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More "Whir" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the trigger. Cautiously he thrust it through the bars of the gate. Bending down, he took a long and deliberate aim. The fates seemed to be on his side. Rochester suddenly stiffened into attention, his gun came to his shoulder, as with a loud whir a pheasant flew out of the wood before him. The two reports rang out almost simultaneously. The pheasant dropped to the ground like a stone. Rochester's arms went up to the skies. He gave a little cry and fell over, a huddled ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... anything that folks like we can understand," the carter continued, by way of passing the time. "On'y foreign tongues used in the days of the Tower of Babel, when no two families spoke alike. They read that sort of thing as fast as a night-hawk will whir. 'Tis all learning there—nothing but learning, except religion. And that's learning too, for I never could understand it. Yes, 'tis a serious-minded place. Not but there's wenches in the streets o' nights... ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... he does not live there. His intimates know that only a few minutes after the last dinner guest has departed, his chauffeur will drive him some twenty miles to a much simpler abode on a secluded dirt road. Here, he really lives. Whistling tree toads replace the constant whir of buses ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... with all his new chivalry around him, dashed down the narrow valley—the white standard of France on one side of him, his keen-eyed little son on the other—and began to deploy the whole advance battalion, preliminary to a grand charge—whiz! whiz! whir! whir! from both sides came the arrows, as thick as hail and as terrible as javelins, from the hidden archers. The astonished Frenchmen fell back. That crowded still more those who were yet wedged in the narrow space behind. Now came the English onset. Then a panic. Then a rout. Then a ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... out of the darkness, came something that moved on a whir of caterpillar treads. Something hard and metallic slammed against Mike's shoulder, ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the day there is heard everywhere the whir of sewing machines. New dresses are feverishly cut and made; old ones ripped and remade. Hats are bought, old ones are retrimmed. Buggies are repainted and baby carriages oiled. Dick does a thriving business in lemons, picnic baskets, ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... you to come back with me. Come back home and get some of the old colour into your cheeks. The country doesn't agree with you, but we'll have you all right pretty soon. We'll have you flogging the trout pools and tramping over the heather with a gun. You remember how—whir-r-r—the black-cock used to rise up right at one's very feet. They've been very plentiful the last two years. Oh, we'll have the good old times over again! You'll see, we'll soon put ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... the wraithest of wraithly things! Tickle me, Love, in these Lonesome Ribs! 'Tis a fair Whing-Whangess, with phosphor rings, And bridal-jewels of fangs and stings; And she sits and as sadly and softly sings As the mildewed whir of her own dead wings,— Tickle me, Dear, Tickle me here, Tickle me, Love, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX (of X) • Various
... bother the life out of me. They creep in through the cracks and crannies and eat the grain. If I go over by the grain chest, the first thing I know, there's a whir, and a cloud of them darts up in front of my face. Sometimes it makes my heart come right up in my mouth. I wish there wasn't ...
— Ben Comee - A Tale of Rogers's Rangers, 1758-59 • M. J. (Michael Joseph) Canavan
... sudden plunge of the little road team. Farwell stood for a moment listening to the diminishing drum roll of hoofs, whir of spokes, and clank of axles in ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... his glass cage, he muddled his columns several times. He was far from an admirable accountant at his best; but this day he was what he termed "the limit." Totals fled him like birds, with a whir of wings. A sun-gleam hypnotized him once, for he did not know how long; and his nose, a little later, followed for several gymnastic minutes the ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... voice died away, and simultaneously the three dignitaries, who seemed to be officiating priests, from their solemn gestures, stepped backward, passing beneath the protruding arms of the idols. There sounded the deep whir of some mechanism somewhere, and the same invisible force that had Jim and his two companions in its control suddenly began to ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... quickly to one of the long windows, which she unbolted and flung open, expecting to hear the shrill whir of the burglar-alarm, which, every night, Hill switched ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... Melbain was silent for several moments. She seemed to be thinking. Louise's face was expressionless. She had made one attempt to check Wrayson, but recognizing its futility she had at once abandoned it. From below in the valley came the faint whir of the reaping machines, from the rose garden a murmur of bees. But between the two women and the man there was silence—silence which lasted so long that Monsieur Jules, who was watching from a window, ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... was choked with cabs and omnibuses. The cab drove through the Seven Dials, and there the public-houses were disgorging at every corner their poor ruins of men and women. Shouts, curses, quarreling, and laughter struck upon the ear above the whir of the wheels. Unshaven men and unwashed women, squalid children running here and there among the oyster and orange stalls, thieves, idlers, vagabonds of all conditions, not a few honest people withal, and among them the ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... wrecks Of a tree that swept the skies Long ago, On a sudden seven ducks With a splashy rustle rise, Stretching out their seven necks, One before, and two behind, And the others all arow, And as steady as the wind With a swivelling whistle go, Through the purple shadow led, Till we only hear their whir In behind a rocky spur, ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... Jack agreed, raising his voice to make himself heard above the whir of the propellers and the noise of the engine. "I wouldn't mind flying all ...
— The Boy Allies at Jutland • Robert L. Drake
... their voices preparatory to the late-afternoon concert, soon to begin. They hummed a few bars of one melody, then of another; and at last, Angela's voice leading, there burst upon the room in full chorus, to the rhythmic whir of the wheels, the melodious music and maudlin ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... The whir of "B's" was interrupted, and slowly and deliberately came an "I, I, B." Alex leaped in his chair, ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... yet above the city streets, above the noise and whir, There seems to come a fragrant breath of frankincense and myrrh. I saw a woman, bent and wan, and on her face a light The look that Mary might have worn that other Christmas night. And as the little children passed, and one lad turned and ...
— The White Christmas and other Merry Christmas Plays • Walter Ben Hare
... a little rise, I heard the whir of a motor engine and the raucous voice of a Klaxon horn. Before I realized what it meant, I was in the midst of a mass of plunging, snorting animals, shouting carters, and kicking mules. In a moment the caravan scattered wildly across the plain ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... of shoes, than to find myself dropping into the death of sleep! how much sweeter then must it not be to sink into the sleepiest of sleeps, the father-sleep, the mother-bosomed death of nothingness and unawaking rest! Then shall all this endless whir of the wheels of thought and desire be over; then welcome the night whose darkness doth not seethe, and which no morning shall ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... its low flight which ends in a nearly perpendicular slide down to within ten or twelve feet from the ground, the bird being closely followed by a second one pursuing. In reality I did not see the birds, but I heard the fast whir of their wings. ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... holding thus, reached out with his right. The hand closed about the cluster, and the twig was broken. Grayson gave a great shout then. He turned his head as though to drop them, and, that far away, I heard the sibilant whir of rattles. I saw a snake's crest within a yard of his face, and, my God! I saw Grayson loose his left hand to guard it! The snake struck at his arm, and Grayson reeled and caught back once at the ledge with his left hand. He caught once, I say, to ...
— 'Hell fer Sartain' and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... backward. I saw him leave the water, not quite the leviathan I had fancied; I saw him fly over my head and heard him flopping behind me. Getting to my feet, I turned to rush at my prize and capture him. I was checked—first by my ears, for in them rang the sharp whir of a rattle. Cold blood shot from my heart to the tips of my toes and the top of my head. I needed nothing more to hold me back, but there before my eyes was the other visitor to this pleasant sunny spot, his head rising from ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... word of command spoken in that room was the thunder of the law in the wilderness about, and men obeyed. There's a bat living there now. He tumbled about me in the dull light, filling the silence with the harsh whir of pinions. ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... day when the two girls were working over their sewing-machines, the whir of the numerous machines filling the great ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade
... sound ran round and up And down the height, most like the whir of wings Through tangled trees of forests old and dim. A moment thus—the time a crisped leaf, Held, armlength overhead, will take to fall— And then a man was sitting ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... think, indeed, that Some persons have exprest surprize that Something of extravagance there may be in Strange as it may seem Strictly speaking, it is not Such an avowal is not Such is not my theory. Such is steadfastly my opinion that Such is the truth. Such, then, is the answer whir I make to Supposing, for instance, Surely I do not misinterpret the spirit Surely it is preposterous Surely, then, Surely, this is ...
