alger
... in, and in restless hesitation taken a cigar, and not having yet lighted it, was standing weary and motionless before the open window, gazing at the light feathery white clouds gliding around the bright moon, when suddenly a faint rustle made him start and turn round. Varvara Petrovna, whom he had left only four minutes earlier, was standing before him again. Her yellow face was almost blue. Her lips were pressed tightly together and twitching at the corners. For ten full seconds she looked him in the eyes ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Jack. "Hold on, driver! Keep your seats, ladies, and gents. Just make yourselves free—everything's paid for. Driver, rustle these folks around as long as they're a mind to go—friends of ours, you know. Take them everywheres—and if you want more money, come to the St. Nicholas, and we'll make it all right. Pleasant journey to you, ladies and gents—go ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... adobe wall until the moment came for entering the arena. Near to him, Jose calmed his big, black horse and waited also, cold hauteur the keynote of his whole attitude. Dade waved his hand to them, and they followed him into the empty rectangle. From the crowd came a rustle as of a gust of wind through tree-tops; then they were still again, watching ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... this picture, and they were still more astonished when the real live bear was led into the ring and marched up and down with a wooden gun upon his shoulder, while the performance of his bottle-trick always created a rustle all over the tent. This was the surest sign ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... of the tree and boat to rise and fall with the water had ceased. He was still more struck, when he went outside, by the comparative silence. The wind still whistled overhead and swayed the branches, but the hiss and rustle of ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... was all unreasoning—there was no more to be done than on those other days which he had wakened to with bitterness, because they seemed useless and empty of any worth—but this morning the mere light of the sun was of use, the rustle of the small breeze in the leaves, the soft floating past of the white clouds, the mere fact that the great blind-faced, stately house was his own, that he could tramp far over lands which were his heritage, ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Nor had the promised saddle horse materialised. The boys were too busy to run in any horses, her father had told her shortly when she reminded him of his promise. When the fence was done, maybe he could rustle her another horse—and then he had added that he didn't see what ailed Yellowjacket, for all the riding she was ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... city, I entered at a venture any of the buildings I found open. Here it was a bazaar where they sold cotton materials of alternate colors called "al adjas," handkerchiefs as fine as spider webs, leather marvelously worked, silks the rustle of which is called "tchakhtchukh," in Bokhariot, a name that Meilhac and Halevy did wisely in not adopting for their celebrated heroine. There it was a shop where you could buy sixteen sorts of tea, eleven of which are green, that being the only kind used in the interior of ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... and in a moment the light was shut out as the heavy curtains ran together. Then he heard the rustle of the woman's silk dress as she sat down opposite to him in the dark. He felt unaccountably nervous, and her china blue eyes had made a disagreeable impression upon him. ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... wild, great west wind abroad, flapping above one like an immense banner, and every now and again swooping furiously against my windows. The wind is too strong perhaps, and the trees are certainly too leafless for much of that wide rustle that we both remember; there is only a sharp, angry, sibilant hiss, like breath drawn with the strength of the elements through shut teeth, that one hears between the gusts only. I am in excellent humour with myself, for I have worked hard and not altogether fruitlessly; and I ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... were not, though they came from the same cause—electricity. The glare that dazzled the eyes of the Plush Bear came from the electric lights of a large store, where he was being unpacked, together with other toys. There was a rustle of paper as the Plush Bear was unwrapped, and ...
— The Story of a Plush Bear • Laura Lee Hope
... inspired me. There seemed to me something pitiless and phantom-like in the severity of their enormous bare trunks, stretching on without break or branch into the distance—overhead, and there at length giving birth to a sea of dark waving plumes, the rustle of which reached my ears as the sound of tossing waves. Passing beneath these vast trees we came to others of smaller growth, but still of the same type,—straight-stemmed, with branching foliage at their summit. Here we stood to rest, and as we paused I became aware that the ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... the look of a rattlesnake's when it coils for a spring, and his breast swelled out as if he was summoning all his strength. He stepped forward to a tree so lightly that there came no rustle from the dead leaves he trod upon. Harry took his place on the other side of the tree, ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... away, were clusters of rather brilliant lights. Presumably this pointed to the fact that these lights were placed at points of special importance, such as strongly guarded bridges, in which case it seemed probable that the canal might form part of the boundary line. In order to avoid the slightest rustle which might attract attention, I rolled my raincoat and secured it over one shoulder, "bandolier fashion." I next covered the brass buttons of my tunic with mud, to prevent their reflecting the rays of a possible ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... is a good man. He has a good heart, but there's so many of them that it is all he can do to rustle what must be had. Why," she told me in a burst of confidence, "I've been saving up for a tombstone for ma for twelve years, but I have to help pa once in a while, and I sometimes think I never will get enough ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... with not having the imagination of expenditure that she appeared to charge her friend, but with not having the imagination of terror, of thrift, the imagination or in any degree the habit of a conscious dependence on others. Such moments, when all Wigmore Street, for instance, seemed to rustle about and the pale girl herself to be facing the different rustlers, usually so undiscriminated, as individual Britons too, Britons personal, parties to a relation and perhaps even intrinsically remarkable—such moments in especial determined ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... go up and rustle a few of the boys that know the mine well. I expect before we find him Mr. Wolf Struve will be a lamb and right anxious ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... their buddings and disleafings,—events, things suffered, things done, catastrophes,—stretch through all lands and times. Is not every leaf of it a biography, every fibre there an act or word? Its boughs are Histories of Nations. The rustle of it is the noise of Human Existence, onwards from of old. It grows there, the breath of Human Passion rustling through it;—or stormtost, the stormwind howling through it like the voice of all the gods. It is Igdrasil, the Tree of Existence. It is the past, the present, and ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... By the insult of our presence, By the outrage of our actions. We have found you great and noble. 210 Fail not in the greater trial, Faint not in the harder struggle." When they ceased, a sudden darkness Fell and filled the silent wigwam. Hiawatha heard a rustle 215 As of garments trailing by him, Heard the curtain of the doorway Lifted by a hand he saw not, Felt the cold breath of the night air, For a moment saw the starlight; 220 But he saw the ghosts no longer, Saw no more the wandering ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... and the prayers, while very brief, were so pointed as to be almost startling. They sang, too, a great deal, only a verse at a time, and whenever they seemed to feel like it. Her amazement reached its hight when she felt a little rustle beside her, and turned in time to see the eager light in ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... petted and spoiled was she: A word, and all her life is changed! His wavering love too easily In the great, gay city grows estranged: One year: she sits in the old church pew; A rustle, a murmur,—O Dorothy! hide Your face and shut from your soul the view— 'Tis ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... was filing out along the main corridor of St. Sidwell's. It came with a tramp and a rustle and a hiss and a tramp, urged to a trot by the excited teachers. The First Division first, half-woman, carrying itself smoothly, with a swish of its long skirts, with a blush, a dreamy intellectual smile, or a steadfast impenetrable air, as it happened to be more or less ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair
... George saw him place his hand on the sill and peer through the crack. The moments slipped by, and his eye remained glued to the crack. Suddenly there was a rustle in the bush close by. It passed unnoticed, for George had eyes and ears for nothing but what his chief was doing. Again there was a rustle, this time more pronounced. Still it ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... camp-fires in the snow at Dismal River and a wintry blast was whistling through the bare, brown limbs of the cottonwoods, there were sounds of revelry at the big frontier post, spirited music, merry laughter, the rhythmic beat of martial feet in the measures of the dance, the rustle of silk, and the pit-a-pat of dainty slippers. Only two or three households were unrepresented. It was the first hop Mrs. Stone had missed. It was something that the chaplain and his wife did not care for. It was a nuisance to Leonard, who loved his books ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... Day after day and night after night the drought gets worse. The rivers sink low; brooks run dry; the edges of the lakes become marshes. The marshes dry out to hardened mud. The dry leaves of the trees rustle and crumble. All the animals and wood creatures gather around the muddy pools that once were lakes or rivers. People begin saving water and buying it and selling it as the most precious ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... rustle of fabric, and she laid down the photograph a moment too late, as her aunt came in. As it happened, the elder lady's eyes rested on the picture, and a faint flush of annoyance crept into the face of the girl. It was scarcely perceptible, but Miss Barrington ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... can't take the ripple from the breeze, And she can't take the rustle from the trees; And when I am out of the old girl's sight ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... earth was raked level. Not so much as the hole from which my beet had been ravished remained in circumstantial evidence. The rest of the party arrived while I stood transfixed, the picture of detected guilt. To the rustle of the corn, and the shuffle of feet over the furrows succeeded a horrible hush. Then, a chorus of mocking girlish cackles, led by Paulina Hobson's discordant screech, smote the sunset air and covered me with a pall of infamy. Paulina caught at the fence for support as ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... had been shining down through the trees, had gone under a cloud, and the branches about them began to rustle as the ...
— Sunny Boy in the Country • Ramy Allison White
... world, where immortal clarities sigh past in the perfumes of the blossoms, populate the breathings of the breeze, throng and twinkle in the leaves that twirl upon the bough; where the very grass is all a-rustle with lovely spirit-things, and a weeping mist of music fills the air. The final scenes especially are such a Bacchic reel and rout and revelry of beauty as leaves one staggered and giddy; poetry is spilt like wine, music runs to drunken waste. The choruses sweep down the wind, tirelessly, ...
— Shelley - An Essay • Francis Thompson
... night he sat by the window of his room. Insensible now to the cold, to the wind moaning outside, to the snow whirling against the pane, he lived with phantoms. To and fro, to and fro glided the wraith-forms, vanishing and appearing. The soft rustling sound of the snow was the rustle of their movements. Across the gleam of light, streaking coldly through the pane, flickering fitfully on the wall, floated ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... spreads her mantle green Across the pasture-lands of snow, And Spring's first scarlet breasts are seen Where treetops rustle to and fro; Then come fair fragrant dreams as though Our lightest fancy to entrance And paint us what we fain would know Adown the ...
— The Rose-Jar • Thomas S. (Thomas Samuel) Jones
... sides of the cleft, rested knee and foot on the ledge, and extended a hand. I could not see Cavor, but I could hear the rustle of his movements as he crouched to spring. Then whack and he was hanging to my arm—and no heavier than a kitten! I lugged him up until he had a hand on my ledge, ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... left standing rather helpless before the problem presented by the fact that this competent and diligent young lawyer—whom, forsooth, the rustling leaves of the forest could never for once entice from the rustle of the leaves of his law-books—did nevertheless transact, during his own first four years of practice, probably less than one half as much business as seems to have been done during a somewhat shorter space of time by our poor, ignorant, ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... aired and in good repair, as a caretaker who lived close by used to come and look after it every day. The first night that the family settled there, as the clergyman was going upstairs he heard a footstep and the rustle of a dress, and as he stood aside a lady passed him, entered a door facing the stairs, and closed it after her. It was only then he realised that her dress was very old-fashioned, and that he had not been able to enter ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour
... coachmen, are no longer "curios;" they are persistent in their efforts to establish themselves, having no regard for peculiar races with peculiar occupations. It means that the Negroes must hustle and rustle, create avenues, open new vistas, announce new projects, and thus avoid alms-seeking and poor houses in ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... unintentionally—here he was, prettily trapped; and for the life of him he could see no way out of it again. The darkness began to weigh upon him. He gave ear; all was silent without, but within and close by he seemed to catch a faint sighing, a faint sobbing rustle, a little stealthy creak—as though many persons were at his side, holding themselves quite still, and governing even their respiration with the extreme of slyness. The idea went to his vitals with a shock, and he faced about suddenly as if to defend his life. Then, for the ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... of Salisbury Plain, unshaded for mile after mile, and a dot in the middle distance, the back of the one porter returning to Framlynghame Admiral, if such a place existed, till seven forty-five. The bell of a church invisible clanked softly. There was a rustle in the horse-chestnuts to the left of the line, and the sound of ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... did not present themselves uncalled, it was highly becoming to worship the Lord in fine clothes. So there were broken rainbows in the tall pews, with a soft waving of fans to and fro in the essenced air, and a low rustle of silk. The men went as fine as the women, and the June sunshine, pouring in upon all this lustre and color, made a flower-bed of the assemblage. Being of the country, it was vastly better behaved than would have been a fashionable London congregation; but it certainly saw no reason why Mr. ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... thou shouldst send me greeting in the grave, The cold breath of the grave itself were sweet; Oh, take my life! my life, 'tis all I have, If I should make thee live I do entreat! I think that I shall hear, when I am dead, The rustle of ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... when I do, I strive to get there with both feet. We must either work the campaign funds into their legitimate channels, or every blamed patriot within the sound of my voice will have to fasten on a tin bill and rustle for angle-worms amongst the hens. ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... moment entered Gentle Annie. She walked with little steps; propelling her plenitude silently but for the rustle of her silk skirt. In her hand she held a scented handkerchief, like any lady in a drawing-room; her hair, black at the roots and auburn at the ends, was wreathed, coil on coil, upon the top of her head; ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... thought. A stolid looking servant came to the door, who eyed her suspiciously, and did not seem disposed to admit her. However, on her decided request to see the lady of the house, she was shown a seat in the hall, and left to her reflections. A moment after, there was the rustle of silken robes, the sparkle of brilliant jewels, and a ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... vanished in the thicket with the undeliberate and impulsive act of an animal. There was a momentary rustle in the alders fifty feet away, and then all was silent. The hidden brook took up its monotonous murmur, the tapping of a distant woodpecker became suddenly audible, and Mr. Hamlin ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... a cloudy, misty moonlight, and there he saw it!—something white, gliding in! He heard the still rustle of its ghostly garments. It stood still by his bed;—a cold hand touched his; a voice said, three times, in a low, fearful whisper, "Come! come! come!" And, while he lay sweating with terror, he knew ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... He heard a rustle behind him, and there she was. She had on a gray fur coat and a lively little hat. Her cheeks were delicately tinted by ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... terrors returned, and with additional force. Sitting down, she looked fixedly at the hangings till her eyes ached, and then covering her face with her hands, and scarcely daring to breathe, she listened intently for the slightest sound. A rustle would have made her scream—but all was still as death, so profoundly quiet, that the very hush and silence became a new cause of disquietude, and longing for some cheerful sound to break it, she ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the middle of the hall another woman rose. Her motion was accompanied by the rustle of silk, and instantly there was silence, for Elsa Mallaby commanded ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... and delicate rustle of a large, mannerly audience was heard as the janitor opened and closed the door; and stage-fright seized the boy. The orchestra began an overture, and, at that, Penrod, trembling violently, tiptoed down the hall into the Janitor's ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... sound of childish voices chattering, childish feet trotting to and fro, and childish laughter sounding sweetly through the Sabbath stillness of the place. From a room near by, came the soothing creak of a rocking-chair, the rustle of a newspaper, and now and then a scrap of conversation common-place enough, but pleasant to hear, because so full of domestic love and confidence; and, as she listened, Christie pictured Mrs. Wilkins and her husband taking their rest ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... white men who went to the war from Talbotton took Negro men-servants (slaves) along with them. These were usually called body-servants, and it was a body-servant's duty to cook, wash, and do general valet service for his master. In a pinch, he was also supposed to raid a hen roost, or otherwise rustle food for ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... and erect of figure, with a severe cast of countenance, and heavy black curls pinned up under her net cap; her print dresses were always starched until they crackled, and on Sunday her black silk dress rustled as I never heard any silk dress rustle before. ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... unseen by us, and we, therefore, fancied ourselves wiser than he. The wind in the pines, the rustle of the leaves, the murmur of the brook, the growl of the thunder, and the voices of the night were all understood and answered by him. The flowers, the trees, the rocks, the hills, the clouds were to him, not lifeless things, but living friends, who laughed and wept with him ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... the table ready, and awaited the Baba Yaga. It began to grow dusky; the black rider appeared for a moment at the gate, and all grew dark. Only the eyes of the skulls sent forth their light. The trees began to crack, the leaves began to rustle, up drove the Baba Yaga. Vasilissa went ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... tumult of the ball, music and the blended harmony of many voices, rustle and whisper of skirt and silk, and the swish! swish! of feet across the ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... fabrics,—avoiding rather than courting observation. The vulgar impression derived in Broadway from an opposite habit is vastly increased by modern fashions; for the apology for a bonnet that leaves brow, cheek, and head fully exposed,—the rustle and dimensions of crinoline,—the heavy masses of unctuous false hair attached to the back of the head, deforming its shape and often giving a coarse monstrosity to its naturally graceful poise and proportions,—the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... of but little nerve or resolution find insupportable. To me, trained to a serenity of stoicism, it could make no demoralizing appeal. I had out my matchbox, opened it at leisure, and, while the whole vaulting blackness seemed to tick and rustle with secret movement, took a half-dozen vestas into my hand, struck one alight, and, by its dim radiance, made my way through the building by the passages we had penetrated in the morning. If at all I shrank or perspired on my ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... foreman. "Tell Sing Foo to rustle in the grub," he went on to one of the cowboys on ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in the Great West • Laura Lee Hope
... steadily scoured the neighborhood; and the further they went, the worse they fared. There was not a horse standing down by a pool, with his stiff legs shut up into biped form, nor a cow staring blandly across an old rail, nor a sheep with a pectoral cough behind a hedge, nor a rabbit making rustle at the eyebrow of his hole, nor even a moot, that might either be a man or hold a man inside it, whom or which those active fellows did not circumvent and poke into. In none of these, however, could they ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... forms as the microscopic plant which produces the so- called "red snow." On the smooth plain of the interior no rock waste relieves the snow's dazzling whiteness; no streams of running water are seen; the silence is broken only by howling storm winds and the rustle of the surface snow which they drive before them. Sounding with long poles, explorers find that below the powdery snow of the latest snowfall lie successive layers of earlier snows, which grow more ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... be rats. Look at yon fellow, Francis! Be'st as big as Mother Joan's kitten. Give me that stone." He flung it at the rat, and it flew clattering across the floor. There was another pattering rustle of hundreds of feet, and then a ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... of a few autumn days. The bleached foliage is falling all winter long, thus giving the ground near an untidy aspect. With some, the question of absolute neatness is paramount; with others, leaves are clean dirt, and their rustle in the wind does not cease to be music even after ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe
... rest. His eyes were turned toward the black wall of trees. A rustle, ever so faint, reached his ears ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... with the same unchanging smile with which she had first entered the room—the smile of a perfectly beautiful woman. With a slight rustle of her white dress trimmed with moss and ivy, with a gleam of white shoulders, glossy hair, and sparkling diamonds, she passed between the men who made way for her, not looking at any of them but smiling on all, as if graciously allowing ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... hands resting upon the table, the butt-end of a pistol beneath each palm. A rustle like that of a sheet or a gown trailing along the grass was audible on his right, not ten paces from him. He straightened up as ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... wrestling with the thunder-gust; they have made music both glad and solemn; they have attuned my thoughts by their quiet sound as I paced to and fro beneath the arch of intermingling boughs. Now they can only rustle under my feet. Henceforth the gray parsonage begins to assume a larger importance, and draws to its fireside,—for the abomination of the air-tight stove is reserved till wintry weather,— draws closer and closer to its fireside ...