— Phrases for Public Speakers and Paragraphs for Study • Compiled by Grenville Kleiser
... thrust through the greensand soil of the lane they entered, the suave, gray columns of the beeches above, the blurred mauves and russets of the woods, the swift, awkward flight of a pheasant that crossed their way with a creaking whir of wings, the amethyst stars of a bush of Michaelmas daisies, showing over a whitewashed cottage wall, the far blue distance before them, framed in the tracery of the beech-boughs. He knew that she loved it all from the way she looked ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... with seedling shrubs; so he felt sure that this entrance was never used. The lane, he noted, swept away to the right toward Issy and not toward the Clamart road. He heard, as he stood there, the whir of a tram from far away at the left, a tram bound to or from Clamart, and the sound brought to his mind what he wished to do. He turned about and began to make his way round the rose-gardens, which were partly enclosed by ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... his own extreme weariness or for the soporific effect of the alcoholic fumes with which his comrade's breath was redolent. When six o'clock struck at the church of St. Eustache, the young detective's alarm resounded faithfully enough, with a loud and protracted whir. Shrill and sonorous as was the sound, it failed, however, to break the heavy sleep of the two detectives. They would indeed, in all probability, have continued slumbering for several hours longer, if at half-past seven a sturdy fist had not begun to rap loudly at the door. ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... trees, forming so many isles of greenery, where the bland calm air was fragrant with the sweet subtle odours breathed from magnificent cactuses, orchids, and irises. Thousands of birds, surprised among the tall grasses by the passing caravan, sprang aloft, and filled the air with the whir and ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... voices rose to a sawing like the shrill whir of wood being cut by machinery.... A derisive laugh broke into the strange sound. It was Fraulein Pfaff's laughter and was followed by her voice thinner and shriller and higher than the other. Miriam listened. What could be going on?... both voices were almost screaming... ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... Americans in the hotels; no art can give the impression of their exceeding multitude. Expresses, panting with as much impatience as the disciplined English expresses ever suffer themselves to show, await them in the stations, which are effectively parts of the great hotels, and whir away to London with them as soon as they can drive up from the steamer; but many remain to rest, to get the sea out of their heads and legs, and to prepare their spirits for adjustment to the novel conditions. These the successive trains carry into the ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... after presented by Alver with a government, he spent his whole life in arms, visiting his neighbours with wars and slaughters; nor did he, in his estate of banishment, relax his accustomed savagery a whir, but would not change ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... deliberations of the Council were disturbed by a loud and persistent rattle, like the whir of a Maxim gun, which proved, on investigation, to arise from the American lawn-mower. The vagrant was propelling it triumphantly across the lawn, and gazing down at it with the same fond pride with which a nursemaid leans ...
— The Lion and the Unicorn and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... the artificial bird was singing its best, and the emperor lay in bed listening to it, something inside the bird sounded "whizz." Then a spring cracked. "Whir-r-r-r" went all the wheels, running round, and then the music stopped. The emperor immediately sprang out of bed, and called for his physician; but what could he do? Then they sent for a watchmaker; and, after a great deal of talking and examination, the bird was put ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... lurched, washed her decks, they received whole tons of water. The difficulties were increased by a fresh breeze which began to blow, whistling among the shrowds, dashing the sails this way and that, and rending them with horrid split, and such whir as may have visited the dreams of Milton, when he imagined the winnowing of the arch-fiend's van-like wings, which encreased the uproar of wild chaos. These sounds were mingled with the roaring of the sea, the splash of the chafed billows ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... he heard a vicious, locust-like whir, whose meaning he recognized. An immense rattlesnake was in the bushes, and Fred had descended almost upon it. But for the tremendous effort of Jack he would have dropped squarely upon the velvety body, with consequences too frightful ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... Sir? why, my Reason, Sir, is this, Haly the Moore, and Rabbi Isaac, and some thousands more of learned Dutchmen, observe your dull Wall Eye and your Whir—Whirligigoustiphon, to be inseparable. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... a horse broke, or settled down to his work under the guttural snarl of his driver; at times the whole throng burst into impartial applause as a horse gained or lost a length; but the quick throb of the hoofs on the velvety earth and the whir of the flying wheels were the sounds that ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... comes 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 ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... at all. When she got tired of the game at last, she rose from almost under my hand and flew aloft with the rush and whir of a shell and lit on the highest limb of a great tree and sat down and crossed her legs and smiled down at me, and seemed gratified to see me ...
— The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... of the Arabs past our ears; 'whir-r-ir' sliced away their scimitars right and left in the air, with the regularity of so many flails at work on a barn-floor; but we did not mind them a bit, for the 'phit—phit—phit!' of the bullets from our Martini rifles pattered ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... marched up the acclivity, whiz—piff—whir! came the balls over my head; and pitter-patter, pitter-patter! they fell on the body of the elephant like drops of rain. The enemy were behind me; I knew it, and quickened my pace. I heard the gallop of their horse: they ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the swallows fly, and sail and circle o'er the deep; The light-winged night-hawks whir and cry; the silver pike and salmon leap. The rising moon, the woods aboon, looks laughing down on lake and lea; Weird o'er the waters shrills the loon; the high stars twinkle in the sea. From bank and hill ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... did not satisfy Susan and she often thought about it. To enter the mill, to stand quietly and look about, was the best kind of entertainment, for she was fascinated by the whir of the looms, by the nimble fingers of the weavers, and by the general air of efficiency. Admiringly she watched Sally Ann Hyatt, the tall capable weaver from Vermont. When the yarn on the beam was tangled or there was something wrong ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... out after the partridges—striding through the heather and across the stubble-fields, ranging over the purple moors with purple horizons all round, and in the distance a strip of turquoise, which was the sea. He could almost hear the whir ... rr of wings and the shots on some far hill-side. And he knew that, though the shooting in a wild, vast country like Rhodesia is a far finer and more sportsmanlike affair than shooting driven birds in England, he yet felt, and would ever feel, that intense British love of the ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... back to the lathe, and the pleasantly soothing whir of the wheels was heard again, while a fountain of the finest possible shavings began to spin in the air. For a few moments Dale watched him at his work. His gray hair flopped about queerly; he made rapid precise movements; and ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... never got to London. Crash and whir of battle, and when the smoke cleared, there were the gallant Highland clansmen scattered, and the sturdy English nobles, and the bonny Irish gentlemen. And a ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... flood of memories the whir of those wings brings back to my tired soul," Stuart dreamily cried; "of woods and fields and hills and valleys of the South, where men and women yet live a sane human life! I'd begun to forget there were any ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... Ben Bow by the bridle, the old horse reared, plunged violently, snapped his halter, and broke away. The boy, at the same instant, was hurled to the ground. The ringing of hoofs and whir of wheels made strange sensations in his ears. He thought what a fool he was to be knocked down by old ...