— The Old Manse (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... interlude! no struggling moon, no mist, no long-winded passages upon the genial earth, no the sense of the night, no marvels of the dawn, no rhodomontade, no religion, no rhetoric, no sleeping villages, no silent towns (there was one), no rustle of trees—just a short story, and there you have a whole march covered as though a brigade had swung down it. A new day has come, and the sun has risen over the detestable parched hillocks ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... and the rhythmic jangling of a brass band, while in the piano exhibit a hired performer was playing upon a concert grand with a great flourish. Nearer at hand they could catch ends of conversation and notes of laughter, the noise of moving dresses, and the rustle of stiffly starched skirts. Here and there school children elbowed their way through the crowd, crying shrilly, their hands full of advertisement pamphlets, fans, picture cards, and toy whips, while the air itself was full of the smell ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... little speech, received with applause and a cheer. Then they quieted down behind the scenes, and a rustle and buzz began in front,—kept up for five minutes or so, in gentle fashion, till two gentlemen, in plain clothes, walked quietly in at the open door; at sight of whom, with instinctive certainty, the whole assembly rose. Leslie Goldthwaite, ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... Van, inverting a tub at the feet of the wondering women. "I'll see if I can rustle up ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... this moment something—an instinct of dissembling— causes him to counterfeit sleep; and he lies still, with shut eyelids. He can hear the door turning upon its hinges of raw hide, then the soft rustle of robes, while he is sensible of that inexpressible something that denotes the gentle presence ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... All the buds and bells of May, From dewy sward or thorny spray; All the heaped Autumn's wealth, With a still, mysterious stealth: She will mix these pleasures up Like three fit wines in a cup, And thou shalt quaff it;—thou shalt hear Distant harvest-carols clear; Rustle of the reaped corn; Sweet birds antheming the morn: And in the same moment—hark! 'Tis the early April lark, Or the rooks, with busy caw, Foraging for sticks and straw. Thou shalt, at one glance, behold The daisy and the marigold; White-plumed ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... ignorant of their meaning. After all, I had suggested the "whole bally business," and was entitled to know the means selected for its conduct. So round went my inquisitive head. Then I shook in my glee. Someone had pushed on the hands of the clock, and it was three minutes to twelve. There was a rustle of excitement in the room. The silence of expectancy followed. "Two-minutes-to" narrowed into "One-minute-to"; and after a premonitory click, which produced sufficient excitement to interfere with our breath, the ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... could devise or money could buy was brought into service. It was the life that Watteau painted, with its quaint and grotesque fancies, its sylvan divinities, and its sighing lovers wandering in endless masquerade, or whispering tender nothings on banks of soft verdure, amid the rustle of leaves, the sparkle of fountains, the glitter of lights, and the perfume of innumerable flowers. It was a perpetual carnival, inspired by imagination, animated by genius, and combining everything that could charm the taste, distract the mind, ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... youth, the one terrible night that cut all happiness short, present before her. She could almost have fancied that she heard the long-silent sounds of her father's step, her father's way of breathing, the rustle of his newspaper as he hastily turned it over, coming through the lapse of years; the silence of the night. She knew that she had the little writing-case of her girlhood with her, in her box. The treasures of the dead that it contained, the morsel of dainty sewing, the little sister's golden ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... railing. We were safe there. Nobody but me liked the place. Miss Pinshon and the overseer agreed in shunning it. And there was promise in the blue sky, and hope in the soft sunshine, and sympathy in the sweet rustle of the pine-leaves. Why not? Are they not all God's voices? And the words of the Book were very precious there, to me and many another. I was rather more left to myself of late. My governess gave me my lessons quite as assiduously ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... sunset with Edward. The autumnal tints were gilding the trees in the park with their glowing hues, and the air had that wintry mildness which is soothing though melancholy. The window was open; and, wrapped up in a thick shawl, I was inhaling the damp moist air, and listening to the rustle of the dried leaves which were being swept from the gravel walk below; the low twitter of some robin-redbreasts was in unison with the scene, and affected me in an Unaccountable manner. My tears fell fast on the book ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... added to his already made discovery, an addition so ingeniously constructed that it will drop the grain in bunches ready for the binder. The discoverer stands by and sees in the form of a human being hands, arms and a band; he watches the motion then starts in to rustle with cause and effect again. He thinks and sweats day and night, and by the genius of thought produces a machine to bind the grain. By this time another suggestion arises, how to separate the wheat as the machine journeys in its cutting process. To his convictions nothing will ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still
... without a tremor, but put me in the garden of a country house after the strength of the company has gone to roost and the place is shut up, and a sort of goose-fleshy feeling steals over me. The night wind stirs the tree-tops, twigs crack, bushes rustle, and before I know where I am, the morale has gone phut and I'm expecting the family ghost to come sneaking up behind me, making groaning noises. Dashed unpleasant, the whole thing, and if you think it improves matters to know that you are shortly about to ring ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... Mr. Egger was invariably carried on in that language. Now this was a refinement of torture, seeing that it was often impossible to gather a meaning from her remarks, whilst to show any such difficulty was to incur her most furious wrath. Egger trembled when he heard the rustle of her dress outside, the perspiration stood on his forehead as he ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... meet us, to cheer us and greet us, As we race past the fields to the woods brightly green, Whose young leaves half rustle with a great show of bustle When we halt at the fairest of ...
— Over the Top With the Third Australian Division • G. P. Cuttriss
... open softly, Sylvie rushed to her own window and heard the rustle of paper against her blinds. She fastened the strings of her bed-gown and went quickly upstairs to Pierrette's room, where she found the poor girl unwinding the silk and ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... called low. There was no answer, but the rattle stopped. "D'yer see me?" he asked, trembling. Jimmy's chest heaved. Donkin, looking away, bent his ear to Jimmy's lips, and heard a sound like the rustle of a single dry leaf driven along the smooth sand of a beach. ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... across the room—the peaked brows, pursed-up lips, and air of gracious patronage; but the dignity of later years seemed but to have added fresh weapons to her armament. A pigtail could never by any chance have been so imposing as the glossy coils which were now wound round the little head. The rustle of silken skirts heralded her approach in a manner infinitely more stately than the scamper of thin brown legs, and the wave of the little hand was emphasised ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... this cold ideal was not the end, and that out of the gall of austerity sweetness should yet come forth. Wise men have said that all great systems of ethics meet upon a higher plane, as the branches of forest trees rustle together in the breeze; for though in the dark earth their roots creep apart, their summits are joined in the freedom of clear air. As I now struck inland from the iron shores of shipwreck, my heart warmed ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... his face. On reading these pages, which have escaped the attention of the professional critics, I wonder whether they may not have a fate similar to Defoe's; for Defoe also was read voraciously by his contemporaries, his pamphlets made a great rustle in their time, and then the critics turned to other and spicier writers. But in due season, other critics, as well as the world, made the discovery that only a genius could have produced Defoe's ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... paradox, of a peopled desolation that men of but little nerve or resolution find insupportable. To me, trained to a serenity of stoicism, it could make no demoralizing appeal. I had out my matchbox, opened it at leisure, and, while the whole vaulting blackness seemed to tick and rustle with secret movement, took a half-dozen vestas into my hand, struck one alight, and, by its dim radiance, made my way through the building by the passages we had penetrated in the morning. If at all I shrank or perspired on my spectral journey, ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... room. Insensible now to the cold, to the wind moaning outside, to the snow whirling against the pane, he lived with phantoms. To and fro, to and fro glided the wraith-forms, vanishing and appearing. The soft rustling sound of the snow was the rustle of their movements. Across the gleam of light, streaking coldly through the pane, flickering fitfully on the wall, floated ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... a fine fellow like him to go to the dogs." Higgins nodded heavily in agreement. "Why don't you send him away where he'll have to rustle? That's ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... said, without looking towards a rustle and half a footstep that had just come in at the door, but leaning back in her chair and speaking towards the corner of the looking-glass, 'will you go down and find out if any gentleman named Julian has been staying in this house? Get to know it, I mean, Menlove, not by directly ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... sinuous, silken rustle; fingers like steel wires tore the pack from his grasp and he found himself looking into the mouth of a small but eminently ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... put the chairs a good way apart, and looked at them very gravely. Then he set them quite close together, and relaxed into a smile. And before he had finished smiling, over the parquet floor behind him there came the light rustle of a dress. The Nubian servant turned round and gazed at Mrs. Armine, who had stopped beside a table and was looking about the room; a white-and-yellow room, gaily but rather sparsely furnished, that harmonized well with the fair beauty which ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... nothing, and the ship was motionless, save for the slight heave of the swell which, stealing along through the blackness, would occasionally take her under the counter and give her a gentle lift that would cause all her spars to creak and her canvas to rustle with a pattering of reef-points, a jerk and rattle of hemp and chain sheets, and a faint click of cabin doors upon their hooks, the whole accompanied, perhaps, with a discordant bang of the wheel chains to the kick of the rudder as the black water swirled and gurgled round it. In the ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... to be switched on, and they cast a deceptive glow upon all work, and idiotic shadows of the moving fingers of the girls. Miss Summers glowered and rubbed the tip of her nose; and at each crack or rustle of a chair or a piece of material she glanced sharply up, as though she were fighting with an impulse to scream. Sally felt that if Miss Summers had screamed they would all have screamed. She herself was tempted to scream first, so as ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... I battled round a point, I heard a rustle and a rush of something coming, and the bowsprit of a large sloop glided into view close by me. She was painted in stripes of all colors above her green bottom. The shimmer of the water shook the reflection of her hull, and made the edges of the stripes blend together. It was ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... first simile—though you prove me doomed To a viler berth still, to the steerage-hole, The sheep-pen or the pig-stye, I should strive To make what use of each were possible; And as this cabin gets upholstery, 360 That hutch should rustle with sufficient straw. ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... moment that Dickie, attracted by the rustle of paper, appeared at the door. His eyes were beginning to droop a little. He rubbed them hard as he crossed the entry. The pit-pat of his bare feet made no sound on the carpeted floor, so that the old man had no ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... then fusses with the cricket, and then fans herself unremittingly until she can see something else to do. During all this time, and throughout all these exercises, the one article of dress upon her fidgety person that has rustle in it, rustles. It chafes against the walls of silence as a caged bear chafes, with feverish restlessness, against the walls of his cell; and as if the annoyance of one sense were not sufficient, she seems to have adopted a bob-and-sinker style of trimming, for hat and dress, and hair and ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... pliant little women who allow themselves to be taken up, petted, set down, and taken up again like a kitten. Her small feet, as I heard them on the gravel, made a light sound essentially their own, that harmonized with the rustle of her dress, producing a feminine music which stamped itself on the heart, and remained distinct from the footfall of a thousand other women. Her gait bore all the quarterings of her race with so much pride, that, in the street, ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac
... seemed reaching out to grasp Nevill, and he shuddered as he realized his danger. The rustle of the bank notes in his breast pocket afforded him a momentary relief as he remembered that they would give him a fresh start in case he had to flee from England. Then a sudden thought lightened the gloom still more, and he clutched ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... night before, and Will was power-fully moved to glance often toward the house, but feared somehow the jokes of his companions. He worked on, therefore, methodically, eagerly; but his thoughts were on the future-the rustle of the oak tree nearby, the noise of whose sere leaves he could distinguish beneath the booming snarl of the machine; on the sky, where great fleets of clouds were sailing on the rising wind, like merchantmen bound to some land of ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... neither would have been able to analyze the reason for its weirdness. For silence is in reality a composite of many lesser noises. In a woodland almost inaudible insects hum, breezes blow, leaves and grasses rustle; at sea the tiny waves lap the sides and equally tiny breaths of air stir the cordage; within the confines of the human shell the mere physical acts of breathing, swallowing, winking, the mere physical facts of ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... grain is stacked, Old wines in fragrant jars are packed: About the farmyard gabbling gander And spangled peacock freely wander: With pheasant and flamingo prowl Partridge and speckled guinea-fowl: Pigeon and waxen turtle-dove Rustle their wings in cotes above. The farm-wife's apron draws a rout Of greedy porkers round about; And eagerly the tender lamb Waits the filled udder of its dam. With plenteous logs the hearth is bright. The household Gods glow in the light, ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... a baby's laughter. And at Christmas time, when we are all a little childish I hope, surprise is the flavor of our keenest joys. We all remember the thrill with which we once heard, behind some closed door, the rustle and crackle of paper parcels being tied up. We knew that we were going to be surprised—a delicious refinement and luxuriant ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... where the most prominent object was the figure of an old gentleman, with grey hair and a velvet skull-cap; he sat at a table writing busily, and everything was so quiet and still that they could even hear the scratch of his quill pen, and the rustle of the sheets of manuscript which he threw from time to time on the floor. Sometimes he looked vaguely out of the window, and sometimes he took off his skull-cap and rubbed his bald head with his pocket handkerchief—then he bent busily over his writing again. Frank, watching him lazily, ...
— Our Frank - and other stories • Amy Walton
... care to return to her home between work and play, she appeared at school in rather festive array. Room 18 was delighted with its transformed ruler, but to the board of monitors this glory of raiment brought nothing but misery. Every twist in the neat coiffure, every fold of the pretty dress, every rustle of the invisible silk, every click of the high heels, meant the coming abdication of Teacher and the disbanding of her cabinet. Just so had Patrick's sister Mary looked on the day she wed the milkman. Just such had been the outward aspect of Morris's auntie on the day of her union to ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... bunk and came forth to the deck. Far away, across the level waters of the great bay, the lights of the city made an illumination against the background of the night; overhead there was a sky bold with stars; the Etna floated mute in a rustle of moving waters. There were no ships near her; only now and again a towboat racing up from the Golden Gates went by with the noise of a breaking wave on a steep shore. In the break of the poop there showed the light of Mr. Fant's window, where he lay in his bunk, relaxing his grisly ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... dark. The woman was on the other side of the man. I wouldn't have been sure she was a woman except for the rustle of her ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... face, but the finer dust particles filtered through and stifled him. At first he felt that he would suffocate, and he coughed and gasped; but presently, when the thicker sand-clouds had passed, he managed to get air enough to breathe. Then he waited patiently while the steady seeping rustle swept by, and the band of his hat sagged heavier, and the load on his shoulders had to be continually shaken off, and the weighty trap round his feet crept upward. When the light, fine touch ceased he removed the covering from his face to ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... Jarrett's supplications. I did not want to argue the matter, so I did not utter a word. I heard the murmur of grumbling voices, and Jarrett's words tactfully persuading the visitors to stay. I heard the rustle of paper being pushed under the door, and Madame Guerard whispering to Jarrett, who ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... There was a rustle as the crowd all swayed their heads to catch a glimpse of the speaker. The salesman leaned forward. "May I ask ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... her husband. She never looked upward, nor beheld how Democrates's eyes grew like bright coals as he gazed on her. He saw her clear high forehead, he heard—or thought he heard despite the jar of the street—the rustle of the muslin robe. Hermione passed, nor ever knew how, by taking this way from the house of a friend, she coloured the skein of life for three mortals—for herself, ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... explain the will in a hard, methodical voice, nodding his head whenever he reached a point of importance at the parchment which rustled between Captain Barker's fingers. For a while this rustle sounded like the whisper ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... was she: A word, and all her life is changed! His wavering love too easily In the great, gay city grows estranged: One year: she sits in the old church pew; A rustle, a murmur,—O Dorothy! hide Your face and shut from your soul the view— 'Tis Benjie leading ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... weird tunes among the trees. Jonah did not exactly believe in ghosts; still, if there were such things, this was just the night and just the place for the ghost he was looking for to take its walk abroad. He did not like it, and began to wish he was safe at home. The bushes round him began to rustle noisily, and a gate in the field swung to and fro with an almost human groan. He fancied he could descry wandering lights and white gleams in the darkness, and the vague consciousness of something coming nearer ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... her back to the door, her face calm and pale, her look vague, arranged her hat with instinctive care. At the noise, formerly delicious, that the rustle of her skirts made, he started, looked at her, ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... bestows on us, and to say to ourselves, "Since she consecrates the whole of her time to me, it is because I possess the whole of her heart"; to behold her thought in lieu of her face; to be able to verify the fidelity of one being amid the eclipse of the world; to regard the rustle of a gown as the sound of wings; to hear her come and go, retire, speak, return, sing, and to think that one is the centre of these steps, of this speech; to manifest at each instant one's personal attraction; to feel one's self all the more ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... light from hidden windows is splintered into the darkness by intervening wayside trees and bushes. Still that wristlet tinkles against the water-jar, and retreating steps rustle from down ...
— The Fugitive • Rabindranath Tagore
... lasted I am not prepared to say. But some faint sounds over and above the rustle of the ewes in the straw, the bleat of the lambs, and the tinkle of the sheep-bell brought me to my waking senses. Uncle Job was still beside me; but he too had fallen asleep. I looked out from the straw, and saw what it was that had aroused me. Two men, ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... beckoning to somnolence. He judged by the position of the stars, as he lay on his back, that it was past midnight, when suddenly he became aware of a noise to the west of him, on the other side of the brook. Sitting up, and listening intently, he suspected, from the rustle of the underbrush, that some one was following the trail, and would presently come upon ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... building castles in the air, the crack of the ball on the bat, the cooing of some pigeons on the roof.... Once again that sharp pleasant sound, again the flight of the bird above one's head, again the rustle of some leaves behind one's head ... soon there will be tea, strawberries and cream, a demand that one shall play tennis, that saunter through the cool dark house, up old stairs, along narrow passages to one's room where one will slowly, happily change into flannels—hearing ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... gaily lighted lobby, its walls paneled from floor to ceiling with great mirrors that reflect lovely women and distinguished men. Then in the theater where the rich carpet deadens every footfall and you feel rather than hear the murmur of many voices speaking softly—the subtle rustle of a crowded place—the lights—the music—oh, girls, it was wonderful, wonderful! I can't ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... the desert silence oppressed Gale. He was unaccustomed to such strange stillness. There was a low stir of sand, a rustle of stiff leaves in the wind. How white the stars burned! Then a coyote barked, to be bayed by a dog. Gale realized that he was between the edge of an unknown desert and the edge of a hostile town. He had to choose the desert, ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... forgotten the Convent and the cloister, the mile-long walk in darkness, the chant of the unseen monks. She trod again the springy heather of her youth; she heard the rush of the mountain stream; the sigh of the great forest; the rustle of the sunlit glades, alive with, life. These all were in the ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... slipped through the undergrowth, and Robert, a skillful young woodsman also, came after with such care and lightness of foot that neither made a twig or leaf rustle. Tayoga always followed the traces. The deer had nibbled tender young shoots, but he had not remained long in one place. The forest was such an abundant garden to him that, fastidious as an epicure, he required the most delicate food to please ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... Gridley had worked up among the quartos. He had got hold of Calmet's Dictionary, and was caught by the article Solomon, so that he forgot his occupation again. All at once it struck him that everything was very silent,—the 'p-'p-'p! of clapping the books had ceased, and the light rustle of Susan's dress was no longer heard. He looked up and saw her standing perfectly still, with a book in one hand and her duster in the other. She was lost in thought, and by the shadow on her face and the glistening of her blue eyes he knew it was her hidden sorrow ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... on the fresh trail she scanned every nook, every clump of bushes. There was a sudden rustle from within a grove of wild plum trees, thickly festooned with grape and clematis, and the doe mother bounded away as carelessly as if she were never ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... a bank of earth for safety, gave another low growl. Disco started and half raised his piece. Jumbo then threw a large stone towards a neighbouring bush, which it struck and caused to rustle. ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... windows, the clean rag carpet on the floor. The very stiffness chilled him, left him ill at ease. To calm his spirit he walked to a window, and stood staring out into the warm sunlight. Then he heard the rustle of Naida's skirt and turned to meet her. She was pale from her weeks of nursing, and agitated for fear of what this unexpected call might portend. Yet to his thought she appeared calm, her manner restrained. Nor could anything ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... The lazy laborers will prepare, Another villa on the line; In the little garden-square Pampas grass will rustle there. ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... are actually there. If you are not, it amounts to the same thing. Every dog knows that you meant to be there, or at any rate, that to be there was the scheme of someone equally bad. The slightest rustle of the wind, the call of a bird, the ejaculation responsive to a flea—any of these, anything to set ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... leaned comfortably back in his arm-chair and dried his legs at the grate filled with red-hot coals, while he listened to the soft rustle of her skirts as she moved noiselessly about him. It is the peculiarity of women like Kitty, to whom Nature has denied the governing power of ideas or great personal beauty or magnetism, such as she gave to Miss Muller, that there is a certain impalpable force and attraction in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... the kildee's call, And afar, the waterfall, But the rustle of a falling leaf They heard above it all; And the trailing willow crept Deeper in the tide that swept The leafy shallop to the shore, And wept and ...