— A Lost Hero • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward and Herbert D. Ward
... falling in big moist flakes that were so thick that the world had been narrowed down to a few yards around us, we drove to some tall bushes growing on the bank of the slough. Faye was hunting, and about to make some ducks rise when he heard a great whir over his head, and although the snow was so thick he could not see just what was there, he quickly raised his gun and fired at something he saw moving up there. To his great amazement and my horror, an immense swan dropped down and went crashing through the bushes. It was quite ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... ventured on thy strident streets, Mid whir of traffic in the vibrant hour When Commerce with its clashing cymbal greets The mighty Mammon in his pomp of power.... And in the quiet dusk of eventide, As wearied toilers quit the marts of Trade, Have I been of their pageant—or ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... and jammed together, and then, during ten seconds, one could not see them for the profanity, except vaguely and dimly. Every windlass connected with every forehatch from one end of that long array of steamboats to the other, was keeping up a deafening whiz and whir, lowering freight into the hold, and the half-naked crews of perspiring negroes that worked them were roaring such songs as 'De las' sack! De las' sack!!' inspired to unimaginable exaltation by the chaos of turmoil and racket that was driving everybody else mad. By this time the hurricane ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... there in the window frame, Marcia closed her eyes. There was still the illusion of a purr about her. Probably because, as her kitten warmed in its circle, its coziness began to whir mountingly. The September afternoon was full of drone. The roofs of the city from Hattie's kitchen window, which overlooked Morningside Heights, lay flat as slaps. Tranced, indoor quiet. Presently Hattie began ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... added their sound to the shrieking of the siren and from the multiple-compartments shafts came the whir of elevators dropping with Gern forces to kill the humans trapped ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... through every fibre and leaf and twig on the few unsevered tendons that have not yet felt the keen edge of the woodman's steel. See the first leaning it cannot recover. Hear the first cracking of the central vertebra; then the mournful, moaning whir in the air; then the tremendous crash upon the green earth; the vibration of the mighty trunk on the ground, like the writhing and tremor of an ox struck by the butcher's axe; the rebound into the air of dismembered ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... remember the ceaseless booming of the thunder that shook the houseslike an earthquake, the futile popping of revolvers, the whining shells overhead, the cries and groans, the Spanish oaths, and the heavy breathing of my men about me, and always just in front of us, the breathless whir of the gatling. ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... He had not gone ten yards, however, before my gun was at my shoulder and the trigger drawn; before I heard the crack I saw him cringe; and, as the white smoke drifted off to leeward, he fell heavily, completely riddled by the shot, into the brake before me; while at the same moment, whir-r-r! up sprung a bevy of twenty quail, at least, startling me for the moment by the thick whirring of their wings, and skirring over the underwood right toward Archer. "Mark, quail!" I shouted, and, recovering instantly my nerves, fired my one remaining barrel ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... rather see the incessant stir Of insects in the windrows of the hay, And hear the locust and the grasshopper Their melancholy hurdy-gurdies play? Is this more pleasant to you than the whir Of meadow-lark, and her sweet roundelay, Or twitter of little field-fares, as you take Your nooning in the shade of ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... minute before speaking, because the words were hardly out of his mouth before Gussie was out of the cupboard. I have commented on the speed with which he had gone in. It was as nothing to the speed with which he emerged. There was a sort of whir and blur, and he was no ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... Church of the more western world seems to have gotten a new lease of aggressiveness in service, a new intensity in activities so numerous as to be a bit bewildering sometimes. The wheels whir busily and noisily. You feel them. But Him, the unseen presence that makes you reverently wrap your face up out of sight, and stand with awed heart to listen, Him we seem ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon
... are brave." He did not answer, fearing to turn the balance. As she sank into a porch chair a rustling breeze moved the lilac plumes and brought their perfume to her. From down the avenue came the whir of wheels and the hurrying click of a horse's hoofs. At length she rose, and said tremulously: "I stand with you, Bob. May God make the blow as light ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... seated, speaking in French with a strong Flemish accent. He was, he said, a mechanic, whose duty it was to care for the bells and the machinery. He had an assistant who went on duty at six o'clock. He served watches of eight hours. There came a "whir" from a fan above, and a tinkle from a small bell somewhere near at hand. He said that the half hour would strike in three minutes. Had I ever been in a bell tower when the chimes played? Yes? Then ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... are as yellow as their louis d'or. Stupid men that they are, they believe us good for nothing but to catch rats; we, the wise, the meditative, the independent, who have slept upon the prophet's sleeve, and lulled his ear with the whir of our mysterious wheel! Pass your hand over our backs full of electric sparkles—we allow you this liberty, and say to Charles Baudelaire that he must write a fine ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... a play the night before Commencement. A land of Pullman's palace-cars. And lo! they secured sections 5 and 6, 7 and 8, in the "Mayflower." Just time to kiss the baby of one friend, and to give a basket of guavas to another, and then whir for Cincinnati ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... short by the far-off whir of the trolley, sounding clearly through the still morning. Miss Lyndesay walked quickly along the curving road to the Common where she was to receive her guests. Reaching the long narrow green, where a few cows nibbled placidly as in the days when a green in the ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... for him, but the spell of English country life was weaving itself round him, now that the charm of the desert was receding into a mist of memories. The waning of pleasant autumn days in an English woodland, the whir of game birds in the clean harvested fields, the grey moist mornings in the saddle, with the magical cry of hounds coming up from some misty hollow, and then the delicious abandon of physical weariness in bathroom and bedroom ...
— When William Came • Saki
... across the park made them both hot, and it was a relief to sit down on her favourite tree-root above the stream and yield herself to the luxury of summer idleness. A robin was chirping far overhead, and from the grass at her feet there came the whir of a grasshopper. Otherwise, save for the music of the stream, all was still. An exquisite, filmy drowsiness crept over ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... thick foliage of a cedar tree on the opposite bank, a pheasant and his mate were hopping about, uttering their harsh, rude notes; then came a whir and whistle of wings and a quick passing shadow overhead as a flock of black duck sped over the tree tops to some sandy-banked, reed-margined ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... making merry in the marshy fields along the avenue. Their robust chorus mingled with the whir of the cars. Soft, dark clouds were driving lakeward. The blast furnaces of the steel works in South Chicago silently opened and belched flame, and silently closed again. A rosy vapor, as from some Tartarean breathing, hovered about the ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... I was compelled to hold that awful figure down upon the seat before me, lest it should slide to the floor. On we sped, past hedge and tree, by field and lonely wood. And ever in my ears was the whir of the wheels, the drumming of hoofs, and the crack of the whip; and ever the flitting moonbeams danced across that muffled face until it seemed that the features writhed and gibed at me, beneath ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... the fiend to break in at a funeral with a real character of the deceased, instead of that Mrs. Grundyfied view of him which the clergyman is so painfully elaborating in his prayer? Remove the pendulum of conventional routine, and the mental machinery runs on with a whir that gives a delightful excitement to sluggish temperaments, and is, perhaps, the natural relief of highly nervous organizations. The tyrant Will is dethroned, and the sceptre snatched by his frolic ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... had retired with a bounce she remained alone in the gymnasium, eyes downcast, lips quivering. Later still, sitting in precisely the same position, she heard the soft whir of the touring car outside; then the click ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... over the machine, her tongue clattering an unwearied accompaniment to the whir of the wheel, as Mrs. Donovan sewed the ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... kid was not listening. With trembling fingers she was pulling off the wrappings from a small package, and suddenly a warning whir cut short Myrtle's harangue. She lurched forward, and tried to pull Leslie's ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... stir the shallows; But when these shining wings, this depth of air, Bear me aloft above the bending shores Where men abide, and far the welkin's strength Over the multitudes conveys me, then With rushing whir and clear melodious sound My raiment sings. And like a wandering spirit I float unweariedly o'er flood and field. (Brougham's version, in ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... legs, a whole face with eyes, nose, mouth, chin, and ears, complete. He could see, for he had glanced about him as he dressed. He could speak, for he sang loudly. He could hear, for he had turned quickly at the whir of pigeon-wings behind him. His skin was smooth all over, and nowhere on it were the dark scarlet maps which the child found so interesting on the arms, face, and breast of the burned man. He did not strangle every little while, or shiver madly, and scream ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... me spin, that my heart may not be sad. Spin and sing for my brother's sake, and the spinning makes me glad. Spin, sing with humming whir, the wheel goes round and round. For my brother's sake, the charm I'll break, Prince Hero shall be found. Spin, sing, the golden thread, Gleams in the sun's bright ray, The humming wheel my grief can heal, For ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston
... in verse, Or to this presence could rehearse The sights and voices ravishing The boy knew on the hills in spring, When pacing through the oaks he heard Sharp queries of the sentry-bird, The heavy grouse's sudden whir, The ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... stubble, wrangled With rank weeds, and shocks of tangled Corn, with crests like rent plumes dangled Over Harvest's battle-piain; And the sudden whir and whistle Of the quail that, like a missile, Whizzes over thorn and thistle, And, a ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley
... Credence:—drinking sound of grass, Worm-talk, clashing jaws of moth Chumbling holes in cloth: The groan of ants who undertake Gigantic loads for honour's sake— Their sinews creak, their breath comes thin: Whir of spiders when they spin, And minute whispering, mumbling, sighs Of idle grubs and flies. This man is quickened so with grief, He wanders god-like or like thief Inside and out, below, above, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... are some of you that have heard that Voice too often to be much touched by it. There are some of you too busy to attend to it, who hear it not because of the clatter of the streets and the whir of the spindles. There are some of you that are seeking to drown it in the shouts of mirth and revelry. There are some of you to whom it comes muffled in the mists of doubt; but I beseech you all, look at the Cross, look at the Cross! and hear Him ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... winds had furled their wings. White clouds rose, dazzling, opaque, up to the blue zenith. The querulous cicada complained in the laurel. Birt heard the call of a jay from the woods. And then, as he once more urged the old mule on, the busy bark-mill kept up such a whir that he could hear nothing else. He was not aware of an approach till the new-comer was close upon him; in fact, the first he knew of Nate Griggs's proximity was the sight of him. Nate was glancing about with his usual air of questioning disparagement, and cracking a long lash ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... fence for all summer. I heard the noise of spinning in the house, and my dog scurried off after the cat as I went in the door. I saw Miss Polly Marsh and her sister, Mrs. Snow, stepping back and forward together spinning yarn at a pair of big wheels. The wheels made such a noise with their whir and creak, and my friends were talking so fast as they twisted and turned the yarn, that they did not hear my footstep, and I stood in the doorway watching them, it was such a quaint and pretty sight. They went together like a pair of horses, and kept step ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... difficulties had taught the captain just how to aim. As he pulled the lanyard, the little bronze cannon spit out fire viciously, and the long projectile, to which had been attached the end of the coiled line, sailed off on its errand of mercy. With a whir the line spun out of the box coil after coil, while the crew peered out over the breaking seas to see if the keeper's aim was true. At last the line stopped uncoiling and the life-savers knew that the shot had landed somewhere. For a time nothing happened, ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... I was aware of all my ribs, and would have sworn to a twist in the back-bone. The boats, fast astern, lay in a deep shadow, and all around I could see the circle of the sea lighted by the fire. A gigantic flame arose forward straight and clear. It flared there, with noises like the whir of wings, with rumbles as of thunder. There were cracks, detonations, and from the cone of flame the sparks flew upwards, as man is born to trouble, to leaky ships, ...