— Riley Child-Rhymes • James Whitcomb Riley
... to his belief in eternity. He must feel that, or the thing would be unbearable. For the first time in his life he gave conscious thought to Natalie's religious belief. She believed in those things. She must. She sat devoutly through the long service; she slipped, with a little rustle of soft silk, so easily to her knees. Perhaps, if he went to ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... A little rustle of expectancy swept through the group of listeners. Bettina drew nearer Barbara and clasped her hand; and all settled themselves anew with an especial air of interest. "I see you, like most other people, care more for him. He is immensely popular at present. It is quite the fashion ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... no answer; but it seemed to him that there was a faint rustle as of whispering on the other side. He tried the handle. It did not yield; and Apollonia's yellow eyes sent out a flash of excited expectation. She looked an amazon, waiting the signal ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... morning, the soft hum of insects fell on his ear instead of the roar of London traffic. Through the open window the southern air blew upon his face. Above the sound of busy wings the distant sea sang its low dirge. It was a living perspective of sound. The least rustle near at hand overpowered it, and yet it was always there—an unceasing throb to be felt as much as heard. Some acoustic formation of the land carried the noise, for the sea was eight miles away. It was very peaceful; for utter stillness is not peace. A room ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... Northern States April is the month of the robin. In large numbers they scour the fields and groves. You hear their piping in the meadow, in the pasture, on the hillside. Walk in the woods, and the dry leaves rustle with the whir of their wings the air is vocal with their cheery call. In excess of joy and vivacity, they run, leap, scream, chase each other through the air, diving and sweeping among the trees with ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... heard the rustle of a silk on the stairway. A moment later Miss Warren mounted the horseblock and stood waiting for Reuben, who soon appeared ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... floor. This time his guide remarked that he would take him upstairs to the baron's private room. He was slowly ascending the broad marble staircase and admiring the bronze balustrade, the rich carpet, the magnificent frescoes, and the costly statuary, when a rustle of silk resounded near him. He had only time to step aside, and a lady passed him rapidly, without turning her head, or even deigning to look at him. She did not appear more than forty, and she was still very beautiful, with her golden hair ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... where the mountains once slept now they seemed wide-awake. Keen eyes saw every moving thing, from the bees in the bluebells to the slow fishing-boats far out at sea; sharp ears that were cocked like a collie's heard every chirp and trill and rustle, and a nose that understood everything was holding up every vagrant breeze and searching it for its message. For the cubs were coming out for the first time to play in the big world, and no wild mother ever lets that happen without first taking infinite precautions that her little ones ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... frightened at the undreamt-of impression this music was making upon him. Then, all at once, he wheeled and stepped boldly into the porch, pushing the inner door open and hearing it rustle against its leathern frame as it swung to ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... on the copse beyond the orchard. A little while ago she would have passed quickly on without a moment's hesitation, but now she felt a sort of sympathy with Peter. She was lonely, and he was lonely; besides, he had been kind to None-so-pretty. So presently she made a little rustle, which roused Sober from his slumbers. He raised his head, and finding that it was a friend wagged his bushy tail and resumed his former position; but this roused Peter too, and he slowly turned his eyes upon Lilac and stared silently. Knowing that it would be useless to wait for him to speak, ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... Saturday afternoon. The day was bright and sunny, and in the shelter of the grand stand on the campus, where the little east wind could not rustle, it was comfortably warm. The grass still held much of its summer verdancy, and the sky overhead was as deeply blue as on the mildest spring day. After a week of dull or stormy weather yesterday and to-day, ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... shall be heard with veneration amid the roar of the Pacific's waves, away upon the river of the North and East where liberty is divided from monarchy, and be wafted in gentle breezes upon the Rio Grande. It shall rustle in the harvest and wave in the standing corn, on the extended prairies of the West, and be heard in the bleating folds find lowing herds upon a thousand hills. It shall be with those who delve in mines, and shall ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... text is announced, there is an indescribable rhythmic movement forward, followed by a concerted rustle of Bible leaves; not the rustle of a few Bibles in a few pious pews, but the rustle of all of them in all the pews,—and there are more Bibles in an Edinburgh Presbyterian church than one ever sees anywhere else, unless it be in the warehouses of ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... his old travelling companion did not respond with a joyous neigh to the rustle of the oats rattling on the wicker work. Alarmed, he called Jovial with a friendly voice; but the animal, instead of turning towards his master a look of intelligence, and impatiently striking the ground with his fore-feet, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... done. It was all unreasoning—there was no more to be done than on those other days which he had wakened to with bitterness, because they seemed useless and empty of any worth—but this morning the mere light of the sun was of use, the rustle of the small breeze in the leaves, the soft floating past of the white clouds, the mere fact that the great blind-faced, stately house was his own, that he could tramp far over lands which were his heritage, unfed though they might be, and ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the principal bedroom opened noiselessly. Elvine entered the sitting-room, accompanied by that delightful rustle of silk which is quite irresistible to male ears. At all times a beautiful woman, just now ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... sister had answered, Miss Irma came down the stairs with her quick light step, not like any I had ever heard. With a trip and a rustle she came bursting in upon us, so that all suddenly the quaint old kitchen, with its shining utensils catching the red sunshine through the low western window and the swaying ivy leaves dappling the floor of bluish-grey, was ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... in a low tone, but with inten- tion. He was certainly desirous of lifting his foot out of the water, but it seemed that all movement to that end would have to wait until he had successfully ex- pressed his opinions. In the meantime, there was heard slow footsteps and the rustle of skirts, and then some people entered the smoking room on their way to dine. Coke took his foot ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... describes low scenery is not low, nor is the description itself necessarily so. Pride, and contempt for our fellow-creatures, evince a low tone of moral feeling, and is the innate vulgarity of the soul; it is this which but too often makes those who rustle in silks and roll in carriages, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... leaves, making them rustle as if they were whispering to each other the great news that summer would soon ...
— Princess Polly's Gay Winter • Amy Brooks
... of the edifice, disturbed now and then by silken rustle and soft-shod foot were bewildering to Amarilly. She experienced a slight depression until the vibrating tones of the organ fell softly upon the air. The harmony grew more subdued, ceased, and was succeeded by another moment of ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... she was talking about, and went on lifting the canoe ashore. Whether I really heard her give a terrified gasp I don't know; perhaps I only thought so. But as I put the canoe on the bank I heard a rustle, and when I looked up she was gone. There was nothing to tell me she had really even been there. It was just as probable that I was crazy, or walking in my sleep, as that a girl who talked like that—or even any kind of a girl—should be at La Chance. The cold, collected ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... with glorious color the peaks of the neighboring sentinel hills, the last rider had saddled, and the company was mounted and ready for their foreman's word. Then to the music of jingling spurs, tinkling bridle chains, squeaking saddle leather, and the softer swish and rustle and flap of chaps, romals and riatas, they rode forth, laughing and joking, still, with now and then a roaring chorus of shouting comment or wild yells, as some half-broken horse gave an exhibition of his prowess in a mad effort to unseat ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... listened intently. The noise could not have been far away and was certainly in the house. For half an hour I waited with every nerve on the alert, but there came no other sound save the chiming clock and the rustle of the ivy ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... sound except the echo of his sigh Or step ran sadly through that antique house, When suddenly he heard, or thought so, nigh, A supernatural agent—or a mouse, Whose little nibbling rustle will embarrass Most people, as ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... was more terrible than ever, and, saving the musical dash of water from time to time, and an occasional rustle as of a few grains of earth or sand trickling down from the ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... along the winding old road through the woods. The color deepens in the west; the pines grow black against it; the rich brown of the oak leaves seems to glow everywhere in the last soft light; and the mystery that never sleeps long in the woods begins to rustle again in the thickets. You are busy with your own thoughts, seeing nothing, till a flash of yellow passes before your eyes, and a fox stands in the path before you, one foot uplifted, the fluffy brush swept aside in graceful curve, the bright eyes looking straight into yours—nay, looking ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... the best man, and the little old gentleman from Australia watched him genially from behind those gold-rimmed glasses. And, then, scarcely was he at the altar rails when through the open church door one heard the sounds of horses' feet, one heard a rustle, the murmur of voices, caught a glimpse of a waiting group arranging themselves finally in the porch of the church. Maud, on the arm of her father, came slowly up the aisle. The little old gentleman turned his head as though ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... A general rustle, as if some speech were coming, made him forestall it by plunging on, "His beautiful racket he'd been practising with for this tournament; and I not only didn't knock the scoundrel down, but I helped the thing along. I wouldn't have supposed I could ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... from all accounts. Don't know as ever I saw them, but I knew the old woman, and used to hear of her goin's on bringing these young uns up. I don't see as you're bound to canvass for them, no way in the world. Rustle in and get her yourself, is what ...
— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards
... barn. The eight pairs of double-soled boots clattered on the stairs like a sudden hail-storm on a roof. Brindle, old Charley, and a strange horse who seemed to be visiting them, who were munching their evening hay, raised their heads, astonished; while a furtive rustle from some dim corner in the loft showed that Mrs. Top-knot or Mrs. Cochin-China, hidden away there, heard too, and did not ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... my baby, the night is behind us, And black are the waters that sparkled so green. The moon, o'er the combers, looks downward to find us At rest in the hollows that rustle between. Where billow meets billow, there soft be thy pillow; Ah, weary wee flipperling, curl at thy ease! The storm shall not wake thee, nor shark overtake thee, Asleep in the arms of the ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... the child's hand. Mrs. Hobbs whispered to him, with evident pride, that it was "goin' to be one of the biggest funerals ever given in Ostable." Mr. Sharon nodded. Then, after waiting a moment or two, he tiptoed along the front hall and took up his stand by the parlor door. There was a final rustle of gowns, a final crackle of Sunday shirtfronts, and then a ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... a smile, 'twas a garment's rustle, 'Twas nothing that I can phrase,— But the whole dumb dwelling grew conscious, And put on her ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... accentuate, and make reasonable the perceptions of his quickened senses. Sense blended with sense—as when the sharp fragrance of the thyme which his feet crushed gave him the vision of her immortal beauty, or when, in the rustle of the wind-swept grasses, he had a consciousness of her thrilled heart beating near by. All nature, in fact, was vocal of Sanchia by day; and at night, presently, she stole white-footed down the slant rays of the moon ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... A few feet from her bed she heard a sobbing sigh, then a rustle, then followed silence. She struck a match and, getting up, lighted candles. Her hand shook, but she remembered that she must be ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... approach they fluttered clumsily to their element; there, the symbols of elegance and grace, like wreaths of sea-foam on its surface, they glided on, apparently without an impulse or an effort. She was gazing on them when a rustle amongst the willows on her left arrested her attention. Soon the mysterious and almost omnipresent form of ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... having been abroad upon it had, on his return, travelled at once to the country. To Camylott he came because it was his refuge in all unrestful hours or deeply grave ones—the broad, heavenly scene spread out before it soothed him when he gazed through its windows, the waving and rustle of the many huge trees on every side never ceased to bring back to him something of the feeling he had had in his childhood, that they were mighty and mysterious friends who hushed him as a child is hushed to sleep; and so he came to Camylott for a few days' repose before re-entering Court ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... is opened in a tumultuous fashion, there is a rustle of silken skirts, and there—there, where the gas-light falls full on her from ...
— A Little Rebel • Mrs. Hungerford
... eager interest and delight,—wild roses blooming under the old stone wall, wild bees humming among the blackberry-bushes, tremulous sweet columbines skirting the vocal woods, wild geraniums startling their shadowy depths; and I hear now the rustle of dry leaves, bravely stirred by childish feet, just as they used to rustle in the October afternoons of long ago. Sweet Puritan Sabbaths! breathe upon a restless world your calm, still breath, and ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... too tough for the police and the other reporters, so they turned it over to me. It's a bully assignment, and my pay starts when I solve the mystery. Now I'm starved; I wish you'd rustle me ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... Macao. He was in the navy, you know; and although it is only four years since I left my father's house I feel so old; and sometimes when I awake in the night I think I can hear the sound of the beating surf and the rustle of the nipa-palms in the trade wind. And, oh! I so long to see——" Her eyes filled with tears, and ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... hear me? She might have heard the rustle of the parchment, the turn of the lock. Sometimes I think she suspects—But, no, no, she's a child still, and she'd say something, speak out. No, no; it's all right. Yes, yes, I'm coming, Ida!" he said aloud, as the girl called to him on ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... up over The Dale, set the fairy forest of glass swaying, with a silken rustle. On every swinging branch millions of jewels flashed in the sunlight. With a soft crashing sound some tree would let fall its priceless burden in a dazzling rain of diamonds. Crash! and the silver roof of the barn slid down into the yard, collapsing in a flood of opals. The whole ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... sweep of his sword, he cut the two silken cords which, tied to a ring near the door, held up the tapestry. The hangings fell instantly like the drop curtain of a theatre, its rustle overwhelmed in the vociferous yell that rang to ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... send me greeting in the grave, The cold breath of the grave itself were sweet; Oh, take my life! my life, 'tis all I have, If I should make thee live I do entreat! I think that I shall hear, when I am dead, The rustle of ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... was a confused rustle; the crystal ball rolled from the table, and the seer laughed quickly. Obeying a strenuous ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... said Clelie, "to those who have known only the comfortable make-believe miseries that rustle in crepe and shed tears—whenever there's ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... and set my foot in the thong. There was a rustle of silk and a quick step on the balcony. Then two soft hands took hold of my wrists. I looked up at the big eyes, the face white in the moonlight, the ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... cooling of the air a shiver and a rustle passes over the tree-tops as the sundown breeze brings relief to the tired world. Immediately the forest is alive again, but with new inhabitants. The dancing fireflies weave rings of bluish light around the tree-trunks, already half lost in the gathering darkness; ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly
... trunk of a tree, looking at the water, that was perfect in its stillness, floating the moon upon it. But for some reason she disliked it. It did not give her anything. She listened for the hoarse rustle of the sluice. And she wished for something else out of the night, she wanted another night, not this moon-brilliant hardness. She could feel her soul crying out in her, ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... the little sitting-room, and Ser Giulia was there, cutting out a skirt on the table very carefully, in a tense silence that was broken only by the click of the scissors and the rustle of silk. ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... voice, that voice which she had really never heard, barely rising above the rustle ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... his handwriting," she said in a puzzled tone. "They are love letters, and they are to her—but they are not from him." For a moment or two she was silent, and I heard the pages rustle in her hands as she turned them impatiently. "They are not from him," she repeated presently, with an exultant ring in her voice. "They are written after her marriage, but they are from another man." She was as sternly tragic as an avenging fate. "She wasn't faithful to him while she lived. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... and only the keenest eye could discern any distant object in the darkness. The silence was unbroken save by the occasional cry of the wolf, the creaking of a cricket, or the rustle of a passing breeze. ...
— Indian Story and Song - from North America • Alice C. Fletcher
... protested against this change, as meeting the devil half way, but the minister carried his point, and ever after that she rushed ostentatiously from the church the moment a psalm was given out, and remained behind the door until the singing was finished, when she returned, with a rustle, to her seat. Run line had on her the effect of the reading of the Riot Act. Once some men, capable of anything, held the door from the outside, and the congregation heard Tibbie rampaging in the passage. Bursting into the ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... poured in. Samuel waited just long enough to catch the rustle of innumerable garments, and a medley of perfumes which might have been blown from all the gardens of the East. Then he turned and fled to the ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... Bedfordshire, being in no hurry to enter the more barren fens of Lincolnshire. So he says. This house is just on the edge of the town: a garden on one side skirted by the public road which again is skirted by a row of such Poplars as only the Ouse knows how to rear—and pleasantly they rustle now—and the room in which I write is quite cool and opens into a greenhouse which opens into said garden: and it's all deuced pleasant. For in half an hour I shall seek my Piscator, {61a} and we shall go to a Village {61b} two miles off and fish, and have tea ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... has selected a marble capital on which to sit - quick reminder of those classic days when he roamed the Greek glades. Over the cold seat he has spread his fawn-skin. He has just been moving his lips over the pan-pipes, but a rustle among the leaves has caused him to pause in his melody. In the grass he sees a lizard which is as intent on Pan as Pan is on him. Care-free Pan with pointed ear and horned brow, we love thee, for dost thou not give us all our jollity and fun, the ...
— Sculpture of the Exposition Palaces and Courts • Juliet James
... sound, Unless to ears of unimagined beings, Resident incorporeal or stretched In vigilance of ecstasy among Ethereal paths and the celestial maze. The rumour of our onward course now brings A steady rustle, as of some strange ship Darkling with soundless sail all set and amply filled By volume of an ever-constant air, At fullest night, through seas for ever calm, Swept lovely ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... from the courtyard. I looked round for a way to escape, but to reach the woods I had now a long bit of open ground to cover, and was puzzled. Then overhead I heard a bird rustle, and I looked up, and at once a thought came to me. The tree was an old, gnarled ash, and the leaves on it were thick for the time of year. Moreover, the branches were so large that surely in the fork I could find a hiding place. And being so close to the hall, search ...
— A Thane of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... Hearing the rustle of skirts and feeling that another hand fanned her, the sick girl moved a little, but did not open her eyes, for her head hurt her, so that ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... a silver dust; the fresh and transparent mist swings about the rock it bathes, and its rebounding train mounts lightly along the courses. No stir in the air; no noise, no living creature in the solitude. You hear only the monotonous murmur of the cascades, resembling the rustle of the leaves that the wind stirs ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... eternity. Such was her thought as she looked down the clear, translucent depths; but would it have been of any use to try to utter it to anybody?—to Sally Kittridge, for example, who sat all in a cheerful rustle of bright ribbons beside her, and who would have shown her white teeth all round at such a suggestion, and said, "Now, Mara, who but you would have thought ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... wearing dainty shoes that make your feet beautiful, and pretty hats from under which your eyes shine impenetrably, and silk skirts that make such a mysterious rustle; and I thought: "I haven't a good hat or ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... the light in our lover's eyes, what could we need when that comes to pass? You would look on us then as mere human clay; we with our habiliments shall be for you like so much mud—worthless, lifeless, crumbling to pieces, going about with the rustle of dead leaves. Rags or the daintiest finery will be as one to us then; the ambergris of the boudoir will breathe an odor of death and dry bones; and suppose there is a heart there in that mud, not one of you but would make mock of it, not so much as a memory will ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... Madame Jaubert, as I groped onward by the wall, and at the same time seizing my right hand. Instantly as she did so, I heard a rustle just behind me—two quick and violent blows descended on the back of my head, there was a flash before my eyes, a suppressed shout of exultation rang in my ears, and I ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... house, a handsome carriage drove up to the door of his neighbour, and Mr. Garie and his wife, who had been enjoying a drive along the bank of the river, alighted and entered their residence. The rustle of her rich silk dress grated harshly on his ear, and the soft perfume that wafted toward him as she glided by, was the very reverse of pleasant ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... to a box and, taking one of the kittens, sat down with his back to the door. Then he rose up hastily at a sudden rustle from behind and glanced inquiringly ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... cliques, each engaged in deadly and bitter feud with the rest. When the moon-eyed soprano arose, with a gentle flutter, and opened her charming mouth in solo, her friends settled themselves in their pews with a general rustle of satisfaction, while the friends of the contralto exchanged civilly significant glances; and on the way home the solo in question was disposed of in a manner at once thorough and final. The same thing occurred when the contralto was prominent, or ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... house and hearing his boast that he could have accomplished it in time. Now, just as he got his ear flattened to the iron door and was almost choking for breath in an agony of listening, the newspaper began to rustle. ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... for some time with the usual result when the slightest rustle of foliage caught his ear. He looked up. She was standing directly ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... neither spoke until they reached the shanty itself. There was no sign of human life about it: the door stood open, and the only sound to be heard was the rustle of the wind whispering among the pines upon the mountain side. Both men flung themselves from ...
— "Seth" • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... door the rustle of silk came in like the sound of wind. Two long silken robes passed over the floor of the anteroom and farther on in the darkness of the chambers, which was dispelled by the light of the lamp, borne by the servant ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... try to convince them that it pays to be strong and clean in mind and body—" he began earnestly, when a rustle of skirts and the click of footsteps at the threshold caused him to turn. Anne Wellington, in an embroidered white linen frock, stood framed in the ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... shadow passed by the window on the first story. Then a rustle was heard, and from the door to the middle of the room sprang ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... Outwards the chant extending, reaches the hollows of the valley, rolling over the shortened stubble, where the plough already begins the first verse of a new time. A pleasant sound to listen to, the hum of the threshing, the beating of the engine, the rustle of the straw, the shuffle shuffle of the machine, the voices of the men, the occupation and bustle in the autumn afternoon! I listened to it sitting in the hop-oast, whose tower, like a castle turret, overlooks and domineers the yard. In the loft ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... had finished the newspaper, and was writing an unimportant note; his back was to the door, and hearing the rustle of his wife's dress, and knowing her step, he did not turn his head sufficiently to observe her countenance, but ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... very light foot on the stairs—a rich rustle of silks. Everything still again—Dr. Renton looking fixedly, with great sternness, at the half-open door, from whence a faint, delicious perfume floats into the library. Somebody there, for certain. Somebody peeping in ...
— The Ghost • William. D. O'Connor
... Grunewald. Calling a waiter, he sent the huge envelope in to her table. She glanced at it a moment and then gradually drew the package from its envelope, while Field and I stood watching behind the entrance. It spread all over the table as she continued to unfold the enormous sheet, and its rustle attracted the attention of nearly every one in the room. When it had spread itself all over Mr. Barrett, who meanwhile was laughing heartily, Miss Jeffries discovered the poem in Field's hand, and, although blushing crimson, joined in the ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... us, we do not hear the rustle of wings, [1] nor feel the feathery touch of the breast of a dove; but we know their presence by the love they create in our [25] hearts. Oh, may you feel this touch,—it is not the clasping of hands, nor a loved person present; ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... heat became less oppressive; once, when he stopped and leaned exhaustedly against a sapling, he fancied he saw the zephyr he could not yet feel in the glittering and trembling of leaves in the distance before him. Again the deep stillness was moved with a faint sighing rustle, and he knew he must be nearing the edge of the thicket. The spell of silence thus broken was followed by a fainter, more musical interruption—the glassy tinkle of water! A step further his foot trembled on the ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... had done its work, and the weeds were returning. The buildings of the settlement showed here and there through the stems of the colonnade, fresh painted, trim and dandy, and all silent as the grave. Only, here and there in the crypt, there was a rustle and scurry and some crowing of poultry; and from behind the house with the verandahs, he saw smoke arise and heard the crackling ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... there was great stir and rustle and preparation. Those lords and barons in attendance at Court who were from the vicinity went off to gather their following; and those from distant parts of the Kingdom sent commands to their constables or stewards to hasten hither their very last retainer and ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... soon afterwards. Martha went into the dining room. A suspicious rustle as she turned the door knob caused her to frown. Primmie was seated close to the wall on the opposite side of the room industriously peeling apples. Her mistress regarded her intently, a regard which caused its object ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... took up the howl. There was a stir, a rustle, all along the street that had seemed empty, and from nowhere, it seemed, the space in front of me was crowded with shadowy forms, human ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... loosened, His lips grew all soft, and his eyes were beholding Strange things we beheld not about and above him. So he sat for a while, and then swept his robe round him And arose and departed, not heeding his people, The strange looks, the peering, the rustle and whisper; But or ever he gained the gate that gave streetward, Dull were his eyes grown, his feet were grown heavy, His lips crooned complaining, as onward he stumbled;— Unhappy, unkingly, he went his ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... endure it. How much more awful was it then to the unfortunate woman who, half broken-hearted, fever-stricken, and well-nigh crazed with the suffering of mind and body, waited in it to see murder done! Slowly the minutes passed, and at every raindrop or rustle of a bough her guilty conscience summoned up a host of fears. But by the mere power of her will she kept them down. She would go through with it. Yes, she would go through with it. Surely he must ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... there was a rustle of fabric, and she laid down the photograph a moment too late, as her aunt came in. As it happened, the elder lady's eyes rested on the picture, and a faint flush of annoyance crept into the face of the girl. It was scarcely perceptible, but Miss Barrington saw it, and though ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... their plan into execution, Reginald proposed returning to the tower without further delay, when a rustle was heard in the bushes, and Sambro crept up to the camp. He had seen, he said, several lights streaming from the upper part of the building, which made him suppose that there must be a good many people within. Still, as they could have no suspicion of the attempt about to be made, they would ...
— The Young Rajah • W.H.G. Kingston
... He, too, had ideals, even as had Ikey Snigglefritz; and sometimes, hopeless of attaining them, his own solid success was as dust and ashes in his mouth. And Mrs. William Darragh McMahan wore a look of discontent upon her plump but pretty face, and the very rustle of her silks ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... suppressed halo, Rustle of hidden wings, Wafture of heavenly frankincense— Which of ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... the dark drives looked like deserted labyrinths, and cool retreats where one would have liked to have stopped late, where the very rustle of the leaves seems to whisper amorous temptations, and there was seduction in the softness of the air and in the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... wayside shrines, but sometimes they moved. This was not now a wolf country, but two-footed wolves were plenty, and as dangerous. The hangers-on of the army—beggars, feagues, and footpads—hovered, like the cowardly beasts of prey they were, about the outskirts of the city. Did a leaf rustle, we started; did a shambling shape in the gloom whine for alms, we made ready for onset. Gilles produced from some place of concealment—his jerkin, or his leggings, or somewhere—a brace of pistols, and we walked with ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... loneliness fell upon Ishmael. He had won, and none of the sweets of victory were his. He lagged behind. There was a rustle at his side, and Hilaria's hands ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... opened the door of his sitting-room he heard a woman's dress rustle, and Hermione ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... the room, past the first tables, and, as she walked, the muffled, characteristic sounds she began to hear seemed but to punctuate and emphasize the silence, like echoes in a cave: a faint rattle of rakes, like the rustle of leaves, and a delicate chink-chink of gold, like the chirping of young ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... poor tramp who finds a gold doubloon in the forest, and just when he is beginning to realize all that it means to him drops it in the grass and cannot find it again. There is not the faintest motion in the foliage, no rustle of any dry leaf, and yet we know that something has moved—something has come or has gone; and, gazing fixedly at one spot, we suddenly see that it is still there, close to us, the pointed ophidian head and long neck, not drawn back and threatening, but sloping forward, dark ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... saddle hanging in the stable," he wheedled, "and I'll gamble I can rustle something to ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... of the room, which she deemed to be Piero's—they had never cohabited there, or indeed anywhere, she knew not where he slept—Eleanora paused, affrighted. She had heard a rustle! she had seen something! it was a hand held beyond the arras!—and there was a poignard ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... farewell; when next you rise To make of fools a sacrifice, You'll hear, down-cleaving from the skies, The rustle ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... of them. I have a face that can stop an eight-day clock if I look at it hard enough; and yet beneath this hideous mask there's a poor coward's soul that worships beauty and hungers for love! I don't allow women in this house because I can't stand the rustle of their drapery. I don't want one of them to get her claws into me. They can see through me in a minute. Women have an X-ray in their eyes. They can look through a brick wall, without going to see what's on the other side. A man learns a ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... away into paleness; her lips closed. Without speaking, she turned and walked slowly away, her head drooping. The philosopher heard the rustle of her skirt in the long grass of the orchard; he watched her for ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... nearer and still nearer, and more frequent; the ground quaked under their feet; in the intervening silences they heard the whine and the rustle of upthrown litter in the air, the patterings and plops of debris raining into the spaces ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... on in the valley wood, going from bush to bush, little heeding whither we went. There are no woods so silent as the nut-tree; there is scarce a sound in them at that time except the occasional rustle of a rabbit, and the 'thump, thump' they sometimes make underground in their buries after a sudden fright. So that the keen plaintive whistle of a kingfisher was almost startling. But we soon found the stream in the hollow. Broader than a brook and yet not quite a river, ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... up, but knelt there silent, dry-eyed, till the last rustle of his going died in the night. And then, like a waiting storm, the torrent of her grief swept down upon her; she stretched herself upon the black and fleece-strewn ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... that's the thing!" said our Uncle Peter quite positively. All in a minute he seemed to rustle with time tables and maps and smell of cinders and railroad tickets. "Now there's Bermuda for instance!" he suggested. "Just a month of blue waters and white sand would put the roses back ...
— Fairy Prince and Other Stories • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... and a hush fell upon the vast assembly. Then the silence was broken by the rustle and stir of all those thousands going down upon their knees, as the cardinal-patriarch lifted ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... one sleeping groom in it. The very CUSTOS of the grand Edifice (such the rarity of fees to him) I could not awaken without difficulty. In the gray autumn zephyrs, no sound whatever about this New Palace of King Friedrich's, except the rustle of the crisp brown leaves, and of any faded or fading ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... would be a great occasion and conscious of his poor clothes, he determined to make an impression by his speech. He prepared it with the utmost care, and to "make assurance doubly sure," committed it to memory, a thing he rarely did. His turn came. There was an expectant rustle through the audience, some almost audible comments on his clothes, his height, his thinness. He cleared his voice. He started to say the first word. It was gone. Frantically he searched his memory for that speech. His mind was a blank. Again he cleared his voice and wrestled fiercely ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... did rustle one of Buck Weaver's calves—mind, I don't say I did—but say I did? Didn't he bust my father up in business? Ain't he aiming to do the same by your folks, Phyl?" He was almost ready ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... stood still. The sun was near to setting. A gentle breeze made the yellow ears rustle; the tower of Olivo's house glowed red in the evening light. Lorenzi, too, halted. His pale face was motionless, as he gazed into vacancy over Casanova's shoulder. His arms hung limp by his sides, ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... sky is tent enough for me," Zen protested, "and I can surely rustle a blanket or two around the camp. Besides, I'll want a riding horse to ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... he couldn't get the Great Horned Owl out of his mind. Every time he heard the leaves rustle in the trees he jumped as if forty Great Horned Owls were after him. But since nothing of the sort happened, at last he forgot all about that danger. It was late in the afternoon when a horrid call sent ...
— The Tale of Billy Woodchuck • Arthur Scott Bailey
... make the minimum of noise—handed Bell a sheet of stiff cardboard. It passed into Bell's fingers without a rustle. He showed ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... blue light with rosy and golden and green boughs blowing athwart it, and heard the whir of looms, the calls and laughs of human life, the coo of dove, the hum of bees, the trill of mock birds, outreaching all other heights of joy, the clangour of the sea-birds, and the tender rustle of the new-leaved branches in the wind, that love for me which I had seen in the heart of the woman I had loved since I could remember, seemed my own keynote of the meaning of life sounding in my ears above all other ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... it is true," said Mimi seriously, "but it must not look as if we had skimped the stuff. Dresses are worn full, and I should like nice large folds so that it may rustle ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... suddenly the darkness turned into water. This is the only suitable figure. A heavy shower, a downpour, comes along, making a noise. You hear its approach on the sea, in the air, too, I verily believe. But this was different. With no preliminary whisper or rustle, without a splash, and even without the ghost of impact, I became instantaneously soaked to the skin. Not a very difficult matter, since I was wearing only my sleeping suit. My hair got full of water in an instant, water streamed ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... for there was a slight west wind which, while catching the foliage of the trees, caused it to rustle and so conceal any slight ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... himself now into an Indian, crawling and creeping with deadly caution through the bushes, exercising an infinite patience that he might make no leaf or twig rustle, and now and then looking carefully over the tops of the bushes to see that his enemy had not fled. As he advanced he held his rifle well forward, that he might take instant aim when the ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... to the entrance to the gaming halls, where the lights, the gowns, the jewels, the sparkling eyes, the natural beauty and the beauty of enamel, the vague perfumes, the low murmur of voices, the soft rustle of silks, the music of ringing gold, all combine to produce a picture and ensemble as beautiful as a mirage and as false. Nothing is real in Monte Carlo but the little pieces of gold and the passion to win them. The two renewed their tickets of admission and passed on into the famous ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... dream to her, that she who sits there now reeling yarn in her stuff petticoat and white short-gown is the same who took the arm of Colonel Burr amid the blaze of wax-lights and the sweep of silks and rustle of plumes. She wonders dreamily as she remembers the dark, lovely face of the foreign Madame, so brilliant under its powdered hair and flashing gems,—the sweet, foreign accents of the voice,—the tiny, jewelled fan, with its glancing pictures ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... her bedroom through the flat branches of the pine, would get a feeling of being the only creature in the world. The crinkled, silvery sea, that lonely pine-tree, the cold moon, the sky dark corn-flower blue, the hiss and sucking rustle of the surf over the beach pebbles, even the salt, chill air, seemed lonely. By day, too—in the hazy heat when the clouds merged, scarce drifting, into the blue, and the coarse sea-grass tufts hardly quivered, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... with a benignly triumphant expression, and a complacent rustle of silken skirts. Harriet, beneath an automatic smile, hid a troubled heart. Royal was losing no time, Ward his innocent instrument, and this fatuous old lady of course playing his game for him! Madame Carter had always ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... very low behind a bank of earth for safety, gave another low growl. Disco started and half raised his piece. Jumbo then threw a large stone towards a neighbouring bush, which it struck and caused to rustle. ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... on the brook. But when, now and again, it chanced that the wind took a little turn over it, there was a rustle in the rushes, and the Water-Lily sometimes ducked completely under the waves. Then its leaves were lifted up in the air and stood on their edges, so that the thick green stalks that came up from the very bottom of the ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... kept close together, sneaking along with our pistols cocked, quiet as possible. Rajah brought up the rear, and in this formation we marched along, alert for danger. At times the rustle of a bush in the breeze put us on our guard, and we crouched down with muscles tense and pistols raised; or the flutter of a bird over our heads, or the shrilling of an insect, or the creak of a tree sounded an ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... his prayer, gazes quietly around him and recognises Gurnemanz. To the question of the latter, how and whence he comes, he replies: "I am come by ways of wandering and pain. Can I believe myself at last delivered from them, since I hear once more the rustle of this forest, and behold you, worthy elder? Or am I still baffled in my search for the right road? Everything looks changed...." "What road is it you seek?" Gurnemanz inquires. "The road to him whose profound wail I heard of yore ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... averted cheek in loneliest dell Is conscious of a gaze it cannot bear, The leaves that rustle near us seem to tell Our heart's sad ...
— The Christian Year • Rev. John Keble
... had been waiting there for a few minutes he heard footsteps and the rustle of a skirt among the undergrowth, and presently a woman stole out from the darkness, and, running up to the man, clutched his arm, panting and ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... and starling nestle, Where the tall turret rises high, And winds alone come near to rustle The thick leaves ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
... indeed been to him a successful hunting-ground for bees and wild honey, and will be long remembered for sweeter stores of honey encombed and presented in enduring type. Washington Irving says of the early poets of Britain that "a spray could not tremble in the breeze, or a leaf rustle to the ground, that was not seen by these delicate observers and wrought up into some beautiful morality." So John Burroughs has studied the Hudson in all its moods, knowing well that it is not to be wooed and won in a single day. ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... off the attitudinizor and sat staring perplexedly at the buzzing fly on the pane of glass. Out in the other room van Manderpootz continued his harangue to the repentant Carter, and off in a corner invisible from my position I could hear the rustle of papers as Miss Fitch transcribed endless notes. I puzzled vainly over the problem of what had happened, and then the ...
— The Point of View • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... along in a quiet and reflective way, as if he also was making plans, was greatly startled by this sudden flash of a light-colored mass, this rustle, this waving, this thud upon the ground, and he bounded sidewise entirely across the road, stopping with his head in the bushes ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... in the summer-parlour, an airy and delightful room, full now of afternoon sunshine and the rustle of trees; for the three long windows opened on the garden. The great music-room was at one end, and at the other, in a deep alcove hung with purple curtains, a little household shrine had been made. Three portraits hung there, two marble busts stood in the corners, ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... disgrace—municipal disgrace." And as Aunt Augusta named the plague that was to come upon us, she looked as if she expected it to wilt us all into sear and dried leaves. And in point of fact, we all did rustle. ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... the cobbles; the muffled roar of the sea sounded close at hand. And, indeed, it sprang upon you quite magnificently at a turn of the road. To-night it scarcely moved; a ripple as the waves licked the sand, a gentle rustle as of trees in the wind when the pebbles were dragged back with the ebb—that was all. It seemed strangely mysterious under the misty, uncertain light of ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... she was certainly very happy—or very thoughtless. She was actually romping with Milly, and was now evidently being chased down the rose-alley by that volatile young woman. Then these swift Camillas apparently neared the house, there was the rapid rustle of skirts, the skurrying of little feet on the veranda, a stumble, a mouse-like shriek from Milly, and HER voice, exhausted, dying, happy, broken with half-hushed laughter, rose to him on the breath ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... began and went on very much as concerts do everywhere. The orchestra played and the artists sang, and then there was a little rustle and hush of expectation as they brought in a box or platform for the child to stand upon so that all could see her. The piano was rolled out into a convenient place, and then the slight, blue eyed girl, gay in a ...
— Camilla: A Tale of a Violin - Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso • Charles Barnard
... courtyard, Nana, Pauline and other big girls engaged in games of battledore and shuttlecock. They had grown up together and were now becoming queens of their building. Whenever a man crossed the court, flutelike laugher would arise, and then starched skirts would rustle like the passing of a ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... way," said Lady Anne, coming back with a rustle of silks while Mrs. Gray yet stood in bewilderment, holding the baby's frock in her limp fingers. "By the way, Mary is very anxious about her father—how he will take her accident. Will you tell your husband that I shall be glad to see him when he ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... however; the big chestnuts pawed the ground and flecked their impatient sides with foam; the coachman seemed to be slowly petrifying on the box, and the groom on the doorstep; and still the lady did not come. Suddenly, however, there was a sound of voices and a rustle of skirts in the doorway, and Mr. Gryce, restoring his watch to his pocket, turned with a nervous start; but it was only to find himself handing Mrs. Wetherall into ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... moment, studied the rocks again, stepped back, then forward quickly, and sprang across. She slipped and fell, but got to her feet again, and came on as before. She went out of Windham's sight, but in another minute he heard a rustle above him, looked up, and saw her standing very near the edge, and looking down at him, panting a ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... was debating within herself, uncertain whether to remain or return, there was a rustle amid the foliage of the chestnut tree immediately outside the garden enclosure, and a man's form swung from one of the branches to the top of the wall. Zuleika's emotion well-nigh overcame her. She had recognized Giovanni. In another instant he had leaped from the wall to the ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... sighs over it, bending the tall reeds with mournful rustle, and the wild bird passes and repasses with plaintive cry over the rushes which form his ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... Fletcher, and Carraway was about to fling open the shutters, when light steps passed quickly along the hall and he heard the rustle of a woman's ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... died slowly down until no sound could be heard above the rustle of frocks ... and suddenly everybody realized that it ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... bear, 's a bear, give him gowdy!" cried Colwell; and Uncle Walter laid his best eye on his old queen's-arm, and fired. Rustle, rustle, went the leaves; a limb snapped; a growl exploded; a rattling wheeze ran shuddering on the still air; a shower of bark, scratched front the tree, clattered down on the leaves; and then a groan—then thrash—bound ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... to go up to the swamps to-morrow and rustle some duck eggs," Bill observed irrelevantly—his eyes following the arrow flight of a mallard flock. But his wife was counting audibly, checking the days ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... She had spied an old piece of board and she immediately flew to get it, her silly little head filled with the idea of making it serve her as a ladder. She tugged it laboriously across the stubbly field, and her short, panting breaths did not reach Nan's ear, full of the near rustle of leaves and the hum of the ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... and went off to bed. The examining magistrate laughed, danced a quadrille, flirted, and kept wondering whether it was not all a dream? The kitchen of the Zemstvo hut, the heap of hay in the corner, the rustle of the beetles, the revolting poverty-stricken surroundings, the voices of the witnesses, the wind, the snow storm, the danger of being lost; and then all at once this splendid, brightly lighted room, ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... for peace till Gabriel blows his horn. Those wise old elms could hear no cry Of all that distant agony— Only the red-winged blackbird, and the rustle of thick ripe corn. ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... deep woods beyond Kenmore, and Farwell seemed going toward the night instead of facing the morning. At five he paused to feed his dogs and take a bite himself, and, as he sat upon a fallen tree, the mystic stirrings of life thrilled him as they often had before. It was more a sense of rustle and awakening than actual sound. Hidden under the silence of the forest lay the quivering promises, as the rosy light lay just on the border of the woodland. Both were pressing warm and comfortingly close to the lonely man with his patient dogs at his feet. Farwell was a better man, a ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... door then, to be ready for Mrs. Laval's coming; and presently the soft step and gentle rustle of drapery reminded Matilda anew that she had done for ever with Mrs. Candy's plump footfall and ...
— The House in Town • Susan Warner
... and rustle of persons turning to look, which had already begun to mark her entrance into a room, surrounded Rose as she walked up to Lady Charlotte. Mr. Flaxman, who had been standing absently silent, woke up directly she appeared, and went to ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... rocks of the Spy-glass re-echoed it a score of times; the whole troop of marsh-birds rose again, darkening heaven, with a simultaneous whirr; and long after that death-yell was still ringing in my brain silence had re-established its empire, and only the rustle of the re-descending birds and the boom of the distant surges disturbed the languor ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the face. She was laughing; she was the incarnation of merriment and of consciously graceful, captivating vivacity. The miserable father was, however, fascinated; he gazed and gazed until his eyes overflowed, and his hands trembled, and the paper fell with a rustle to ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... forth a sound of life. The twittering of swallows from above, the song of greenfinches in the trees, the rustle of hawthorn sprays moving under the weight of tiny creatures, the buzz upon the breeze; the very flutter of the butterflies' wings, noiseless as it is, and the wavy movement of the heated air across the field cause a sense of motion and ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... tall, angular woman, very spare and erect of figure, with a severe cast of countenance, and heavy black curls pinned up under her net cap; her print dresses were always starched until they crackled, and on Sunday her black silk dress rustled as I never heard any silk dress rustle before. ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... before long, and bringing some needle-work to the table, sat by the old man's side. It was pleasant to observe the fresh flowers in the room, the pet bird with a green bough shading his little cage, the breath of freshness and youth which seemed to rustle through the old dull house and hover round the child. It was curious, but not so pleasant, to turn from the beauty and grace of the girl, to the stooping figure, care-worn face, and jaded aspect ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... Cuinn pacing behind me. I heard a rustle at the edge of the forest, a stir and whisper beyond the trees, and turned to speak to him, then saw him slipping away toward the outskirts ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... wilderness of foliage here and there made livid green by arc-lights. Its walks teemed with humanity, its benches were crowded. Dimly from its heart came the cool plashing of the fountain, in lulls that fell unaccountably in the roaring rustle of restless feet. Over across, Broadway raised glittering walls of glass and stone; and thence came the poignant groan and rumble of surface cars crawling upon their ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... distinctly hear the rustle of the skirts. Gradually the door between the two rooms began to open wide. Then the curtain began to move. Mr. Hunter sat with ...