— Youth • Joseph Conrad
... tell where—the tall swale-grass on the river edge, erect now again after the April floods, or the brown broom-corn nearer the road, or from the sky above? We could hear the squirrels' mocking chatter in the tree-tops, the whir of the kingfishers along the willow-fringed water—the indefinable chorus of Nature's myriad small children, all glad that spring was come. But above these our ears took in the ceaseless clang of the drums, and the sound of hundreds of armed men's feet, tramping in unison ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... night-hawks would cut their strange curves in the evening sky. Far out beyond, sea-gulls, mere specks of white, would wheel and plunge into the bay, and at our backs the woodcock, shy enough in any other presence, would whir fantastically through the woods. All nature was the same, but I was no longer its solitary admirer, for I held in my arms a gentle framework of delight such as no other man before or since has known. She was finer than the finest ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... turning his head to see the train fly along. This deep gravity in childhood is peculiar to the East. What could that boy, standing on his lump of earth as a Stylites on his pillar, be thinking of? From time to time flocks of pigeons, busy feeding, flew off with a sudden whir as the train passed by, and alighted farther away on the plain; aquatic birds swam swiftly through the reeds that outstretched behind them, pretty wagtails hopped about, wagging their tails, on the crest of the levees; and in the heavens at a vast height, ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... clump of bushes directly in front, came a puff of white smoke wreathed with flame; the whir of the hollow ball is heard, and it ploughs the moist ground a few ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... red projection was within a foot of the Hoobat now and its fellows had frozen as if to allow it the honor of battle with the feathered enemy. To all appearances Queex did not see it, but when it sprang with a whir of speed which would baffle a human, the Hoobat was ready and its claws, halting their rasp, met around the wasp-thin waist of the pest, speedily cutting it in two. Only this time the Hoobat made no move to unjoint and consume ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... broken in body and spirit, incapable of thinking two thoughts in sequence. His brain seemed to whir, undone, in ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... is happening because you do not see yourself grow, or hear the whir of the machinery. All great things grow noiselessly. You can see a mushroom grow, but never a child. Paul said for the comforting of all slowly perfecting souls that they grew "from character to character." "The inward man," he says elsewhere, "is renewed from day to day." ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond
... distant, sullen thunder, followed by the unmistakable whir of a Parrott shell. Suddenly shrapnel shells began to come over, screaming, exploding, filling the air with the rush ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... tombs. A man will be shown standing in a reed boat which has been pushed in amongst the waving papyrus. A boomerang is in his hand, and his wife by his side helps him to locate the wild duck, so that he may penetrate within throwing-distance of the birds before they rise. Presently up they go with a whir, and the boomerang claims its victims; while all manner of smaller birds dart from amidst the reeds, and gaudy butterflies pass startled overhead. Again one sees the hunter galloping in his chariot over the hard sand of the desert, shooting his arrows at the gazelle as he goes. Or yet again with ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... was to be left in peace. But I was curious to know where the doolies had gone. I got out of bed and looked into the darkness. There was never a sign of a doolie. Just as I was getting into bed again, I heard, in the next room, the sound that no man in his senses can possibly mistake—the whir of a billiard ball down the length of the slates when the striker is stringing for break. No other sound is like it. A minute afterwards there was another whir, and I got into bed. I was not frightened—indeed I was not. I was very curious to know what had become of the ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... to the shrieking of the siren and from the multiple-compartments shafts came the whir of elevators dropping with Gern forces to kill the humans trapped inside ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... proper altitude, safe from fire from below, and with all enemy planes driven off. The growl of the big guns came less furiously to their ears, so far removed from the ground were they. The incessant whir of the Liberty motor that had come from American shops and the buzz of the propellers rendered it difficult for him to hold converse with ...
— Air Service Boys Flying for Victory - or, Bombing the Last German Stronghold • Charles Amory Beach
... get her, at all. When she got tired of the game at last, she rose from almost under my hand and flew aloft with the rush and whir of a shell and lit on the highest limb of a great tree and sat down and crossed her legs and smiled down at me, and seemed gratified ...
— The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... on this trunk waiting for the hour of departure, I have a foretaste of the joy of being away from the insidious cries of hawkers, the tormenting bells of the rag-man, the incessant howling of children, the rumbling of carts and wagons, the malicious whir of cable cars, the grum shrieks of ferry boats, and the thundering, reverberating, smoking, choking, blinding abomination of an elevated railway. A musician might extract some harmony from this chaos of noises, this jumble of sounds. ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... beat out its seconds with the same monotonous sound, and the finger crept towards the fateful hour. Then came the wheeze and whir preliminary to the strokes of four, conveying to familiar ears that only eight more minutes remained. At this warning Joseph arose from his seat, and, walking out into the graveyard, made direct to an eminence overlooking the long ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... left, strained up, and, holding thus, reached out with his right. The hand closed about the cluster, and the twig was broken. Grayson gave a great shout then. He turned his head as though to drop them, and, that far away, I heard the sibilant whir of rattles. I saw a snake's crest within a yard of his face, and, my God! I saw Grayson loose his left hand to guard it! The snake struck at his arm, and Grayson reeled and caught back once at the ledge with his left hand. He caught once, I say, to do him full justice; then, ...
— 'Hell fer Sartain' and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... will come. I will call in if I may, and chat it over with you when you come home. We have not breakfasted yet. Goodbye!" There was a whir of wheels, and the yellow cloud rolled away down the road again. By some legerdemain the Admiral found that he was clutching in his right hand one of the obnoxious bills. He crumpled it up, and threw it into ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... sound of the wild hunt, and speedily the storm is laid. Merely a wanton whir still pulses in the breeze, a wave of weird voluptuousness, like the sensuous breath of unblest love, still soughs above the spot where impious charms had shed their raptures and over which the night now broods once more. But dawn begins ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... the bluebird comes 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 ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... the whir of machinery and the pounding of hammers, and he went over and peered through one of the windows. The building proved to be a furniture factory. Most of the work was being done by machines, but there were enough tasks left over to keep the owners of the parked cars busily occupied. The main ...
— The Servant Problem • Robert F. Young
... on elevated ground, there was no annoyance from flies. There were crowds of them, but they did not attack human beings. You might sit on a bank in the fields with endless insects passing without being irritated; but everywhere out of doors you must listen for the peculiar low whir of the stoat-fly, who will fill his long grey body with your blood in a very few minutes. This is the tsetse of ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... difficulty. My cork came up in the back water under the rock on which I stood, and there, almost at my very feet, it disappeared. I could not believe that a bass had taken it, but all doubt on the subject was dispelled by the shrill whir of my reel as the fine silk line spun out at a tremendous rate. The fish had darted across the current, and only stopped after he had taken out over ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... the city every day, and at night you can see their lights moving overhead in the darkness. Sometimes they fly so low that you can hear the whir of their engines. For the moment you don't know if they're Russian ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... picturesque sequence the personages of the Masque pass before us. Merchants, hucksters, players, lovers, gossips, soldiers, vagabonds, and princes crowd the scene, and have in turn their word of poignant speech. We mingle with the throng in the streets; we hear the whir of looms and the din of foundries, the blare of trumpets, the whisper of lovers, the scandals of the market-place, and, in brief, are let into all the secrets of the busy microcosm. A contracted stage, indeed, yet large enough for the play of many passions, as the narrowest hearthstone ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... while, there in the window frame, Marcia closed her eyes. There was still the illusion of a purr about her. Probably because, as her kitten warmed in its circle, its coziness began to whir mountingly. The September afternoon was full of drone. The roofs of the city from Hattie's kitchen window, which overlooked Morningside Heights, lay flat as slaps. Tranced, indoor quiet. Presently Hattie began ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... swallowed hard while he looked away across the fields. Lenore felt herself drawn by an irresistible power. The west wind rustled through the waving wheat. She heard the whir of the threshers. Yet all seemed unreal. Her father's passion had made this place ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... cold darkness of eternity he sits, this god who has grown old. His rounded eyes are open on the whir of time, but man who made ...
— Profiles from China • Eunice Tietjens
... to be a bunch of dry leaves and grass coiled swiftly, with the rattling whir that goes straight to the fear center of the human heart. In a flash Anna's hands were full of rocks. The first article in every California mountain child's education is to destroy every rattlesnake that comes in sight. Anna dodged the first strike of the snake, and before he could get nearer ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... was fragrant with the odor of new-mown grass and the breath of wild strawberries that had fallen under the sickle, to make the sweet hay sweeter with their crimson juices. The whir of the scythes and the clatter of the mowing machine came from the distant meadows. Field mice and ground sparrows were aware that it probably was all up with their little summer residences, for haying time was at its height, and ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... not very far from Hyde Park Corner in London Town. Behind the whir and rattle of the traffic it stands, spacious and cool and very old, muffled by the little streets that guard it, happily unconscious, you would suppose, that there were any in all the world so unfortunate as to have less than five ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... the critical moment of the attack. Then, while they waited, the long white beam from a man-o'-war at sea settled along the ridge on the left and showed the strong wired entrenchments of the outpost. Whir-r-r went a shell overhead, and the first shot of the battle burst in an eruption of black ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... air can make no sound as it rushes in the swift wing-beats. The whish of a duck's wings can be heard two or three hundred yards on a still night. The wings of an eagle rustle like silk in the wind as he mounts upward. A sparrow's wings flutter or whir as he changes his flight. Every one knows the startled rush of a quail or grouse. But no ear ever heard the passing of a great owl, spreading his five-foot wings in ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... in body and spirit, incapable of thinking two thoughts in sequence. His brain seemed to whir, undone, ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... door neighbour, Madame Adversity, tirling at the door pin; so give me my down bed, Tom, and I'm off." With that she bangs open the window, and before I recover from my surprise, launches forth, with a loud whir, mattrass and all, leaving me, Pilgarlic, lying on the paillasse. Well, her nest is scarcely cold, when in comes me Mistress Adversity, a wee outspoken sour crabbit gizzened anatomy of an old woman—"You ne'erdoweel, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... of the Lafayette was a stirring affair. Promptly at three o'clock P. M. the vessel moved away from her moorings, amidst the din of the band, the waving of flags, the whir of the movie machine, the blowing of whistles and the cheers of friends ...
— A Journey Through France in War Time • Joseph G. Butler, Jr.
... furled their wings. White clouds rose, dazzling, opaque, up to the blue zenith. The querulous cicada complained in the laurel. Birt heard the call of a jay from the woods. And then, as he once more urged the old mule on, the busy bark-mill kept up such a whir that he could hear nothing else. He was not aware of an approach till the new-comer was close upon him; in fact, the first he knew of Nate Griggs's proximity was the sight of him. Nate was glancing about with his usual air of questioning ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... was a whir-ring sound in the air, and the cup was knocked from his hands. The water was all spilled ...
— Fifty Famous Stories Retold • James Baldwin
... offered to accompany her, but she declined. She hastily asked the direction of Baker's dock from the butler, and then ran out of the house and sprang to the steering-wheel of her waiting car. With a whir of the starter ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... mountains. And back to the myriad tiny things that she remembered best, the little, friendly things ... a stretch of maple-shadowed streets heavy and still with the heat of a summer noon; a flurry of pigeons in the courthouse square; yellow dandelions in a green lawn, the whir of a lawnmower and the smell of the cut grass; ivy on old bricks and the rough feel of oak bark under her hands; water lilies and watermelons and crepe papery dances and picnics by the river in the ...
— The Passenger • Kenneth Harmon
... verse, Or to this presence could rehearse The sights and voices ravishing The boy knew on the hills in spring, When pacing through the oaks he heard Sharp queries of the sentry-bird, The heavy grouse's sudden whir, The rattle ...
— A Village Stradivarius • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Donny stood holding Ben Bow by the bridle, the old horse reared, plunged violently, snapped his halter, and broke away. The boy, at the same instant, was hurled to the ground. The ringing of hoofs and whir of wheels made strange sensations in his ears. He thought what a fool he was to be knocked down ...
— A Lost Hero • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward and Herbert D. Ward
... were making merry in the marshy fields along the avenue. Their robust chorus mingled with the whir of the cars. Soft, dark clouds were driving lakeward. The blast furnaces of the steel works in South Chicago silently opened and belched flame, and silently closed again. A rosy vapor, as from some Tartarean breathing, hovered about the mouths of the furnaces. Moment ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... snow was falling in big moist flakes that were so thick that the world had been narrowed down to a few yards around us, we drove to some tall bushes growing on the bank of the slough. Faye was hunting, and about to make some ducks rise when he heard a great whir over his head, and although the snow was so thick he could not see just what was there, he quickly raised his gun and fired at something he saw moving up there. To his great amazement and my horror, an immense swan dropped down and went ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... rabbit scuttled off to cover, and often with the whir of drumming wings a grouse rose noisily and lumbered away with spread tail into the painted foliage. But all the beauty of it was a beauty of wildness and of nature's victory over man. For such beauty Ham felt no ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... knitting a flat web of ten inches with a series of five motions between the rows of stitches, while just by are the circular machines, whose motions are so rapid that the clicks of the needles merge into a whir, and a man is able to attend to six machines, making one hundred and thirty pounds ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... thrilled with his triumph and his greeting to the Folk he came to rescue, he landed with a whir upon the ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... some footprints beside a small field-piece that, dismounted and rusted, lay half buried in ashes, a sudden whir-r-r caused him to spring back as though he had received an electric shock. Only his quickness saved him from the living death held in the fangs of a rattlesnake that had evidently just crawled from the black muzzle of the gun. The snake instantly re-coiled to repeat its venomous stroke, and though ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... breeze rushes through the trees and fans the traveller's opened pores. With a sudden, startling whir, mounting with their hearts, a bird flushes from the tangled growth ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... all struggle. About neck and all four hoofs was the burning grip of the rope, so bitterly familiar, and man had once again enslaved him. Alcatraz relaxed. Presently there would come a swift volley of curses, then the whir and cut of the whip—no, for a great occasion such as this the man would choose a large and durable club and beat him across the ribs. Why not? Even as he had served Cordova this man of the flaming ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... machines marched back and forth across the floor, and the men who watched them with suicidal intensity ran after them barefooted when they made off with a broken thread, spliced it, and then escaped from them to their stations again. In other rooms, where there was a stunning whir of spindles, girls and women were at work; they looked after Lyra and her nephew from under cotton-frowsed bangs; they all seemed to know her, and returned her easy, kindly greetings with an effect of liking. From time to time, at Lyra's bidding, the young fellow explained to Annie some curious ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... than to find myself dropping into the death of sleep! how much sweeter then must it not be to sink into the sleepiest of sleeps, the father-sleep, the mother-bosomed death of nothingness and unawaking rest! Then shall all this endless whir of the wheels of thought and desire be over; then welcome the night whose darkness doth not seethe, and which no morning shall ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... does not live there. His intimates know that only a few minutes after the last dinner guest has departed, his chauffeur will drive him some twenty miles to a much simpler abode on a secluded dirt road. Here, he really lives. Whistling tree toads replace the constant whir of buses and taxicabs. ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... angel-fall from Heaven, is hope? The wing-whir discord of the legion's fall From God forever, mocks my heart's loud call. Empty of beauty from its base to cope, The Earth is hollow. Where, then, can I grope And not be met by echoes that appal? What! shouts my mind, in wonder ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... and leaf and twig on the few unsevered tendons that have not yet felt the keen edge of the woodman's steel. See the first leaning it cannot recover. Hear the first cracking of the central vertebra; then the mournful, moaning whir in the air; then the tremendous crash upon the green earth; the vibration of the mighty trunk on the ground, like the writhing and tremor of an ox struck by the butcher's axe; the rebound into the air of dismembered branches; the frightened flight of leaves and dust, and all ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... enough now. For a moment they paused, beak to beak, eye to eye, furious, with necks outstretched and hackles stiff with the rage of battle. They began to rise and fall like two feathers tossing in the air, very quietly. But for the soft whir of wings there was no sound in the room. Taffy could scarcely believe they were fighting in earnest. For a moment they seemed to touch—to touch and no more, and for a moment only—but in that moment ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... thou comest from the realms afar! Thy strong wings whir like some huge bellows' breath— Swift falls thy fiery eyeball, like a star, And dark thy shadow as the pall of death! But thou hast marked a tall and reverend tree, And now thy talons clinch yon leafless limb; Before thee stretch the sandy shore and sea, And sails, like ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... about his upper lip, seemed to indicate, in spite of his strength and color, some pulmonary weakness. He, however, rose after a moment's rest with undiminished energy and cheerfulness, readjusted his knapsack, and began to lightly pick his way across the fallen timber. A few paces on, the muffled whir of machinery became more audible, with the lazy, monotonous command of "Gee thar," from some unseen ox-driver. Presently, the slow, deliberately-swaying heads of a team of oxen emerged from the bushes, followed by the clanking chain of the "skids" of sawn planks, which they were ponderously ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... source. The soil was black and deep and the forest magnificent. Great beeches and hickories were mingled with the willows and live oaks and cypresses, and the foliage was thick, green, and beautiful. The birds seemed innumerable, and now and then flocks of wild fowl rose with a whir from the creek's edge. Keen, penetrating odors of forest and wild flower came to ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... comes before a fall! We had not gone far when—whir, whir, whir—a fearful racket! bits of broken steel springs whizzed past my ears, and the whole machine came to a dead stop. It was not to be moved either forward or backward. The vibration of the one-bladed propeller had brought ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... the two girls were working over their sewing-machines, the whir of the numerous machines filling the great warehouse, ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade
... purring of the valves, a soft panting from the exhaust, and a whir of wheels, a huge red machine flew past them in ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... dotted with pleasure craft, like a leviathan. Men were busy in the cars, fore and aft. The mooring ropes were cast off as the vessel gained an offing, and ballast being thrown out she began to rise slowly. The propellers began to whir, and the great craft swung around breasting the breeze and moved slowly up the lake. The crowd cheered. Count von Zeppelin, tense with excitement, alert for every sign of weakness watched his monster creation with ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... was so eager to have him go on that she had forgotten all about being afraid of him. "And when they whir up from the road, sir, they ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody
... shrill cries came from who could tell where—the tall swale-grass on the river edge, erect now again after the April floods, or the brown broom-corn nearer the road, or from the sky above? We could hear the squirrels' mocking chatter in the tree-tops, the whir of the kingfishers along the willow-fringed water—the indefinable chorus of Nature's myriad small children, all glad that spring was come. But above these our ears took in the ceaseless clang of the drums, and the sound of hundreds ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... the soporific effect of the alcoholic fumes with which his comrade's breath was redolent. When six o'clock struck at the church of St. Eustache, the young detective's alarm resounded faithfully enough, with a loud and protracted whir. Shrill and sonorous as was the sound, it failed, however, to break the heavy sleep of the two detectives. They would indeed, in all probability, have continued slumbering for several hours longer, if at half-past seven a sturdy fist had not begun to rap loudly at the door. With one ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... bush the exquisite song of the mocking-bird trills out, and far up the rocks the hoof-strokes of the mountain sheep strike with a rattle of stones that seems music in the crystal air. Yonder the wild turkey calls from the pine trees, or we hark to the whir of the grouse or the pine-hen. Noisy magpies startle the silence of the northern districts, and the sage-hen and the rabbit everywhere break the solitude of your walk. Turn up a stone and sometimes you see a revengeful scorpion: anon the huge tarantula comes forth to look at the camp-fire. ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... aim. As he pulled the lanyard, the little bronze cannon spit out fire viciously, and the long projectile, to which had been attached the end of the coiled line, sailed off on its errand of mercy. With a whir the line spun out of the box coil after coil, while the crew peered out over the breaking seas to see if the keeper's aim was true. At last the line stopped uncoiling and the life-savers knew that the shot had landed somewhere. For a time ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... many an English river, but so small here that it scarcely has a name; now catch hasty glimpses of a distant town, with its clean white houses and their cool piazzas, its prim New England church and school-house; when whir-r-r-r! almost before you have seen them, comes the same dark screen: the stunted trees, the stumps, the logs, the stagnant water - all so like the last that you seem to have been ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... come off, after all, when Bragdon, who had picked up some knowledge of the new machines in his earlier singlestate, tipped up the hood and dove for the carburetor. After a time he signalled to the Hawaiian to work the crank, and then with a whir, a rumble, at last a clear bellow, the monster responded, trembled, turned its snout up the narrow road, and disappeared. Milly threw a kiss to her husband, who waved his hat in answer. He had saved the day, and she ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... the marsh there arose, all of a sudden, a sound like the cry of anger, then another on the back of it, and then one horrid, long-drawn scream. The 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 whir; and long after that death-yell was still ringing in my brain, silence had re-established its empire, and only the rustle of the redescending birds and the boom of the distant surges disturbed the languor of ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... if an ocean steamer had suddenly stopped the whir of its wheels at the approach of the pilot come out from shore to ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... entirely disappeared. But fearing that sparks might yet be smouldering under the bark or in the dry wood, Charley began scraping the sides of the stump. As his hand reached the top of the stump, there was a sudden startling whir of wings and something shot upward into the dark. Charley recoiled as though shot. His heart beat a tattoo against his ribs. His first thought was of the sudden blow the rattler had given the ranger. Yet he knew it was no rattler that had suddenly sprung upward into the night. He drew forth ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... room, sat her mother and her aunt, busy with their sewing. The blinds were closed, to keep out the warm sun of a sultry July day, and only an occasional breath of air found its way in between their tightly turned slats. The whir of the locust outside, and the regular creak, creak of Aunt Jane's tall rocking-chair were the only sounds to break the stillness. This peaceful scene was ruthlessly disturbed by Polly, who came flying into the room and dropped into a ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... to a generation aspiring to Americanize the globe. The genius of our nation should cause our ploughs and harrows to prepare the valley and delta of the Nile for tillage; be responsible for the whir of more of our agricultural machinery in the fields of India; locate our lathes and planers and drilling machines in Eastern shops, in substitution for those made in England or Germany; be responsible for American locomotives drawing American cars in Manchuria and Korea over rails rolled in ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... about the events of the last few days. I felt myself slowly waking as though from a nightmare. The dazzling sunshine was everywhere around us; the whir of reaping machines, the slighter humming of bees, and the song of birds, were in our ears; the perfume of all manner of flowers, and of the new-mown hay, made the air wonderfully sweet. My guest, in a cool grey flannel suit and a Panama hat, was by my side, looking ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of England emerges; and the Monument with its bristling head of golden hair; the dray horses crossing London Bridge show grey and strawberry and iron-coloured. There is a whir of wings as the suburban trains rush into the terminus. And the light mounts over the faces of all the tall blind houses, slides through a chink and paints the lustrous bellying crimson curtains; the green wine-glasses; the coffee- cups; ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... you on the floor, And then shet up, jest like a box, so you couldn't sleep any more. Wa'al, 'Bijah he fixed it all complete, and he sot it at half-past five, But he hadn't mor'n got into it when—dear me! sakes alive! Them wheels began to whiz and whir! I heered a fearful snap! And there was that bedstead, with 'Bijah inside, shet up jest like a trap! I screamed, of course, but 'twan't no use, then I worked that hull long night A-trying to open the pesky thing. At last I got in a ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... stood beside the table, hardly moving, until she knew by whir and horn that the Norcross automobile was gone. Then she sent Ellen to bed, and herself moved quickly to a secretary in the little alcove library back of the drawing-room. Taking a key from her bosom, she unlocked a drawer and took out a packet of yellow legal ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... hurry, every now and then getting blocked and jammed together, and then, during ten seconds, one could not see them for the profanity, except vaguely and dimly. Every windlass connected with every forehatch from one end of that long array of steamboats to the other, was keeping up a deafening whiz and whir, lowering freight into the hold, and the half-naked crews of perspiring negroes that worked them were roaring such songs as 'De las' sack! De las' sack!!' inspired to unimaginable exaltation by the chaos of turmoil and racket that was ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... exceeding multitude. Expresses, panting with as much impatience as the disciplined English expresses ever suffer themselves to show, await them in the stations, which are effectively parts of the great hotels, and whir away to London with them as soon as they can drive up from the steamer; but many remain to rest, to get the sea out of their heads and legs, and to prepare their spirits for adjustment to the novel conditions. ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... of the leather straps at my heels; yet I did not turn to see what pursued me, for I was intent upon reaching my father. Suddenly like thunder an angry voice shouted curses and threats into my ear! A rough hand wrenched my shoulder and took the meat from me! I stopped struggling to run. A deafening whir filled my head. The moon and stars began to move. Now the white prairie was sky, and the stars lay under my feet. Now again they were turning. At last the starry blue rose up into place. The noise in my ears was still. ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa
... a noisy whir of sewing-machines in Madame Levaney's large dressmaking establishment. Cicely Leeds's head ached as she bent over the ruffles she was hemming. She was the youngest seamstress in the room, and wore her hair hanging in two ...