— Indian Ghost Stories - Second Edition • S. Mukerji
... rose with a rustle of his silk gown, which was heard all over the hall in the dead silence, and proceeded to tell the Earl of Somebody and the other distinguished guests what everybody knew, namely, that the school had now come to the end of another year's work, and etcetera, etcetera. But how, when he took up ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... everything movable in Pompeii, removed and scattered about in royal museums. These tombs were the most impressive things of all. The wild woods surround them on either side; and along the broad stones of the paved road which divides them, you hear the late leaves of autumn shiver and rustle in the stream of the inconstant wind, as it were like the steps of ghosts. The radiance and magnificence of these dwellings of the dead, the white freshness of the scarcely finished marble, the impassioned ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... a word. The silence of that office was unearthly. He opened the window, winter as it was, to let in the sound of cabs and footsteps for company. He missed even the familiar rustle of the "penny dreadfuls" as the boy turned their pages. He wished anybody, even his direst foe, might turn up to save him ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... of sentries, the huddled bungalows of the cantonment lay below her empty as a handful of shells on a lone shore; and in the overpowering stillness each least sound stood out crisp and clear-cut as twigs against a winter sunset; the fitful rustle of bedclothes; Rob breathing peacefully in a distant corner; the whisper of the punkah; the querulous creaking of the rope answered by a whine from the back verandah, where a resigned coolie swayed a basket of damp straw, packed with bottles ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... very slight one, scarcely more than has been felt in this country, but occurring in a place that lad been many times destroyed by them it was rather more exciting. I had just awoke at gun-fire (5 A.M.), when suddenly the thatch began to rustle and shake as if an army of cats were galloping over it, and immediately afterwards my bed shook too, so that for an instant I imagined myself back in New Guinea, in my fragile house, which shook when an old cock went to roost ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... sweet, thrush-like voice, with that true musical thrill which no teaching can impart. At the first few bars of a Chopin nocturne Mr Macalister's newspaper wavered, and fell to his knee. Margot heard the rustle of it, slid gradually into a simpler melody, and was conscious of a heavy hand waving ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... A rustle of silken skirts attracted his attention; the scowl vanished, and he readjusted his smiling mask as the door opened and Lady Constance entered ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... among low shrubs and around the bowlders, carefully guarding every slightest movement lest some rustle of disturbed foliage, or sound of loosened stone, might draw the fire of those keen watchers. Nor dared they ignore the close proximity of their own little company, who, amid such darkness, might naturally ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... they shimmer and rustle and stream Westward, the night moths, masks of the Magdalen! See, Puck of the revels, he leaps through the sinister dream Waving his elfin evangel of Mystery, Puck of the bubble or dome of their scoffing or trust, Puck of the fairy-like tower ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... Jack can rustle a cup of coffee and something to eat for us. He'll be ready as soon as we can ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton
... completed his mysterious incremation, he, with his yellow eyes, made a stolen glance around, and lighting his cigar, glided gracefully up the steep road, under the solemn canopy of old timber, to the sound of the moaning stream below, and the rustle of withered leaves about him, toward ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... there was a slight rustle, and then all became still. He went on painting without even turning his head. But the quivering silence, and the consciousness of some vague gentle breathing near him, at last made him fidgety. He looked up, and felt amazed; a woman stood ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... except in a dirty little North St. Louis flat with us three girls in a bed? Haven't I got my name all over town for speed, just because I've always had to rustle out and try to learn how to flatten out a dime to the size of a dollar? Where do I come in on the solid-gold talk, I'd like to know. I'm the penny-splitter of the world, the girl that made the Five-and-Ten-Cent Store millinery department famous. I can look tailor-made ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... a slave to his own aesthetic eye and ever-youthful heart that the sight of lovely woman pleased him more than the sight of anything else on earth; he delighted in her proximity, in the rustle of her garments, in the sound of her voice; and lovely woman's instinct told her this, so that she was very fond ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... of life or guilty of death, and the packed court, composed about equally of men and women, most of whom would have shuddered to see a dog beaten, or a tired hare made to go an extra mile, settled themselves in their places with a rustle of satisfaction at the thought of seeing a man brought before them in the shame of suspected murder, and promised themselves an interesting and thrilling couple of days in observing the gallows march nearer him, and in watching ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... away, and when she saw him coming she thought to herself, "Unless I frighten this Jackal, he will eat me." So she ran as hard as she could up against the sicakai tree, which made all the branches shake and the leaves go rustle, rustle, rustle. And when the Jackal heard the rustling noise he got frightened, and thought it was all the little kid's friends coming to help her. And she called out to him, "Run away, Jackal, run away. Thousands and thousands of Jackals have run away at that sound—run ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... ensued we occasionally caught the alternate murmur of the skipper's and Bainbridge's voices: but they were speaking in ordinary conversational tones, and the multitudinous sounds of the ship—the faint rustle of canvas aloft, the patter of reef-points, the creaking of the yards and timbers, the wash of water alongside, and the subdued hum of many voices on deck—prevented us from catching a word of what was being said. However, we gathered ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... them, and I ain't worth a cuss f'r letter-writin'. Y' see, she's only aunt by marriage, but I like her; an' I guess she's got about all she can stand up under, an' so I like t' help her a little when I can. The old man died owning nothing but the house, an' that left the old lady t' rustle f'r her livin'. Dummed if she ain't sandy as old Sand. They're gitt'n' ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... unheeded, they slipped out of his fingers on to the grass. He felt supremely and blissfully lazy. The soft thud of tennis balls, and the players' voices calling the score, came faintly through the still air, and Vane half closed his eyes. Then a sudden rustle of a skirt beside him broke into his thoughts, and he looked up into the face of the girl whom Lady Patterdale had greeted ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... as pitch, and in the light that issued the raindrops glittered as they fell. In the trees, in the bushes, on the grass, was the rustle ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... seized from behind and strangled in his hairy grasp, than turn and die of the seeing. The night was dark—no moon and many clouds. Not a sound came from the close. The cattle, the horses, the pigs, the cocks and hens, the very cats and rats seemed asleep. There was not a rustle in the thatch, a creak in the couples. It was well, for the slightest noise would have brought his heart into his mouth, and he would have been in great danger of scaring the household, and for ever disgracing himself, with a shriek. ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... other girls very distinctly because they dressed more than she did, struck emphatic notes of colour, startled one by novelties in hats and bows and things. I've always hated the rustle, the disconcerting colour boundaries, the smart unnatural angles of women's clothes. Her plain black ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... speak to him and try to win him from his mood, but I refrained. I could see there was a soul battle waging and I realised that upon its outcome might depend Bob's salvation. Some seek the quiet of the woods, the soothing rustle of the leaves, the peaceful ripple of the brook when battling for their soul, but Bob's woods appeared to be the shadowy places of misery, his rustling leaves the hoarse din of the multitude, and his brook's ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... word all eyes were strained greedily forward, and such a rustle followed, that Amyas, in the very face of detection, had ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... family. I came into this room to ask you to exercise your authority with your daughter Laetitia, or if not your authority—for she is over twenty-one—your influence. But I see that I shall get no help. It is, however, what I expected—no more and no less." And the skirts rustle with an intention of getting ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... breathlessly, he heard the same quick rustle he had heard that memorable evening, and was quite satisfied that he saw a figure glide swiftly out of the open door of his room. It was no doubt his neighbor, who had been seeking her children, and as he heard their ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... a slight rustle of silk, and Adelaide entered followed by Mr. Travilla with Elsie on his arm, in bridal attire. The shimmering satin, rich, soft lace and orange blossoms became her well; and never, even on that memorable night ten years ago, had she looked lovelier or more bride-like; never had her ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... passed and Claudia did not come. A half an hour slipped away. Old Katie in her impatience got up and walked about the room. She heard the rustle of silken drapery, and peeped out. It was only Mrs. Dugald, in her rich white brocade dress, passing into ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... come," replied Clark, glancing around to see if any one had the nerve to laugh. "I heerd her say she was collectin' rattles; an' I thought, while I was waitin', I might as well rustle up a few. Oh, you don't need to ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... was great stir and rustle and preparation. Those lords and barons in attendance at Court who were from the vicinity went off to gather their following; and those from distant parts of the Kingdom sent commands to their constables or stewards to hasten hither their very last retainer and every ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... man with the greatest pull. White barbers, white waiters, white coachmen, are no longer "curios;" they are persistent in their efforts to establish themselves, having no regard for peculiar races with peculiar occupations. It means that the Negroes must hustle and rustle, create avenues, open new vistas, announce new projects, and thus avoid alms-seeking and poor houses in ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... to him so noiselessly, that for a moment or two he was unaware of her entrance. There was neither the rustle of skirts nor the sound of any movement to apprise him of it, yet he became suddenly conscious that he was not alone. He turned around at once and saw her standing within a few feet of him. She held out her ...
— Berenice • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the wind was rising without, and seemed to rustle and whistle in the draughty passages of the old house. Thalassa placed one lamp at the head of the stairs, and others in the niches of the passage, where they flickered feebly and diffused a feeble light. Halfway down the passage he paused before a closed door. It was the room in which ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... right but it isn't enough," said Fred. "I'll get Lester's, and you fellows can rustle up something else that will ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... still. The palm leaves did not rustle, no jackals were stirring, and even the shrill-voiced insects had ceased their cries. Moreover, the great city below was quiet as a home of the dead. It was as though the presage of some advancing doom scared the world to silence. For without ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... into brush and knew it for red cedar. Patches of it grew thick on the high ridges, matted close for cover. As the travelers crept under it they heard the rustle of shoulder against shoulder, the moving click of horns, and the bleat of yearlings for their mothers. They had stumbled in the dark on the bedding-place of a flock ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... Library across from the closed door of the Mission. Parlor, black-eyed Indian urchins peeping furtively from the head of the stairs till bells rang lights out. Then silence fell, stabbed by the creak of floor, the swing of door, the click and rustle of the ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... court-functionaries, and ladies of France, in blazing gala costume, who all greeted the envoys with demonstrations of extreme respect: The halls and corridors were lined with archers, halbardiers, Swiss guards, and grooms "besmeared with gold," and it was thought that all this rustle of fine feathers would be somewhat startling to the barbarous republicans, fresh from the fens ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... reflectively, the women sat with folded hands, watching the last glow upon the hills, and the brightening of the evening star; dreamily listening to the choir of frogs, the faint tinkle of cowbells, the bleating of folded lambs, and the continual rustle of the ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... himself. He and the mare were the sole living creatures in what, for its stillness, might have been a painted landscape. Not a breath of air stirred the weeping grey-green foliage of the gums; nor was there any bird-life to rustle the leaves, or peck, or chirrup. Did he draw rein, the silence was so intense that he could ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... as an historical hero, history herself will tell you; nor, in whatever triumphal hall they may be hanging, will the captured flags of Trafalgar fail to rustle at the mention of that name. But what Collingwood was as a disciplinarian on board the ships he commanded perhaps needs to be said. He was an officer, then, who held in abhorrence all corporal punishment; who, though seeing more active service than any sea-officer ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... woman's voice, an astonished rustle of excitement swept through the audience, and when the chairman, Charles Davies, Professor of Mathematics at West Point, had recovered from his surprise, he patronizingly asked, ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... in, for there was a rustle and a board cracked, but her hand touched the pistol and she turned on the powerful electric torch. As the beam of light swept across the room she saw that the drawer of a small writing-table had been pulled out. Then the beam passed ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss
... frozen seas. In other parts of the world, be they ever so barren, there is some slight vibration of the air—some faint hum, be it from the distant haunts of men, or from the leaves of the trees, or the wings of the birds, or even the faint rustle of the grass that covers the ground. One may not actively perceive the sound, and yet if it were withdrawn it would be missed. It is only here in these Arctic seas that stark, unfathomable stillness obtrudes itself upon you in all its gruesome reality. You find your tympanum straining ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... had answered, Miss Irma came down the stairs with her quick light step, not like any I had ever heard. With a trip and a rustle she came bursting in upon us, so that all suddenly the quaint old kitchen, with its shining utensils catching the red sunshine through the low western window and the swaying ivy leaves dappling the floor of bluish-grey, was glorified ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... we saw, having previously heard its rustle, one of those very large iguanas which exist in this part of the country. We had heard tales of their size and ferocity from the natives near the Peake (Telegraph Station); I believe they call them ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... Allison's room was open, the gas burning dimly at the toilet-table, but no one was there. Even as he hesitated what to do, a door at the east end of the wide corridor quietly opened, and a flood of light from Miss Allison's boudoir shot across the darkness. Elmendorf heard the soft rustle of silken folds, and hastened towards the light. Florence stood there at the door-way in some rich wrap of a pale, delicate shade of pink. Billows of creamy lace broke away from the shoulders and down along the entire front. The short elbow-sleeves seemed ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... who told them that his name was Gardner, had a good-humoured, sunburned face and an honest look. The prairie was now wrapped in inky gloom, and there was an impressive stillness except for the occasional rustle of a leaf, but when Harding came out of the bluff with a load of wood a puff of icy wind suddenly stirred the grass. The harsh rustle it made was followed by a deafening crash, and a jagged streak of lightning fell from the leaden clouds; then the air was filled with the roar of driving ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... companions flew onward, Perseus fancied that he could hear the rustle of a garment close by his side; and it was on the side opposite to the one where he beheld Quicksilver, yet only Quicksilver ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... blink. In the desertion he walked past Lehman's Drug Store and Otto Kramer's bar, and crossed over to pause for a nameless moment in front of Paul Hendricks' Hobby Center, which was all dark, and seemed little changed. He took to a side street, and won back the rustle of trees and the click of his heels in ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... from the mania of persecution. He either lies curled up in bed, or walks from corner to corner as though for exercise; he very rarely sits down. He is always excited, agitated, and overwrought by a sort of vague, undefined expectation. The faintest rustle in the entry or shout in the yard is enough to make him raise his head and begin listening: whether they are coming for him, whether they are looking for him. And at such times his face expresses the utmost uneasiness ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... a kestrel's lonely cry From the wood near there— A rustle in the wheat as I passed ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... next moment; but it detains the first sunlight and holds it round its head for an hour at least, till it pleases to change from rosy red to deep blue; and the sunset, as if spell-bound, lingers latest on its crest. The soft winds which hardly rustle the pine needles down here are raging rudely up there round its motionless summit. The mark of fire is upon it; and though it has passed into a grim repose, it tells of fire and upheaval as truly, though not as eloquently, as the living volcanoes of Hawaii. Here under its shadow one learns ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... "I heard the fir-trees rustle, but I can't see them and do not hear them any more," replied Heidi, looking in great perplexity down the street. The noise of the passing carriage had reminded her of the roaring of the south-wind on ...
— Heidi - (Gift Edition) • Johanna Spyri
... then a startled squirrel dropped from bough to bough; or there was the stealthy, sickening rustle of an unseen snake among the fallen leaves. From somewhere, too, where precipices that they could not find dashed downwards into damp gullies, cold, ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... like the rustle of skirts, the stretching of kid. There was dulness in the atmosphere. Yet if it was dull, Sommers realized that it was his own fault—a conclusion he usually took away with him from the feasts of the rich which he attended. He lacked the power to make the most of his opportunities. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... too! Strange! it was but yesterday that I was wandering through Kelvin Grove, and as the phantom breeze brought down the withered foliage from the spray, I thought, how probable it was, that they might erelong rustle over young and glowing hearts deposited prematurely ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... the window, gently fanning herself, as she looked now at the sky, now at the dark landscape. Camors imagined he could distinguish her gentle breathing above the sound of the fan; and leaning eagerly forward for a better view, he caused the leaves to rustle slightly. She started at the sound, then remained immovable, and the fixed position of her head showed that her gaze was fastened upon the oak in which ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... flapping, on the look-out for its prey. They think that by eating the flesh the limbs of the child will become supple like the wings of the bird. If a child is slow in learning to speak, they give it to eat the leaves of the pipal tree, which rustle continually in the wind and are hence supposed to have the quality of making a noise. All qualities, objective and instrumental, were conceived of in the same manner, because in the absence of verbs or abstract terms their proper relation to the subject and object ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... those first four years; and yet, even with this allowance, we are left standing rather helpless before the problem presented by the fact that this competent and diligent young lawyer—whom, forsooth, the rustling leaves of the forest could never for once entice from the rustle of the leaves of his law-books—did nevertheless transact, during his own first four years of practice, probably less than one half as much business as seems to have been done during a somewhat shorter space of time by our poor, ignorant, indolent, ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... half so gay As bright St. James's on a levee day? What fierce ecstatic transports fire my soul, To hear the drivers swear, the coaches roll; The Courtier's compliment, the Ladies' clack, The satins rustle, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... answer, there was a quick rustle, a switch clicked, and there was Daphne, propped on a white arm, looking at me with wide eyes and parted lips. Her beautiful dark hair was tumbling about her breast and shoulders. Impatiently she brushed it clear of ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... Sappers, crept upwards with Major Henderson as guide. A Dutch outpost challenged, but was satisfied by a Dutch-speaking Carabineer. Higher and higher the men crept, the silence broken only by the occasional slip of a stone or the rustle of their own breathing. Most of them had left their boots below. Even in the darkness they kept some formation, and the right wing curved forward to outflank the defence. Suddenly a Mauser crack and a spurt of flame—then another and another! 'Come on, boys! Fix bayonets!' yelled ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... with a little rustle and walked to the door. 'No, it's too hot out there,' she said, and returned to face him. 'Charles,' she said in rather a high voice, 'did you find your hat and ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... sweet chord in his heart rather than in his ears. It must be admitted that he gave little heed to the sacred words she read; but the flexible music of her voice, mingled with the murmur of the brook, the rustle of the leaves and the occasional song of a bird, all combined to form the sweetest ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... room, leaving Bogle alone, to listen to the melancholy rustle of peeling wall-paper within and the steady crackling of bullets without. But when, peering through the improvised loophole, he next caught sight of his officer, Angus had emerged from the house by the cellar window, and was creeping with ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... frames appeared small oases of oil-painting. Faraday, hat in hand, stood some time in wavering indecision, wondering in which of the brocaded and gilded chairs he would look least like a king in an historical play. He was about to decide in favor of a pale blue satin settee, when a rustle behind him made him turn and behold Miss. Genevieve magnificent in a trailing robe of the faintest rose-pink and pearls, with diamond ear-rings in her ears, and the powder that she had hastily rubbed on her face still lying ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... dis nigger's got to rustle around an' fix up some lunch," said Chris, his face falling. "Golly, I spect you-alls going to be powerful hungry ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... with beautiful deference, "will you lead us in prayer?" There was a perceptible rustle of feeling on the Settlement side of the walk, for Mr. Todd was one of the parson's deacons, but he had also been the master workman in the building of the schoolhouse, and his neighbors were quick to respond to ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... and creak of bough And rustle of the frost, And winter's inner voice—avow The holy hour is crossed, And far, mysterious music sounds, Sweet like ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... abrupt or sudden, and an atmosphere of quieting influences, like everything which retards by broadening, is in the general line of religious culture. The soul of an infant is well compared to a seed planted in a garden. It is not pressed or moved by the breezes which rustle the leaves overhead. The sunlight does not fall upon it, and even dew and evening coolness scarcely reach it; but yet there is not a breath of air or a ray of sunshine, nor a drop of moisture to which it is responsive, and which does not stir all its germinant ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... villain call. Sometimes when thou liest warmly on thy bed, Thou art like one unto the gallows led. Fear, as a constable, breaks in upon thee, Thou art as if the town was up to stone thee. If hogs do grunt, or silly rats do rustle, Thou art in consternation, think'st a bustle By men about the door, is made to take thee, And all because good conscience doth forsake thee. Thy case is most deplorably so bad, Thou shunn'st to think on't, lest thou should'st be mad. Thou art beset with mischiefs ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... it, bending the tall reeds with mournful rustle, and the wild bird passes and repasses with plaintive cry over the rushes which form ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... of this clause of my discourse, the congregation, which had been all so still and so solemn, never coughing, as was often the case among my people, gave a great rustle, changing their positions, by which I was almost overcome; however, I took heart and ventured on, and pointed out that, with our Bible and an orthodox priesthood, we stood in no need of the king's ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... literally covered the whole of the rock, and occupied a most commanding position where three lakes met. As we wandered down again, we chanced into a queer sort of chamber, wherein half a dozen weird straggling trees struggled to exist. It was almost dark; the storms of winter could rustle through those blank windows, and the trees were white, and gray, and sickly—more like phantoms than real trees—so queer and withered and pale and anmic were their leaves, and yet they stood eight or ten feet high, showing they had boldly ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... as the wool-clad footsteps of the Grecian Fate. Then, stealing through the profound darkness, came the faintest rustle imaginable. It was not the noise of feet, but rather that of bodies slowly dragging through herbage, as if men were crawling or rolling toward the Casa. Thurstane, not quite sure of his hearing, and unwilling to disturb the garrison ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... passed hurriedly through the grounds and turned in the direction of the Deering Woods. Onward, onward, over the hill and across the fields she flew, until the woods were reached—the silent, leafless woods, where not a sound was heard save the occasional dropping of a nut, the rustle of a leaf, or the ripple of the mill-brook falling over the stones. The warm sun had dried the withered grass, and she sat down beneath a forest tree, watching, waiting, wondering, and trembling violently at last as in ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... on Thames, you may hear the fall of the water over the weirs, or even, in still weather, the rustle of the rushes; and from the bridge you may see the young river, dimpled like a young child, playfully gliding away among the trees, unpolluted by the defilements that lie in wait for it on its course, and as yet out of hearing ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... a clamor of voices, a rustle of silks, a clanking of spurs and swords. Many averred that the lady was some well-known beauty infatuated by Lord Farquhart, playing merely for time. Others thought she might be lady to the real highwayman, whoever he was, and that she was about to force him to reveal himself. ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... punctuated by the sound of fists brought heavily down on a table. Just after one of these, the stovepipe hole was dimmed by something that shut off the light from the room above. It floated down with a slight rustle and the boys could see that it was a paper of ...