— Cicely and Other Stories • Annie Fellows Johnston
... laughter,—I want my wife, I say! Oh, you gods, demons, preta of a thousand hells!" he shrieked, springing to a sitting posture in his bed, and beating the air about him with distracted hands. "These are the memories that whir down and close about me in a cloud of stinging wasps! I cannot endure! In the name of Shaka, whom you worship, strike me dead with the staff you hold,—then will I bless you and believe!" In a transport of madness, he leaned out, clutching at the staff, clawing down the stiff ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... Albano costume, crimson and white, aims directly at him a beautiful bouquet. Not to be outdone, Caper throws her a still larger one, which she catches and keeps—never throwing him the one she aimed! He is sold! But 'whiz, whir!' right and left fly flowers and confetti; and—oh, joy unspeakable!—an Englishman's chimney-pot hat is knocked from his head by a strong bouquet; and ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... my pit, with the dull whir of my propellers alone breaking the silence of the night, I pondered the startling events of the past few hours. Above me the stars and planets gleamed in the deep purple of an almost cloudless sky. Venus had long since dropped below the horizon. But Mars was ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... all kinds of other faults began to develop in the plant. The city complained loudly of the quality of the water and the failure of the system. It was like one of these new-fangled toys, averred the street corners, that runs like a miracle while the paint is on it and then with a whiz and a whir goes all to thunder. ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... returned to her kitchen, was: "Well, it was nearer than the battle. Perhaps next time—" She shrugged her shoulders, and we all laughed, and life went on as usual. Well, I've heard the whir-r of a German bomb, even if I did not see the ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... I heard a whir like the echo of a sawmill, and saw several yards of steel spring shoot out of the inwards of the machine. I heard a sort of frantic shriek from Maud S. I saw a sudden cloud of pebbles and dust in the road, such as I should imagine would be kicked up by ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin
... beating upon boards could be heard above the noises of the street and behind all was the constant droning of a big steam saw and the whir of the heavy stones in the new grist mill. It was the beginning of that amazing diapason of industry which accompanied the building of the ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... prepared to return to the chateau. To arrange various combinations of color in vases was her peculiar joy—and her flower decorations were her special care. She was just entering the great towered gate of Heronac where resided the concierge, when she heard the whir of a motor approaching in the distance, and she hurriedly slipped inside old Berthe's parlor. She disliked dust and strangers, who, fortunately, very seldom came ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... that hearth was an American king. A simple word of command spoken in that room was the thunder of the law in the wilderness about, and men obeyed. There's a bat living there now. He tumbled about me in the dull light, filling the silence with the harsh whir of pinions. ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... deployed into thin lines, with short intervals between the men, as the shrapnel broke. From out the blur of the mingling of landscape and sky there came, simultaneously, a whir, a crash, and the quick dash of shrapnel balls over the ground, and of the brief flash which marked the shrapnel's burst there remained only a dimly-seen lingering cloud of dirty smoke and some silent, writhing ...
— The Boy Allies with the Cossacks - Or, A Wild Dash over the Carpathians • Clair W. Hayes
... wrinkles of water. Here and there a flock of quail, with their feathers ruffled in the autumn gusts, tread through the hard, dry stubble of an oatfield; or, startled by the snap of the driver's whip, they stare a moment at the coach, then whir away down the cold current of the wind. The blue jays scream from the roadside oaks, and the last of the blue and purple asters shiver along the wall. And as the sun sinks, reddening all the western clouds to the color of the frosted maples, light lines of the Aurora gush up from the northern hills, ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... for all summer. I heard the noise of spinning in the house, and my dog scurried off after the cat as I went in the door. I saw Miss Polly Marsh and her sister, Mrs. Snow, stepping back and forward together spinning yarn at a pair of big wheels. The wheels made such a noise with their whir and creak, and my friends were talking so fast as they twisted and turned the yarn, that they did not hear my footstep, and I stood in the doorway watching them, it was such a quaint and pretty sight. They went together ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... for the colonel to feel any sense of apprehension. As there was no wind, the conditions were ideal for an aerial flight, and Norman having once shaped his course, the powerful car sped on its way as if sliding downhill. In time the monotonous whir of the propellers appeared to have its effect upon Colonel Howell, and Norman caught him dozing more than once. He then explained to his passenger that his observations were no longer necessary and persuaded Colonel Howell to wrap up in his blanket ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler
... the chain again, and whir-r-r the engine, and up would come a pair of oil casks, as though the crane were some giant forceps which was plucking out the great wooden teeth of the vessel. It seemed to Tom, as he stood looking down, note-book in hand, that some of the actual malarious air of the coast had been carried home ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... little rise, I heard the whir of a motor engine and the raucous voice of a Klaxon horn. Before I realized what it meant, I was in the midst of a mass of plunging, snorting animals, shouting carters, and kicking mules. In a moment the caravan scattered wildly across the plain and the road ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... Buz-z-z-z! whir-r-r! He was back in the wheat-stack once more, listening to the dull humming of ten thousand bluebottles. From without came the sound of heavy tramping feet, whirring wheels, rough, human voices. The wheaten mass ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... the banks, or stir the shallows; But when these shining wings, this depth of air, Bear me aloft above the bending shores Where men abide, and far the welkin's strength Over the multitudes conveys me, then With rushing whir and clear melodious sound My raiment sings. And like a wandering spirit I float unweariedly o'er flood and field. (Brougham's version, in ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... Hot lie the glimmering plain And uplands parched. 'Behold, the bending grain, Fair in the springtide, now is dead; and dry The brooks. If yet the rainfall fail, we die Of famine sore. No bleating lambs I hear in fold Safe shut, nor lowing kine; nor on the wold The whir of mounting bird: Nor thrives about me Any living thing. So seemeth, end must be Of striving. Since all the land is cursed, What matter if by famine scorched, or thirst, We die?' he saith. "And thick the warlock swarm Above his head, wide-spreading dark wings warm, Fast flitted by. The waiting ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... city. I saw the glaciers part to let pass a great traffic in men and merchandise. I saw the unpeopled north grow into a land of homes, of farms, of mining-camps, where people lived and bred children. I heard the mountain passes echo to steam whistles and the whir of flying wheels. It was a wonderful vision that I saw, but my eyes were true. They called me a fool, and it took the sea and the hurricane to show them I was right." He paused, ashamed of his outburst, ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... he thrust it through the bars of the gate. Bending down, he took a long and deliberate aim. The fates seemed to be on his side. Rochester suddenly stiffened into attention, his gun came to his shoulder, as with a loud whir a pheasant flew out of the wood before him. The two reports rang out almost simultaneously. The pheasant dropped to the ground like a stone. Rochester's arms went up to the skies. He gave a little cry and fell over, a huddled heap, upon ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... battlefield, like the real bees, whir past the ear of him who walks undaunted among them, and sting him who ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... mechanism through which passed a strip of metal. Click! 'Twas cut. Whir! 'Twas a cylinder. Click! Whir! Click! A corner, an edge, an end, and b-r-r-rr! It was dropped, a metallic cartridge, to do its part in peace or war. Even more fascinating was it to see this human machine eject the product ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... seemed that, notwithstanding his usual good fortune, Capt. Barold was doomed this morning to make remarks of a nature objectionable to his revered relation. On their way they passed Mr. Burmistone's mill, which was at work in all its vigor, with a whir and buzz of machinery, and a slight odor of oil in its ...