— Army Boys in the French Trenches • Homer Randall
... The very CUSTOS of the grand Edifice (such the rarity of fees to him) I could not awaken without difficulty. In the gray autumn zephyrs, no sound whatever about this New Palace of King Friedrich's, except the rustle of the crisp brown leaves, and of any faded or fading ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... against the sky, and across the river were rugged hills, covered with shrub oaks, tangled with grape-vines and ivy, with here and there a gray rock jutting out from the maze. The sides of these cliffs, though a quarter of a mile distant, were almost heard to rustle while we looked at them, it was such a leafy wilderness; a place for fauns and satyrs, and where bats hung all day to the rocks, and at evening flitted over the water, and fire-flies husbanded their light under ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... to show where something had been cultivated; the bare earth was raked level. Not so much as the hole from which my beet had been ravished remained in circumstantial evidence. The rest of the party arrived while I stood transfixed, the picture of detected guilt. To the rustle of the corn, and the shuffle of feet over the furrows succeeded a horrible hush. Then, a chorus of mocking girlish cackles, led by Paulina Hobson's discordant screech, smote the sunset air and covered me with a pall of infamy. Paulina caught at ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... cried a welcoming voice as Gorham threw open the door, the words being quickly followed by a rustle of skirts and an enthusiastic embrace. "I'm so glad you're back early. You know Allen is coming to dinner, and couldn't we all go to the ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... was a rustle of a silk dress, and a lady, arrayed in a long cloak and with a thick veil on, was shown into the room. Mr. Caresfoot, rising with that courteous air for which he was remarkable, bowed and begged her to be seated, and then motioned to the servants ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... the ranks of his new and strange defenders, yet power and jealousy had not left his captivity all forsaken. There was still the starling in its cage, and the fat, asthmatic spaniel still wagged its tail at the sound of its master's voice, or the rustle of his long gown. And still from the ivory crucifix gleamed the sad and holy face of the God, present alway, and who, by faith and patience, linketh evermore grief ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... flowers. The ladies and gentlemen hadn't come out to supper yet; at least, only one was there. He was standing with his back to me, before the sideboard, pouring out a glass of something from a decanter. He turned at the rustle of my starched skirt, and, as I passed the door, he saw me. I saw him, too, and ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... I and my mort worships something besides good ale; don't we, Sue?" and then he leered at the mort, who leered at him, and both made odd motions backwards and forwards, causing the baskets which hung round them to creak and rustle, and uttering loud shouts of laughter, which roused the ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... "Rustle?" soliloquized Mrs. Winthrop, as Priscilla's father folded the letter. "I've never heard that word before in such a connection, and ...
— Virginia of Elk Creek Valley • Mary Ellen Chase
... your children on Sunday. Don't place them in long, straight rows, like fence-posts, and "Sh! children, it's Sunday!" when by chance you hear a sound or rustle. Let winsome Johnny have light and air, and let him grow beautiful; let him laugh until his little sides ache, if he feels like it; let him pinch the cat's tail until the house is in an uproar with his yells—let him do anything that will make him happy. When I was a little boy, children ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... the fall of the retreating steps. They sounded for a time, and then were silent. And the evening stillness became pensive, stretched itself out in long shadows, and then grew dark;—and suddenly night, coming to meet it, all atremble with the rustle of sadly brushed-up leaves, heaved a last ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... to be ready for Mrs. Laval's coming; and presently the soft step and gentle rustle of drapery reminded Matilda anew that she had done for ever with Mrs. Candy's plump footfall ...
— The House in Town • Susan Warner
... the newspaper, and was writing an unimportant note; his back was to the door, and hearing the rustle of his wife's dress, and knowing her step, he did not turn his head sufficiently to observe her countenance, but he ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... in to him without ringing, and as she was taking off her goloshes in the entry she heard a sound as of something running softly in the studio, with a feminine rustle of skirts; and as she hastened to peep in she caught a momentary glimpse of a bit of brown petticoat, which vanished behind a big picture draped, together with the easel, with black calico, to the floor. There could be no doubt that ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... tea kettle, pressure cooker; air valve, pressure release valve, safety valve, tires, air escaping from tires, punctured tire; escaping steam, steam, steam radiator, steam release valve. V. hiss, buzz, whiz, rustle; fizz, fizzle; wheeze, whistle, snuffle; squash; sneeze; sizzle, swish. Adj. sibilant; hissing &c v.; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... we walk together; His soft footsteps rustle nigh me; To shield an unregarded head, He hath built a winter shed; And all night in rainy weather, I hear his gentle breathings ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... with a sob and sigh To which there comes no reply But a rustle and shiver From rushes of the river; As Wind with a desolate moan, ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... of high-heeled shoes, the unmistakable rustle of silk, and the peacocks, with a quick flutter, raise their heads, as though to acknowledge the ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... very odd, indeed!" said Wee-Wun the gnome, and he rubbed his eyes very hard. But this was no dream, and no matter how hard he rubbed, he could not rub it away. Then he heard upon the floor a clatter and a rustle, and then a stepping noise—one, two; one, two—and that was the little blue shoes that were marching round and round over the ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe
... took Negro men-servants (slaves) along with them. These were usually called body-servants, and it was a body-servant's duty to cook, wash, and do general valet service for his master. In a pinch, he was also supposed to raid a hen roost, or otherwise rustle food for his ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... of Skvoreshniki, almost in the garden. He had only just gone in, and in restless hesitation taken a cigar, and not having yet lighted it, was standing weary and motionless before the open window, gazing at the light feathery white clouds gliding around the bright moon, when suddenly a faint rustle made him start and turn round. Varvara Petrovna, whom he had left only four minutes earlier, was standing before him again. Her yellow face was almost blue. Her lips were pressed tightly together and twitching at the corners. For ten full seconds she looked him in the eyes ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... of the hills, their fragrant peace and their rude surprises, have I been so moved by an unexpected noise as I was then, standing with the Black Colonel in the black Pass. Partly this was because the surprise was complete, being unheralded by a rustle or a movement, but, still more, because it was the magic hour at which the womb of night moves to the ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... want to lie under the corn and hear it rustle, Cool and green in a long, straight, soldierly row, I am tired of white-faced women and men of iron. I want to go back where the country ...
— Armour's Monthly Cook Book, Volume 2, No. 12, October 1913 - A Monthly Magazine of Household Interest • Various
... bally business," and was entitled to know the means selected for its conduct. So round went my inquisitive head. Then I shook in my glee. Someone had pushed on the hands of the clock, and it was three minutes to twelve. There was a rustle of excitement in the room. The silence of expectancy followed. "Two-minutes-to" narrowed into "One-minute-to"; and after a premonitory click, which produced sufficient excitement to interfere with our breath, the ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... so fatigued, he vaingloriously determined to effect the capture with his single hand. A step or two farther brought him to one margin of a little clearing; on the other, with his arms folded and his back to a huge stone, the Master sat. It is possible Mountain may have made a rustle, it is certain, at least, the Master raised his head and gazed directly at that quarter of the thicket where his hunter lay; "I could not be sure he saw me," Mountain said; "he just looked my way like a man with his mind made up, and all the courage ran ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to be slowed, and brought forward a brass half-pounder, about a foot long, which was charged and fired. In less than a minute after the report, the sound of a deep, solemn bell boomed in the mist, dead ahead. Instantly every head was uncovered, and the rustle of whispered prayers fluttered over the deck, as the pilgrims bowed and crossed themselves. Nothing was to be seen; but, stroke after stroke, the hollow sounds, muffled and blurred in the opaque atmosphere, were pealed out by the guiding bell. Presently a chime of smaller bells joined in a rapid ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... was a scarcely audible rustle on the margin of the woods, a dry branch snapped loudly. A little pause succeeded in which the judge's heart stood still. Next a stealthy step sounded in the clearing. The judge had an agonized vision of regulators and lynchers. The beat of his pulse ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... looking towards a rustle and half a footstep that had just come in at the door, but leaning back in her chair and speaking towards the corner of the looking-glass, 'will you go down and find out if any gentleman named Julian has been staying in this house? ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... on the stairway. His senses not yet dulled, detected a stealthy tread. Not the careless step of a man unafraid, but the cautious rustle and halt of a marauder. Every nerve bristled to keenest alertness as the faint occasional sounds approached, passed the open end of the bar where he crouched, leading on to the window. Then a match flared, and the darkness rushed out as a candle ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... at a glance which was the bride-elect and which the friend, for Kitty fell back to study the effect of silvery white folds with an absorbing interest impossible to mistake while Rose sat looking at the opal as if she scarcely heard a bland voice saying, with the rustle of silk so dear to girlish ears: "A superb thing, just opened; all the rage in Paris; very rare shade; trying to most, as the lady says, but quite ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... wandered about. He looked at himself in the glass for a moment; then he went back to the chair and pulled up another to put his geet upon. He puffed away at his cigarette until he was calmer. But then suddenly he heard the rustle of a dress behind him, and glanced about, and started up with ...
— Damaged Goods - A novelization of the play "Les Avaries" • Upton Sinclair
... without being exactly at church, and they might talk; now and then a muffled, nervous laugh escaped. A delicate scent of flowers from the masses in the chancel mixed with the light and the prevailing silence. There was a soft, continuous rustle of drapery as the ladies advanced up the thickly carpeted aisles on the arms of the young ushers and compressed themselves into place in ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... false alarms disturbed us: first, a despatch rider from the Third Division, and then another from the Corps. At last we heard the purr of three engines together, and then a moment later the faint rustle of others in the distance. We recognised the engines and jumped up. All the birds came home save one. George had never quite recovered from his riding exercises. Slight blood poisoning had set in. His leave had been ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... turned away from him, and bent once more over the corpse. While she was doing so her black veil, with a gentle rustle, fell down over her face and wrapped her, as well as the corpse, as in a dark mist, so that the two forms seemed ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... coat, and in half a minute he was out of the door. Then, however, he realized that there was no need of haste, that he had no idea where to go. It was still dark as midnight, and the thick snowflakes were sifting down—everything was so silent that he could hear the rustle of them as they fell. In the few seconds that he stood there hesitating he ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... A slight rustle made her rise. Almost with terror flew her glance through the suite of rooms. There below she saw the approach of something strange, singular, magical. It was a never-before-seen form, but surrounded by a wonderfully ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... from the mouths of stone men To spread at ease under the sky In granite-lipped basins, Where iris dabble their feet And rustle to a passing wind, The water fills the garden with its rushing, In the midst of ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... sat so, looking up into the changing autumn sky, listening to the soft tinkle of the water running below, the dip of an oar, the swirl of a blue heron's wing as it clove the air, the distant voices of the picnickers farther down the creek, the rustle of the yellow beech-leaves as they whispered of the time to go, and how they would drift down like little brown boats to the stream and glide away to the end. Now and then a nut would fall with a tiny crisp thud, and a squirrel would whisk from a limb overhead. They were very quiet, ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... me tremble so, though well aware that my death might ensue from a twig on the rustle, or a leaf upon the flutter, that my chance of making off unseen was gone ere I could seize it. For now the man was taking long strides over the worn-out planks of the bridge, disdaining the hand-rail, and looking upward, as if to ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... replied Buck; "the sight o' these places makes every tenderfoot moon a bit; and we've got a straight enough job before us. We'll have to rustle some before we've got the Professor out o' the hands o' these people who want ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... trees a woman had come upon the broad walk bordered with flowers. We could hear the rustle of her starched petticoats and observed the ample spread of her old-fashioned black silk skirt. She looked up, and seeing all these eyes staring at her stopped, frowned, smiled, shook her finger at the General, who was laughing ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... impending evil Isaac stopped and looked around him. Suddenly above the musical babble of the brook and the rustle of the leaves by the breeze came a repetition of the sound. He crouched close by the trunk of a tree and strained his ears. All was quiet for some moments. Then he heard the patter, patter of little ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... iron railing. We were safe there. Nobody but me liked the place. Miss Pinshon and the overseer agreed in shunning it. And there was promise in the blue sky, and hope in the soft sunshine, and sympathy in the sweet rustle of the pine-leaves. Why not? Are they not all God's voices? And the words of the Book were very precious there, to me and many another. I was rather more left to myself of late. My governess gave me my lessons quite as assiduously as ever; but after lesson-time she ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... sequins, and, lo, it touched her. She liked its coquettish drapery of tulle and silver about the hips. The "overskirt," which was at that time just coming into fashion, though avoided by the more conservative, had been adopted by Aileen with enthusiasm. She thrilled a little at the rustle of this black dress, and thrust her chin and nose forward to make it set right. Then after having Kathleen tighten her corsets a little more, she gathered the train over her arm by its train-band and looked again. Something was wanting. Oh, yes, her neck! ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... time very still indeed—so still he could hear the rustle of manuscript pages in the other writing-room across the hall. Perhaps he sat there nearly all the afternoon, for the shadows lengthened before he seemed ...
— The Very Small Person • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... pull a trigger when I went back to my room, instead of kicking and struggling day after day to be and feel some other way. I get so sick and tired of fighting myself—you don't know. Anyhow, suddenly there was a rustle in the gold and purple hedge, and there was Robert Halarkenden. I wish I could make you see him as he stood there, in his blue working blouse, a pair of big clippers in his hand, his thick, half-gray, silvery thatch ...
— August First • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and Roy Irving Murray
... wounds of angels which Milton tells of, but the seam still shining for many a long rood behind me. To lie still over the Flats, where the waters are shallow, and see the crabs crawling and the sculpins gliding busily and silently beneath the boat,—to rustle in through the long harsh grass that leads up some tranquil creek,—to take shelter from the sunbeams under one of the thousand-footed bridges, and look down its interminable colonnades, crusted with green and oozy growths, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... transparent, bright. Cristo pr. n. m. Christ, image of Christ. crudeza f. severity, cruelty. crudo, -a raw. cruel adj. cruel, intolerable. crujido m. crackling. crujir clash, click, clank, crack, crackle, creak, rustle. cruz f. cross. cruzar cross, pass, pass through, cruise. cuadrar befit, suit. cuadro m. picture, scene. cuajar coagulate, coat over. cual adv. like, as. cul pron. interrog. which, ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... to Hilliard's office opened, and he heard the rustle of a woman's dress; then his own name ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... the door in the boundary wall by now, and Isabel would not let him come further with her and bade him good-night. But Hubert still stood, with his hand on the door, and watched the white figure fade into the dusk, and listened to the faint rustle of her skirt over the dry leaves; and then, when he heard at last the door of the Dower House open and close, he sighed to himself ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... drifted some way down the lagoon, and a rustle told Norah that they were near one of the reedy islands dotted here and there in the shallows. There was very little foothold on them, but they made excellent nesting places for the ducks that came to the station each year. The boat grounded its nose ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... orchard. A little while ago she would have passed quickly on without a moment's hesitation, but now she felt a sort of sympathy with Peter. She was lonely, and he was lonely; besides, he had been kind to None-so-pretty. So presently she made a little rustle, which roused Sober from his slumbers. He raised his head, and finding that it was a friend wagged his bushy tail and resumed his former position; but this roused Peter too, and he slowly turned his eyes upon Lilac and stared silently. Knowing that it would be ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... slowly and in deep thought through the long avenues of glimmering beeches and under the dry rustle of the quivering poplars. Then, as the first red of dawn touched his face, he looked about him. He was clear of the trees now, and the broad open expanse of the green fields and shining water meadows that ring in Loch Grannoch widened out before him. The winds sighed and rumbled about the hill-tops ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... of a court, the ways of a court. Familiarity does but spice them. I love the cold comfort of the pale oak panelling, the scurrying-in-and-out of lawyers' clerks, the eagerness and ominousness of it all, the rustle of silk as a K.C. edges his way to his seat and twists his head round for a quick whispered parley with his junior, while his client, at the solicitors' table, twists his head round to watch feverishly the quick mechanical nods of the ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... was saving the money to buy myself a silk petticoat," Fanny defended herself. "I wanted to know just once before I died what and how it felt like to rustle up the church aisle instead of slinking down it on a Sunday morning. But I just think a silk petticoat isn't worth thinking about when a thing like ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... have just come in from the terrace. The moon is full over the sea, which is glittering as if it was molten gold. The rocks and promontories stand out dear and ghost-like. There is not a breath to rustle the leaves or to stir the painted wash upon the shore. Men and men's doings, and their speeches and idle excitement, seem all poor, transient, and contemptible. Sea and rocks and moonlight looked just as they look to-night before ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... between the sides of the cleft, rested knee and foot on the ledge, and extended a hand. I could not see Cavor, but I could hear the rustle of his movements as he crouched to spring. Then whack and he was hanging to my arm—and no heavier than a kitten! I lugged him up until he had a hand on my ledge, ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... for thought. A stolid looking servant came to the door, who eyed her suspiciously, and did not seem disposed to admit her. However, on her decided request to see the lady of the house, she was shown a seat in the hall, and left to her reflections. A moment after, there was the rustle of silken robes, the sparkle of brilliant jewels, and a cold ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... and out of countenance, not knowing what to say, happiness had so dulled his wit. To see Adelaide, to hear the rustle of her skirt, after longing for a whole morning to be near her, after starting up a hundred time—"I will go down now"—and not to have gone; this was to him life so rich that such sensations, too greatly prolonged, would have ...
— The Purse • Honore de Balzac
... the fir-trees rustle, but I can't see them and do not hear them any more," replied Heidi, looking in great perplexity down the street. The noise of the passing carriage had reminded her of the roaring of the south-wind ...
— Heidi - (Gift Edition) • Johanna Spyri
... the range for, so's not to lose 'em. We've traced a B-in-a-Box steer clear from Tucson to Denver, done it more'n onct or twice too. I notice you got a big bunch of man-punchers in uniform here. Ain't it their business to rustle ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... another thin sheet of lead, also stained and corroded. On this he scratches, in imitation of the old "Cadmeian letters," a prophecy that "the Isles near Lemnos shall disappear under the sea." So busy is he in this task, that he does not hear the rustle of a chiton behind, and suddenly a man's hand is on his shoulder! Onomacritus turns in horror. Has the goddess punished him for tampering with the oracles? No; it is Lasus, the son of Hermiones, a rival poet, who has caught the keeper ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... door softly. I remained for a moment or so on the big landing, hesitating between my bedroom and my study. As I did so I heard the soft rustle of her movement and the click of the key in her bedroom door. ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... of him as they were of the hospital, and it has never been recorded in the traditions of Saint Margaret's that the Senior Surgeon had ever asked for anything that went ungranted. He seldom attended a board meeting; consequently when he came in at five-thirty there was an audible rustle of excitement and the ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... do not move hand or foot, or rustle the straw. It is no play—it is life or death," said Osmond, as he disposed the straw round the little boy. ...
— The Little Duke - Richard the Fearless • Charlotte M. Yonge
... nerve of his body. It was not a shout of anger: it was something between a shriek and a wail,—like what he fancied would be the cry of a person in the act of being murdered. That Nipen was here now, he could not doubt; and at length Oddo fled. He fled the faster, at first, for hearing the rustle of wings; but the curiosity of the boy even now got the better of his terror, and he looked up at the barn where the wings were rustling. There he saw, in the starlight, the glitter of two enormous round eyes, shining down upon him from the ridge of the roof. But ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... fallen-away bank, her hand on the rough trunk of a tree, looking at the water, that was perfect in its stillness, floating the moon upon it. But for some reason she disliked it. It did not give her anything. She listened for the hoarse rustle of the sluice. And she wished for something else out of the night, she wanted another night, not this moon-brilliant hardness. She could feel her soul crying out in her, ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... still place the "Hermitage" was, thought Alwyn, as soon as Elzear's retreating steps had died away into silence. There was not a sound to be heard anywhere, ... not even the faint rustle of leaves stirred by the wind. And what a haunting, grave, wistfully tender expression filled the face of that sculptured Image on the Cross, which in intimate companionship with himself seemed to possess the little room! He could not bear the down-drooping appealing, penetrating ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... three in the morning, he was so tense and animate that he heard the soft, swift tread of a Chinese in the hall and the faintest possible rustle of a paper thrust under his door. He waited a moment before turning on the light.... It was another missive ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... recalled to the dangers of the present. In the next room he heard a stir, as of a person moving; then followed a sigh, which sounded strangely near; and then the rustle of skirts and tap of feet once more began. As he stood hearkening, he saw the arras wave along the wall; there was the sound of a door being opened, the hangings divided, and, lamp in hand, Joanna Sedley ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... close to me, and, half in fear, half in hope, I began to stir and rustle in the grass, for of my stifled groaning had hitherto come no profit. Then ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... and knew it for red cedar. Patches of it grew thick on the high ridges, matted close for cover. As the travelers crept under it they heard the rustle of shoulder against shoulder, the moving click of horns, and the bleat of yearlings for their mothers. They had stumbled in the dark on the bedding-place of a ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... in the cool night air. The stars were so clear that they seemed to rest on the fields and tree-tops, and the rustle of the sleepless corn passed behind every hedge. She walked with a certain carefulness as of one who had unexpectedly escaped a physical danger; but the peril from which she was conscious of fleeing was spiritual. She had been threatened by avarice which had prompted ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... short. Girlish voices, low and murmurous, fell upon his ear. In a moment he had recognized them. "It won't take me two minutes, Angela. I'll go and get it now," were the first words distinctly heard, and, with a rustle of skirts, Kate Sanders bounded lightly from the piazza to the sands and disappeared around the corner of the major's quarters, going in the direction of her home. For the first time in many eventful days Blakely ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... eternity. He must feel that, or the thing would be unbearable. For the first time in his life he gave conscious thought to Natalie's religious belief. She believed in those things. She must. She sat devoutly through the long service; she slipped, with a little rustle of soft silk, so easily to her knees. Perhaps, if he went ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... distinctly an unlikely evening for the sportsman. The stillness was so complete that the faintest rustle could be heard at a great distance. Moreover, it was the sort of evening when Nature herself seems to be glancing over her ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... were beastly unpleasant. I left the third one alone. I held it up to the light, but the shell was too thick for me to get any notion of what might be happening inside; and though I fancied I heard blood pulsing, it might have been the rustle in my own ears, like what you ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... earth's crust. Upon the narrow stony strip of comparatively level ground the sun's rays fell with concentrated ardour, and along it was a brilliant bloom of late summer flowers—of camomile, St. John's wort, purple loosestrife, hemp-agrimony and lamium. At almost every step there was a rustle of a lizard or a snake. The melancholy cry of the hawk was the only sound of bird-life. Near rocks of dazzling mica-schist was a miserable hut with a patch of buckwheat reaching to the stream. A man standing amidst the white flowers of the late-sown crop said, in ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... made up his mind that there was nothing to do but to try to find his way home, his keen little ears caught the faintest rustle of dry leaves. Instantly Whitefoot was alert and watchful. Long ago he had learned to be suspicious of rustling leaves. They might have been rustled by the feet of an enemy stealing up on him. No Wood Mouse who wants to live long is ever heedless of rustling ...
— Whitefoot the Wood Mouse • Thornton W. Burgess
... close as to cut off one corner of the park, and of the malodorous tanyard between the remnant of grounds and the river Wey that once washed them. On an October day, the Surrey hills standing round about in shadowy distances, the silence of two centuries is scarcely broken by the rustle of leaves dropping on their own deep carpet, and the very spirit of a lost cause dwells here, slowly dying. The house stands backed by a steep wooded hill, beyond which corn-fields 'clothe the wold and meet the sky;' the mansion is a grey, ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... on in this manner for some time. Then the hot summer was over and the green leaves died and fell to the ground with a rustle. All the children except the babies started to school. It became too cold to play out-of-doors in the afternoon, and soon the days got so short that there were no afternoons, and the children forgot it ever had been summer ...
— Jerry's Reward • Evelyn Snead Barnett
... the horrors preparing for the wicked in a future state. A great excitement is visible among his hearers, a scream is heard, and some young girl falls senseless on the floor. There is a momentary rustle, but it is only for a moment—all eyes are turned towards the preacher. He pauses, passes his handkerchief across his face, and looks complacently round. His voice resumes its natural tone, as with mock humility he offers up a thanksgiving for having been successful ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... he heard the rustle of grass, and, upon turning his head, discovered the loud soldier. He called out, ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... nervous in watching her first behaviour, but were not at all prepared for the line of conduct which she adopted. John Ball and Margaret had separated when they heard the rustle of her dress. He had made a step towards the window, and she had retreated to the other side of the fire-place. Lady Ball, on entering the room, had been nearest to Margaret, but she walked round the table away from her usual place for ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... rifle, stumble forward, and sink down on his hands and knees. Between his naked shoulders, low down and to the left, appeared the bone-barbed head of an arrow. He had been shot through and through. Cocked rifles swept the bush with nervous apprehension. But there was no rustle, no movement; nothing ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... with the stillness of the night. Bent on capture, he found himself all at once held captive, his mind swayed as grass in the wind to the sweep of that other's fancy. But abruptly the voice ceased, and the stillness settled deeper. Marcus heard a rustle of soft garments upon the bench; ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... she passed near the open study door, she thought that she heard a rustling, and a flash of hope came across her. Could he be reviving? She entered, but a moment was enough to undeceive her; it had only been a night rustle among the trees. Of ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... running cattle on the open range is reckless and wasteful in the extreme and entirely inexcusable. The cattle are simply turned loose to rustle for themselves. No provision whatever is made for their welfare, except that they are given the freedom of the range to find water, if they can, and grass that often ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... letters: "Assistance for those attacked with the cholera." The true places for revelry, during the night, were the churchyards; they ran riot—they, usually so desolate and silent, during the dark, quiet hours, when the cypress trees rustle in the breeze, so lonely, that no human step dared to disturb the solemn silence which reigned there at night, became on a sudden, animated, noisy, riotous, and resplendent with light. By the smoky flames of torches, which threw a red glare upon the ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... As he did so a rustle of anger shook the lady in her silks and furs. "Do you hear me?" she repeated, and he could guess how her little foot ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... much whether he kills it or not, and he is in no hurry about it. So he sits on the grass and looks at the gray old rocks and the bright young flowers about him, sees the golden sunlight falling in little spots and flecks through the branches, feels the cool, fresh morning air, and hears the soft rustle of the trees and the singing of the birds. Most of all, he listens to the birds that flutter about in the branches above him, as the sparks hover over the fire there, before they fly away up the chimney, and in particular to one bird, right over his head in the tree. It sings so loudly ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost
... eyes flick away from me to the right, then back to me. Cat's not making any noise, and neither am I, but something is. It's just a tiny rustle, or a breath, but I have a creepy feeling someone is standing near us. Way down at the end of the cellar a shadow moves a little, and I can see it has a white splotch—a face. It's a man, and he comes ...
— It's like this, cat • Emily Neville
... A hoof-stroke upon a rock, the glide and rattle of revolving wheels, voices in conversation, and now and then a calling voice, were all the sounds heard above the rustle of the mighty movement. Yet was there upon every countenance the look with which men make haste to see some dreadful sight, some sudden wreck, or ruin, or calamity of war. And by such signs Ben-Hur judged that these were the strangers in the city come up to the Passover, ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... she and Julia went to early mass on the very next morning. Julia found this first experience an ordeal; she and Miss Toland were in a side pew before the big gong struck, and Julia did not raise her eyes from her book as the girls filed in. The steady rustle of frocks and shuffle of feet made her feel cold ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... free yet. He'd heard people say that when you were first married it was like that, you couldn't realize it. He'd heard one of the men at the office say that for a long time, every time he heard his bride's skirts rustle, he had to turn his head to make sure she was really there. Well, he would like now to get up and look out of that window and see if his garden was really there. His garden! He thought with a secret feeling, half pity and half shame, of those yellowed old seed ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... wondering. And he was about to return to the charge with another and more direct question, when his attention was arrested by the sound of footsteps on the stairs; so he sat bolt upright, and stared hard at the door. There was the rustle of a dress. The Baron rose. So did the Reverend Saul Tozer. The lady appeared. It was not Minnie. ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... some knowledge of her habits... and once more he put his ear to the door. Either his senses were peculiarly keen (which it is difficult to suppose), or the sound was really very distinct. Anyway, he suddenly heard something like the cautious touch of a hand on the lock and the rustle of a skirt at the very door. Someone was standing stealthily close to the lock and just as he was doing on the outside was secretly listening within, and seemed to have her ear to the door.... He moved a little on purpose and muttered something aloud that he might not ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... saying among themselves. "No one comes here for anything else. Wait a little, and we will pick his bones." They perched near by, and, not to lose time, employed the interval in drying their wings, for the night had been showery. Once in a while one of them shifted his perch with an ominous rustle. They were waiting for me, and were becoming impatient. "He is long about it," one said to another; and I did not wonder. The place seemed one from which none who entered it could ever go out; and there was no going farther in ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... the dogs close at heel, I soon became lost to everything but the entrancing beauty of the evening, its perfect peacefulness and quietude, emphasised rather than broken by the gentle gurgle and ripple of the river along its banks and the soft sigh and rustle of the wind among the reeds; while the swift changes of light and colour flooding the landscape as the sun sank rapidly in the western sky afforded a picture the surpassing loveliness of which there are no words to describe. ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... pacing behind me. I heard a rustle at the edge of the forest, a stir and whisper beyond the trees, and turned to speak to him, then saw him slipping away toward the outskirts of ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... another ten minutes' wait, that the girls tried to cover with conversation. Then—a rustle of silken skirts and a figure appeared in the archway that caused those assembled to stare in ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... and he stood up and stretched out his hand for silence. Some of the congregation were moving towards the doors; and they turned back with a hurried rustle and murmur, as a whisper went through ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... It sounded like the rustle of skirts, the stretching of kid. There was dulness in the atmosphere. Yet if it was dull, Sommers realized that it was his own fault—a conclusion he usually took away with him from the feasts of the rich which he attended. He lacked ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... INCONCEIVABLE. (Italics mine.) How can we picture to ourselves a state of consciousness putting in motion any particle of matter, large or small? Puss, while dozing before the fire, hears a light rustle in the corner, and darts towards the spot. What has happened? Certain sound-waves have reached the ear, a series of physical changes have taken place within the organism, special groups of muscles have been called into play, and ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... and still—so dark that above the tree-tops all was a soft, abysmal blank, so still that the Japanese lanterns scarcely swung on their strings among the apple-trees, and the leaves almost forgot to rustle. From the tent in the corner of the little garden (little, but large for a garden in London) the quaint, rapturous music of the Hungarian band floated in fitful extravagance, now wildly dominating, now graciously accompanying the murmur of many voices, the mingled ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... latter for the male portion of his retinue and guests of that sex, and another for the female, as, in accordance with the severe, and to us strange, Mexican etiquette, men rarely saw a woman about the premises, though there were many. Only the quick rustle of a skirt, or a hurried view of a reboso, as its wearer flashed for an instant before some window or half-open ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... too, this rustle, thump—rustle, thump—fell exactly into the time of the music; so that, clearly, either the rustle thump was being played to the tune, or the tune sung ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... were introductions and a jingle of merry words and smiles that blended in Kitty's ears with the dreamy music, the rustle of dresses, and perfume of flowers, and ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... trackless deep, veiled in darkness and in clouds. There was a shifting of the bow; the storm died away in the distance, and the morning broke in floods of glory. Then the violin revived and poured out its sweetest soul. In its music I heard the rustle of a thousand joyous wings, and a burst of song from a thousand joyous throats. Mockingbirds and linnets thrilled the glad air with warblings; gold finches, thrushes and bobolinks trilled their happiest ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... then there was a rustle of silks and satins. The audience were about to withdraw. The preacher sat upon his sofa, on the platform, mopping his broad forehead with his handkerchief, for he had spoken with great energy. I could restrain myself no longer. ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... upon it all, so lost in his own somber thoughts that he did not hear the library door open, nor the soft rustle of a woman's dress as ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... an afternoon in August. The sun was blazing down hotly, scarce a breath of wind was stirring, and the tiny waves broke along the shore with a low rustle like that of falling leaves. Some fishermen were at work, recaulking a boat hauled up on the shore. Others were laying out some nets to dry in the sun. Some fisher boys were lying asleep, like dogs basking in the heat; and a knot of lads, sitting under ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... young ladies whose thoughts rise no higher than the dress they wear and the bonnet that decks their heads. If they can be hung over with gewgaws and tinselry, if plumes shall tremble on their heads, silks shall rustle about them, and jewels shine wherever they go, to catch every eye and bewilder every passer-by, they fancy they are in the upper-ten of womanhood. Vain! The peacock, whose little heart is one beating pulse of vanity, is not half so vain as they. Giddy, trifling, empty, ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... The branches over the roof began to move and rustle, and there was a sudden downpour of rain; the camp fire went out, as if an extinguisher had covered it. She stood in the doorway for a breathless instant, then ran back into the cabin, and, catching the candle from the table, stepped out into the blackness; ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... bright, and the supper tray gleamed invitingly from a table between the windows. As Frere entered, a little terrier ran barking to his feet. It was evident that he was not a constant visitor. The rustle of a silk dress behind the terrier betrayed the presence of a woman; and Frere, rounding the promontory of an ottoman, found himself face to face with ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... minute distant sounds were clearly audible—the stream seemed to be tinkling just at his elbow, while much farther away there was a low murmur of falling water at the tumbling dam, mingling with the sighs of vagrant airs among the crowns of the trees, the rustle and creak of dry branches, the whispering of leaf to leaf. Wakeful birds deceived by the moon piped softly and were silent. An owl called. And then for the briefest moment, except for the stream, ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... to have taken place as described, though it was the mere product of chance noises and breaths of air on minds intently expectant; and we are bidden to remember "that in these decisive hours a current of wind, a creaking window, an accidental rustle, settle the belief of nations for centuries." But at any rate it was a ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... a wondering, wakeful night, the excited Hepsey had seen Miss Thorne as plainly as when she first entered the house. The tall, straight, graceful figure was familiar by this time, and the subdued silken rustle of her skirts was a wonted sound. Ruth's face, naturally mobile, had been schooled into a certain reserve, but her deep, dark eyes were eloquent, and always would be. Hepsey wondered at the opaque whiteness of her skin and the baffling arrangement of her hair. The young women of the ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... Anne, coming back with a rustle of silks while Mrs. Gray yet stood in bewilderment, holding the baby's frock in her limp fingers. "By the way, Mary is very anxious about her father—how he will take her accident. Will you tell your husband that I shall be glad to see him when ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... those days in the early year when the spring seems to rush upon the world as though suddenly new born, when there is all at once a delicious whisper and rustle of leaves, and the sunshine permeates everything; when the earth wakes up fresh, green, and laden with dews; and soft breezes, fragrant with the promise of summer, come stealing into the open windows. Nea looked like the embodiment of spring as she stood there in her white gown. Below her was the ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... spicy scent In barter for the balsam that it lent! And when my friend handed the reins to me, And drew a fuming match along his knee, And, lighting his cigar, began to talk, I let the old horse lapse into a walk From his perfunctory trot, content to listen, Amid that leafy rustle and that glisten Of field, and wood, and ocean, rapt afar, From every trouble of our anxious star. From time to time, between effect and cause In this or that, making a questioning pause, My friend ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... stick behind him, under a shrub, and he began to make his way up the half-bare branches of the gnarled cedar. They bore him well, without crack or rustle, and the way was very easy. No ladder made by man could have offered a much simpler ascent. So, mounting slowly and with care, his head came level with the top of the wall. He climbed to the next branch, a foot higher, and rested there. ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... its true element only when it sails out into the ocean of eternity. Such was her thought as she looked down the clear, translucent depths; but would it have been of any use to try to utter it to anybody?—to Sally Kittridge, for example, who sat all in a cheerful rustle of bright ribbons beside her, and who would have shown her white teeth all round at such a suggestion, and said, "Now, Mara, who but you would ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... mantle, doffed forever here, Within these lowly walls. And we were born Amid a glad creation!—-then why hear we ne'er The silver shout, filling the unmeasured heaven?—— Why catch we e'er the rich plume's rustle soft, Or sweep of passing lyre! Our tearful home Hung 'mid a gay, rejoicing universe, And ne'er a glimpse adown its golden paths?—— Oh are there eyes, soft eyes upon us, In the dark and in the day, shining ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon
... him a successful hunting-ground for bees and wild honey, and will be long remembered for sweeter stores of honey encombed and presented in enduring type. Washington Irving says of the early poets of Britain that "a spray could not tremble in the breeze, or a leaf rustle to the ground, that was not seen by these delicate observers and wrought up into some beautiful morality." So John Burroughs has studied the Hudson in all its moods, knowing well that it is not to be wooed and won in a single ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... into execution, Reginald proposed returning to the tower without further delay, when a rustle was heard in the bushes, and Sambro crept up to the camp. He had seen, he said, several lights streaming from the upper part of the building, which made him suppose that there must be a good many ...
— The Young Rajah • W.H.G. Kingston
... hills, long to remain, Shared their short-lived comrade's pain. And bound for the same bourn as I, On every road I wandered by, Trod beside me, close and dear, The beautiful and death-struck year: Whether in the woodland brown I heard the beechnut rustle down, And saw the purple crocus pale Flower about the autumn dale; Or littering far the fields of May Lady-smocks a-bleaching lay, And like a skylit water stood The bluebells ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman
... The rustle of squirrels along the pine-stems, the monotonous music of the cuckoo, varied by a charge of toy pistol-shots when an inexperienced monkey alighted on a dead twig. Brutus, standing squarely between them, eyed ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... is the favourite Wind of all, Beloved of the stars and night; In the rustle of leaves you shall hear it call To the passionate joys of flight. It will carry you forth in its wonderful hair To the far-away courts of the sky, And the breath of its lips is a murmuring prayer For the safety of all who fly. ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... friendless, the forsaken ones of earth, and bidding them find home and friend and joy in him. The meeting continued with but one other interruption. Midway in the services the door opened somewhat noisily, and with many a rustle and flutter Mrs. Hastings and Miss Dora made their way from out the storm and found shelter in the quiet chapel. This was just as Deacon ...
— Three People • Pansy
... light foot on the stairs—a rich rustle of silks. Everything still again—Dr. Renton looking fixedly, with great sternness, at the half-open door, from whence a faint, delicious perfume floats into the library. Somebody there, for certain. Somebody ...
— The Ghost • William. D. O'Connor
... quiet in the forest, almost ominously still. Over our head somewhere, in the thick branches which in places shut out the sunlight completely, I knew that the tree-roads ran crisscross, and now and again I heard some rustle, a fragment of sound, a voice, a snatch ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... the shadowy presence of the woman he loved so passionately walked beside him. On the shores of the lonely fiord or in the pine forests, Elizabeth's bright, speaking face seemed to move before him like a will o' the wisp; even in the rustle of the summer breeze in the leaves he could hear her voice, with its odd breaks and sibilant pauses, so curiously sweet to his ear. "I am possessed," he would say to himself—"I am possessed!" and indeed with all his strength of will he was powerless ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... he sat on the wooden roller under the shade of a tree and thought these things, listening to the rustle of the golden wheat as it moved in the breeze, he pulled a newspaper out of his pocket, and glanced down a long, long list of farms to let. Then he remembered that his pass-book at the bank showed a very respectable row of figures, buttoned up his ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... noiselessly, that for a moment or two he was unaware of her entrance. There was neither the rustle of skirts nor the sound of any movement to apprise him of it, yet he became suddenly conscious that he was not alone. He turned around at once and saw her standing within a few feet of him. She ...
— Berenice • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of your own age, your head encircled with the white reed, enjoying your ease and breathing the perfume of the yew and of the fresh sprouts of the poplar, rejoicing in the return of springtide and gladly listening to the gentle rustle of the plane-tree and the elm. If you devote yourself to practising my precepts, your chest will be stout, your colour glowing, your shoulders broad, your tongue short, your hips muscular, but your penis small. But if you follow the fashions of the day, you ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... on to the left through crowded gardens, pressing his way slowly where all around him lantern-lit faces appeared from the dusk and vanished again into it; where the rustle of summer gowns sweeping the shaven lawns of Bermuda grass sounded like ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... for the coming of the man he hated. During five of these he listened to the sounds of Holton's downward progress, brought to his keen ear on the soft breezes of the young night. There came the crackling of a twig, the thud, thud, thud of a dislodged stone bounding down the slope, the rustle of leaves as the old man shuffled through a pocket of them gathered in the lea of some protruding rock by vagrant winds. Then all was still. He did not guess that Holton had been anxious that these sounds should reach him; that he had stumbled down the trail ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... delicate rustle of a large, mannerly audience was heard as the janitor opened and closed the door; and stage-fright seized the boy. The orchestra began an overture, and, at that, Penrod, trembling violently, tiptoed down the hall into the ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... wedding in the highest sense of the word, and the church was crowded. There was a rustle and a stir as the bride swept up the aisle, and the organ boomed out. There was a little delay at the altar, for the father of the bride had not yet arrived, and there was a disposition to give him a little ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... full; Miss Gainsborough stood still and waited composedly till the obstacle was removed. You could not hear her open or shut the door; you could not hear her foot on the stairs, and yet she went quick. And when she came back, she did not rustle and bustle with her newspaper, but laid it nicely folded beside me, and went back to her seat as quietly as she had left it. Young ladies, that is good breeding ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... battle. These shadows are grenadiers; these flashes are cuirassiers; this skeleton is Napoleon; this skeleton is Wellington; all this is nonexistent, and yet still combats, and the ravines are stained purple, and the trees rustle, and there is fury even in the clouds and in the darkness, while all the stern heights, Mont St. Jean, Hougomont, Frischemont, Papelotte, and Plancenoit, seem confusedly crowned by hosts of specters exterminating ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... alongside. There was a trampling of feet on the deck above them, and the bey's voice giving orders. A few minutes later the anchor was raised, there was more talking on deck, and then they heard a boat push off, and knew by the rustle of water against the planks beside them that the vessel was ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... were spreading like tentacles; they pushed on to meet the moon, whose light was just rising in the east as a dim whitish arch. The orb itself still remained below the horizon. Gusts of wind whirled up the gorge from the east at intervals, causing the pines to sigh, the willows and poplars to rustle. The corn whispered and tinkled. The usual bustle prevailed about the houses and in front of ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... the earth reflect the objects on its breast like water. Hedges, trees, low cottages, church steeples, blighted stumps and flourishing young slips, have all grown vain upon the sudden, and mean to contemplate their own fair images till morning. The poplars yonder rustle that their quivering leaves may see themselves upon the ground. Not so the oak; trembling does not become HIM; and he watches himself in his stout old burly steadfastness, without the motion of a twig. The moss-grown gate, ill-poised ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... woods of fir and beech, waving the gray moss that hung from trunk and branch, tossing the emerald ferns that grew in the moss at the roots, and out again into light to catch the silver down of thistles that grew by the red roadside and rustle their purple bloom; then on the cliff, just touching the blue sea with the slightest ripple, and losing themselves where sky and ocean ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... passed along the avenue in front of the house. There was the sound of voices in the hall, a knock at the door, the rustle of a woman's clothes. Parkins, a little disturbed, announced ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... which the sight of these monster trees inspired me. There seemed to me something pitiless and phantom-like in the severity of their enormous bare trunks, stretching on without break or branch into the distance—overhead, and there at length giving birth to a sea of dark waving plumes, the rustle of which reached my ears as the sound of tossing waves. Passing beneath these vast trees we came to others of smaller growth, but still of the same type,—straight-stemmed, with branching foliage at their summit. Here we stood ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... to ridge; often halting in the lee of a rock for shelter, or to gaze and listen. Even when the grand anthem had swelled to its highest pitch, I could distinctly hear the varying tones of individual trees—Spruce, and Fir, and Pine, and leafless Oak—and even the infinitely gentle rustle of the withered grasses at my feet. Each was expressing itself in its own way—singing its own song, and making its own peculiar gestures—manifesting a richness of variety to be found in no other forest I have yet seen. ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... among my wife and the two guests, and was heard, I think, by all three. Mrs. Hillard, I remember, was greatly startled. As for myself, I was reclining on the sofa at a little distance, and neither heard the rustle nor ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... drawers, a washstand, and close to the bed a wicker chair, with silk cushions, was drawn up, as if in expectation of a guest. The head of the bed was toward her, so that she couldn't see Simeon's face, but he heard the rustle of skirts, and called her name, and she made a step forward and sank ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... complaint the subject, and strains his ear painfully to catch the sound. No rustling of dresses, nor creaking shoes either; where the carpets are taken up, the nurse should wear list shoes, or some other noiseless material, and her dress should be of soft material that does not rustle. Miss Nightingale denounces crinoline, and quotes Lord Melbourne on the subject of women in the sick-room, who said, "I would rather have men about me, when ill, than women; it requires very strong health to put up with women." ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... followed. A number of times I thought to speak to him and try to win him from his mood, but I refrained. I could see there was a soul battle waging and I realised that upon its outcome might depend Bob's salvation. Some seek the quiet of the woods, the soothing rustle of the leaves, the peaceful ripple of the brook when battling for their soul, but Bob's woods appeared to be the shadowy places of misery, his rustling leaves the hoarse din of the multitude, and his brook's ripple the tears and tales of the man-damned of the great city, for he stopped and ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... on the alert. What was that noise in the darkness to her left? She distinctly heard a rustle among the gorse-bushes, and thought something moved in the ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... the accomplished gentlewoman of a hundred years ago, with her solid reading, her strong common sense, her sober religious convictions, her household science. No doubt she loved fine lace and old china; there are recondite internal proofs that she was pretty; and on closing the book a far-off rustle of her brocade reaches us as she makes her spreading curtsey. But we will let her speak for herself a little. Her first position is certainly a strong one: "If this haughty sex would have us believe they have a natural right ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... an audible rustle in the large congregation of St. Paul's Church, well-bred people though they were, as their young minister came up the aisle with his bride and seated her in the minister's pew. They not only turned their heads, giving one slight glance, seeing all without seeming to, as cultured people ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... represented another battle fought with his fate. Justice, Justice for himself and the woman he loved, was the cry raised more than once aloud in sharp agony on that great silence. And only the drone of the shining-winged things and the dry rustle ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... She nodded at him, with the same faint smile on her lips. The silence seemed very long as she looked at him and he gazed straight before him, the forgotten paper falling with a rustle from his ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... board and she immediately flew to get it, her silly little head filled with the idea of making it serve her as a ladder. She tugged it laboriously across the stubbly field, and her short, panting breaths did not reach Nan's ear, full of the near rustle of leaves and the hum ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... eyes. The sides were so bold, the sweep of them so extended, the woods so luxuriantly rich, the scene so desolate in its loneliness and wildness, that she sat down to dream in a trance of enjoyment. Not a sound now but the plash of the water, the scream of a wild bird, and the rustle of leaves. Not a human creature in sight, or the trace of one. Wych might imagine the times when red Indians roved among those hillsides—the place looked like them; but rare were the white hunters that broke their solitudes. It was delicious. The very air that fanned her face had come straight ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... said Dr. Howe, looking at them over his glasses, as they came into the library, "it is good to see you again, young man! How did you leave Helen?" He pushed his chair back from the fire, and let his newspapers rustle to the floor, as he rose. Max came and sniffed about Gifford's knees, and wagged his tail, hoping to be petted. Lois was the only one whose greeting was constrained, and Gifford's gladness withered under the indifference ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... his table, deep in his work. He heard the key turn in its lock and the door open, but he did not look up. Suddenly he was aware of the soft rustle of skirts, and, lifting his eyes, he saw Ruth. For a moment he did not move, thinking she must be but the substance of his dream. Then her black dress caught his attention, and ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... clear enough now—while Mary was away out of the house—while her voice no longer rang in his ears and the soft rustle of her skirts had died away. But, when she came back with her pale face and care-lined eyes, her soft voice and caressing hand, pleading, pathetic, seeking protection from the horrible contact of a jail, would he be ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... they finally said: "If you want to get out and rustle up 500 new members at one dollar each to pay for this thing, we'll ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... woods we walk together; His soft footsteps rustle nigh me; To shield an unregarded head, He hath built a winter shed; And all night in rainy weather, I hear ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... the direction of the horses, taking with him neither his gun or his pistol, which was a rare thing for him to do. Just as he was passing around a pine tree a panther sprang at him from the tree. On hearing the rustle in the limbs, Carson jumped back from the tree as far as he could and thus avoided the full force of the blow from the panther. As he jumped back he drew his knife and had a hand-to-hand fight with the huge feline and succeeded ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan
... in his reverie, the rustle of tartans was heard behind him, a friendly arm clasped his shoulders, and a friendly ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... into service. It was the life that Watteau painted, with its quaint and grotesque fancies, its sylvan divinities, and its sighing lovers wandering in endless masquerade, or whispering tender nothings on banks of soft verdure, amid the rustle of leaves, the sparkle of fountains, the glitter of lights, and the perfume of innumerable flowers. It was a perpetual carnival, inspired by imagination, animated by genius, and combining everything ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... softly, thick in the sky, dropping ceaselessly and soundlessly. It clung to the limbs of trees, making of each branch a thick white arm, stilling the pine-needles, binding them together in the sheath which forbade them to shiver and rustle. It lay in sludgy messes in the pools of the stream and curled over the edges of the steep banks and coated the boulders; it lay its white command for silence upon the racing water. A world dead-white and dead-still. That unbroken silence ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... ceremonial which commands universal esteem. The white man has scoffed at our religion and our morals, but has accepted the brown beverage without hesitation. The afternoon tea is now an important function in Western society. In the delicate clatter of trays and saucers, in the soft rustle of feminine hospitality, in the common catechism about cream and sugar, we know that the Worship of Tea is established beyond question. The philosophic resignation of the guest to the fate awaiting him in the dubious decoction proclaims that in this single ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura
... it is that this lovely art is so wrested to its own destruction! Used only to blind our eyes, and to prevent us from seeing the sun shine, the fields bloom, the trees blossom, and from hearing the foliage rustle; while old—black—rubbed out and dirty canvases take the place of God's own works. I long to see you. I love to cope with you, like Jaques, in my "sullen moods," for I am not fit for the present world of art.... Lady Morley ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... The very rustle of her muslin skirts over the fallen leaves made for his ears a new and ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... very odd, very odd, indeed!" said Wee-Wun the gnome, and he rubbed his eyes very hard. But this was no dream, and no matter how hard he rubbed, he could not rub it away. Then he heard upon the floor a clatter and a rustle, and then a stepping noise—one, two; one, two—and that was the little blue shoes that were marching round and round over ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe
... trode along the foot-worn passages, and opened one crazy door after another, and ascended the creaking staircase, she gazed wistfully and fearfully around. It would have been no marvel, to her excited mind, if, behind or beside her, there had been the rustle of dead people's garments, or pale visages awaiting her on the landing-place above. Her nerves were set all ajar by the scene of passion and terror through which she had just struggled. Her colloquy with Judge Pyncheon, who so perfectly represented the person and attributes ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... was a large one and unlawful visitants might well be hidden towards its farther end. He stood still at intervals, concentrating all his powers to listen, but his ears told him nothing until at last there was a rustle somewhere ahead. Puzzled by the sound, which reminded him of something curiously out of place in the lonely wood, he instantly sank ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... space of time the movement stopped. She was standing still near a carved desk—important because a mouse had once been described sitting beneath it; and she stood so long that his eyes began to blink once more. Then there was a rustle of paper being torn, and he was alert again in a moment. Perhaps paper would be ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... sound as of a chair being pushed back, and a rustle which suggested the hasty laying aside of a manuscript, and Robin's ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... yet, stooping down to Cousin E. E.'s bunk. I heard paper rustle. Had he spared me to rob her? Why didn't she scream? Why didn't she command the creature ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... continued their melodious rustle the palm remembered how once, long, long ago, a glorious human being had visited the oasis. It was the Queen of Sheba, accompanied by the wise King Solomon. The beautiful Queen was on her way back to her ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... awakening Rehoboth. A fresh wind travelled from the gates of the sun, laden with upland sweets, and mellowing moment by moment under the directer rays of the eastern king; while the sycamores in the garden, as if in playful protest, bent before the touch of its caress, only to rise and rustle as, for the moment, they escaped the haunting and besetting breeze, lending to their protest the dreamy play of light and shade from newly-unsheathed leaves. There was a strange silence, too—a silence that made mystic music in Matt's ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... it—again without a light. Standing motionless for an instant to assure himself that she still slept, he went to the drawer in which their ready-money was kept, and removed the casket that contained it. Anne's ear distinctly caught the rustle of notes, and the chink of the gold as he handled it. Some he placed in his pocket, some he returned to its place. He stood thinking, as it were weighing a possibility. While lingering thus, he noticed the reflected image of his own face in the glass—pale and spectre-like in its ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... I threw open the door of my sitting-room and entered, but next instant stood still, for, seated in my chair patiently awaiting me was the slim, well-dressed figure of Mary Courtenay. Her widow's weeds became her well; and as she rose with a rustle of silk, a bright laugh rippled from her lips, ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... of mist whirl here and there And wind-blown tendrils tussle, When every step starts a hidden spring And the trodden moss-tufts hiss and sing 'Tis an eerie thing o'er the moor to fare When the tangled reed-beds rustle. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... notes of seraph song, The rustle of an angel's wing; Do signs like these to earth belong? Do men and angels meet ...
— Food for the Lambs; or, Helps for Young Christians • Charles Ebert Orr
... one's self. And the possibility of them, when his visitor said, or as good as said, "I'm restrained, you see, because of Mr. Rance, and also because I'm proud and refined; but if it WASN'T for Mr. Rance and for my refinement and my pride!"—the possibility of them, I say, turned to a great murmurous rustle, of a volume to fill the future; a rustle of petticoats, of scented, many-paged letters, of voices as to which, distinguish themselves as they might from each other, it mattered little in what part of the resounding ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... evening, as I sat by my fire after having eaten, I looked down on the ground and began to remember my wanderings. I lifted my head. I had heard no sound, no rustle, no footsteps—but I lifted my head. A man was coming towards me across the small clearing. I waited. He came up without a greeting and squatted down into the firelight. Then he turned his face to me. It was Matara. He stared at me fiercely with his big sunken eyes. The night was cold; ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... Strongburg about a month ago, and, knowing that I'd have to rustle up a show soon, I wrote to a theatrical agent in Chicago to let me know if he could furnish me with a good amusement company at small cost. He wrote me that he had the very thing, and offered me one of these bum 'wild west' shows, with a bunch of spavined ponies, a lot of imitation ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... in music-haunted reverie, she heard a slight rustle on the dry carpet around her feet, and the next moment saw dark in the gloom the form of a man. She was startled, but he spoke instantly; it was Vavasor. She was still, and could not answer for ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... the doctor's key in the latch, and a moment later he entered the hall, and paused, as his custom was, to read the messages which had been pencilled for him on a slate. Then came the rustle of Mary's skirt, a few low-toned words, and the sound of quick steps approaching the dining-room door. It was ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... an ancient Palace here, and room for a Court-Martial. "QUE FAIRE? ILS ONT DES CANONS!" said the old Prussian Raths, wandering about in these woods, when Gustavus and his Swedes were at the door. "QUE FAIRE?" may the new military gentlemen think to themselves, here again, while the brown leaves rustle down upon them, after a ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... is the description itself necessarily so. Pride, and contempt for our fellow-creatures, evince a low tone of moral feeling, and is the innate vulgarity of the soul; it is this which but too often makes those who rustle in silks and roll in ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... cold in the circle of mountains, A fireless hearth. The stars drift by like autumn leaves. Only the rustle— Then, close together, Our talk, For and counter, One grating against the other, Rubs a little fire And we warm each other There in the midst of the hollow ...
— Precipitations • Evelyn Scott
... head. In a quiet, pleasant voice, fingering the swagger-stick, as he spoke, in an absent manner, he requested his young friend to re-make the bed—rapidly and completely. For the space of five minutes no sound broke the silence except the rustle of sheets and blankets. At the end of that period the bed looked as good ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... brick-roofed houses with their heavy gray stone walls, While here and there, above them all, the mosque and minaret; Like the voice of some enchanter sounds the bearded muezzin's calls, And the rustle of the cypress seems a ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey
... of his morning visits to the ill appointed bank Aguirre was introduced to Zabulon's two daughters,—Sol and Estrella,—and to his wife, Thamar. On another morning Aguirre experienced a tremor of emotion upon hearing behind him the rustle of silks and noticing that the light from the entrance was obscured by the figure of a person whose identity his nerves had divined. It was Luna, who had come, with all the interest that Hebrew women feel for their domestic affairs, ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the shoulders rounded and the body hunched together as if in the act of throwing a somersault. So grotesque was the attitude that I could not for the instant realize that that moan had been the passing of his soul. Not a whisper, not a rustle, rose now from the dark figure over which we stooped. Holmes laid his hand upon him, and held it up again, with an exclamation of horror. The gleam of the match which he struck shone upon his clotted fingers and upon the ghastly pool which widened ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... time he drew her down on the steps and they sat in silence through long minutes, listening to the muted calling of the crickets in the grasses, the rustle of the river current, all the soft noises of the ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... common, prosperous road, has bloomed, you cannot tell how. It is unexpectedly liberal, fresh, and innocent. The soft garden-winds that rustle its shrubs are, ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... about an acre of ground, but they were tolerably think and full-leaved, and the buck could not be seen from any side. Wherever he was, he was evidently at a stand-still, for not a rustle could be heard among the leaves, nor were any of the tall stalks seen ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... She hoped they would all be too busy with their cooking to notice her. As she passed behind some bushes she suddenly caught the gleam of a steel helmet within a few yards of her. She crouched down under the shelter of a clump of gorse. But in doing so she made a faint rustle. ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... death-agony of the Battle. Loudon, waiting behind the Spitzberg, dashes forward now, towards the Kuhgrund and our Left Flank. At sight of which a universal feeling shivers through the Prussian heart, "Hope ended, then!"—and their solid ranks rustle everywhere; and melt into one wild deluge, ebbing from the place as fast ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... her head, looked her father full in the face. She was laughing; she was the incarnation of merriment and of consciously graceful, captivating vivacity. The miserable father was, however, fascinated; he gazed and gazed until his eyes overflowed, and his hands trembled, and the paper fell with a rustle to the floor. ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... church, and they might talk; now and then a muffled, nervous laugh escaped. A delicate scent of flowers from the masses in the chancel mixed with the light and the prevailing silence. There was a soft, continuous rustle of drapery as the ladies advanced up the thickly carpeted aisles on the arms of the young ushers and compressed themselves into place ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... into paper for the nest in the thatch, but his friend wanted to go to the house because there was a pear quite ripe there on the wall. Next came a moth, and after the moth a golden fly, and three gnats, and a mouse ran along the dry ground with a curious sniffing rustle close to Guido. A shrill cry came down out of the air, and looking up he saw two swifts [Footnote: Swifts: swallows.] turning circles, and as they passed each other they shrieked—their voices were ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... Bogle alone, to listen to the melancholy rustle of peeling wall-paper within and the steady crackling of bullets without. But when, peering through the improvised loophole, he next caught sight of his officer, Angus had emerged from the house by the ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... faint little rustle was heard up above in the corner where Jeanne had tried to persuade her cousin that the chickens were to be seen, and delighted at this evidence that any way they were to be heard, she turned ...
— The Tapestry Room - A Child's Romance • Mrs. Molesworth
... wondered for a time what could have happened, but discovering some very fine ripe blackberries soon turned to picking and tasting them again, when suddenly they heard the whistling close to them, and again still closer; and presently there was a little rustle through the bushes, and there stood the idiot before them, still whistling. They were at first a little frightened, but too much astonished to cry out; and the ragged creature (for he had just the same appearance as when they had first seen him) grinned at them ...
— The Drummer's Coat • J. W. Fortescue
... deep thought through the long avenues of glimmering beeches and under the dry rustle of the quivering poplars. Then, as the first red of dawn touched his face, he looked about him. He was clear of the trees now, and the broad open expanse of the green fields and shining water meadows that ring in Loch Grannoch widened out before him. The winds ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
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