— A Fair Barbarian • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... suddenly in the air and, turning quite around, lighted with his nose pointed, as it was before he sprang. Chad cocked the old gun and stepped forward. A low hissing whir rose a few feet to one side of the path and, very carefully, the boy climbed a fallen trunk and edged his way, very carefully, toward the sound: and there, by a dead limb and with his ugly head reared three inches above his coil of springs, was a rattlesnake. The sudden hate in the ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... the top of it and lay there on the slant of the muck to watch. But it was too dark to see anything. As for sounds, there were none. The stillness was deathlike. True, there were the usual night-sounds of the country—the whir of night-birds, the buzzing of insects, the barking of distant dogs, the mellow lowing of far-off kine —but these didn't seem to break the stillness, they only intensified it, and added a grewsome melancholy to it into ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... flew round to bring up the loads of coal. The big yawning chasm, with the swinging steel rope, running away down into the great black hole, was awesome to look at, as the rope wriggled and swayed with its sinister movements; and the roar and whir of wheels, when the tables started, bewildered them. These crashed and roared and crunched and groaned; they would squeal and shriek as if in pain, then they would moan a little, as if gathering strength to break ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... walking home with her. He felt like one who has undertaken to catch some skittish timorous thing, that, if you stand still, will come within a certain small but safe distance, but you must not move a step toward it, or, whir, away it is. He went slowly home, his heart warm and cold by turns; warm when he remembered the sweet hours he had just spent, and her sweet looks and heavenly tones, every one of which he saw and heard again; cold when he thought of the ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... disappeared. But fearing that sparks might yet be smouldering under the bark or in the dry wood, Charley began scraping the sides of the stump. As his hand reached the top of the stump, there was a sudden startling whir of wings and something shot upward into the dark. Charley recoiled as though shot. His heart beat a tattoo against his ribs. His first thought was of the sudden blow the rattler had given the ranger. Yet he knew it was no rattler that ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... quail, with their feathers ruffled in the autumn gusts, tread through the hard, dry stubble of an oatfield; or, startled by the snap of the driver's whip, they stare a moment at the coach, then whir away down the cold current of the wind. The blue jays scream from the roadside oaks, and the last of the blue and purple asters shiver along the wall. And as the sun sinks, reddening all the western clouds to the color of the frosted ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... sound to the shrieking of the siren and from the multiple-compartments shafts came the whir of elevators dropping with Gern forces to kill the humans trapped ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... sure the paths he chose were clear of other wayfarers. His nerves evidently on keen edge, he seemed to fear surprise of some unpleasant sort. Each crackling twig, as he passed through the thickets, each rustling of a frightened rabbit as it scuttled from his path, each whir of startled grouse, or sudden call of nesting king-bird, made him pause cautiously until he had quite satisfied himself that it meant nothing to be feared. He was ever carefully alert for danger of ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... train the desert was nothing. Man's work defied the heat and the sand and the sullen frown outside. Here in the Pullman smoking-car were luxury, comfort, and companionship. Behind drawn shades were the whir of electric fans, an ebon-faced porter in snowy linen, the clink of ice in long, misted glasses, the cool fragrance of crushed mint. Even the fat man in shirt-sleeves reading the Denver Times, alternately drawing upon his fat cigar and sipping the glass of ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... the flowers she had picked, and prepared to return to the chateau. To arrange various combinations of color in vases was her peculiar joy—and her flower decorations were her special care. She was just entering the great towered gate of Heronac where resided the concierge, when she heard the whir of a motor approaching in the distance, and she hurriedly slipped inside old Berthe's parlor. She disliked dust and strangers, who, fortunately, very seldom came ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... he brought his gun quickly down from his shoulder as a partridge, rising with a gentle whir from the red-topped orchard grass in front of him, skimmed lightly into the golden pathway the sun made through the mist. At the same instant a shot rang out close beside him, and the bird dropped at his feet while Archie Revercomb sauntered ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... rose to a sawing like the shrill whir of wood being cut by machinery.... A derisive laugh broke into the strange sound. It was Fraulein Pfaff's laughter and was followed by her voice thinner and shriller and higher than the other. Miriam listened. What could be going on?... both voices were almost screaming... together... ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... heard the whir of a late trolley. He glanced at his watch. It was half past one. If only a taxicab would come along. But no taxi was in sight. The girl was begging him to put on his overcoat. She had drawn it from her own shoulders and was holding it out to him insistently. But with the ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... with Harry between himself and the snake, so dared not shoot. Harry's automatic had dropped from his nerveless fingers at the first alarming whir of the vibrating rattles. Unable to make a sound or move a muscle the lad stood entirely unnerved while the great reptile prepared ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... Matrons and maidens sat in snow-white caps and in kirtles Scarlet and blue and green, with distaffs spinning the golden Flax for the gossiping looms, whose noisy shuttles within doors Mingled their sound with the whir of the wheels and the songs of the maidens. Solemnly down the street came the parish priest, and the children Paused in their play to kiss the hand he extended to bless them. Reverend walked he among them; and up rose matrons and maidens, Hailing his slow approach ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... throat as I thought of what it had been, and of all the weary years of battling for this. It had been such a hard fight, and now at last it was won. To me the whole battle with the slum had summed itself up in the struggle with this dark spot. The whir of the lawn-mower was as sweet a song in my ear as that which the skylark sang when I was a boy, in Danish fields, and which gray hairs do ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... let us fancy ourselves ready for the start. The machine is placed upon a single-rail track facing the wind, and is securely fastened with a cable. The engine is put in motion, and the propellers in the rear whir. You take your seat at the center of the machine beside the operator. He slips the cable, and you shoot forward. An assistant who has been holding the machine in balance on the rail starts forward with you, but before you have gone 50 feet the speed is too great for him, ...
— The Early History of the Airplane • Orville Wright
... the valves, a soft panting from the exhaust, and a whir of wheels, a huge red machine flew past them in ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... what you think, Bob; you are for my poor; you are brave." He did not answer, fearing to turn the balance. As she sank into a porch chair a rustling breeze moved the lilac plumes and brought their perfume to her. From down the avenue came the whir of wheels and the hurrying click of a horse's hoofs. At length she rose, and said tremulously: "I stand with you, Bob. May God make the blow as light as ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... silent, not so much as the whisper of a reed or the whir of the wing of a nightbird fell upon their ears; and at last, in ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... blanket of night, through which no sound from her could have reached the shore. There was little sound, and none agreeable save the whir of the ship's sewing machine at which Smee sat, ever industrious and obliging, the essence of the commonplace, pathetic Smee. I know not why he was so infinitely pathetic, unless it were because he was so pathetically unaware of it; but even strong men had to turn hastily ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... him, the wraithest of wraithly things! Tickle me, Love, in these Lonesome Ribs! 'Tis a fair Whing-Whangess, with phosphor rings, And bridal-jewels of fangs and stings; And she sits and as sadly and softly sings As the mildewed whir of her own dead wings,— Tickle me, Dear, Tickle me here, Tickle me, Love, in me ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX (of X) • Various
... which the railway station has usurped, with its long slate roof, wooden signal-box, and advertisements in blue and white enamel, I can recall a still pool shining between beds of the flowering rush; and to this day, as I wait for the train, the whir of a vanished water-wheel comes up the valley. Sometimes I have caught myself gazing along the curve of the narrow-gauge in full expectation to see a sagged and lichen-covered roof at the end of it. And sometimes, ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Bronson had been right. I was aware of everything. I took in every meter indication simultaneously and correlated their data in my mind, without the help of the computer. I was aware of every sound, the faint hum of the gas tubes and transformers, the whir of the gyros, the reedy buzz of hydraulic actuators, the periodic clicking of the oxygen reclaim unit. I was aware of everything that was happening in the ship, as if it ...
— Last Resort • Stephen Bartholomew
... large front room, sat her mother and her aunt, busy with their sewing. The blinds were closed, to keep out the warm sun of a sultry July day, and only an occasional breath of air found its way in between their tightly turned slats. The whir of the locust outside, and the regular creak, creak of Aunt Jane's tall rocking-chair were the only sounds to break the stillness. This peaceful scene was ruthlessly disturbed by Polly, who came flying into the room and dropped into a chair at ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... colloid, swings the heavy pithing-iron out of its rack which in liners is generally cased as a settee, and at two hundred feet releases the catch. We hear the whir of the crescent-shaped arms opening as they descend. The derelict's forehead is punched in, starred across, and rent diagonally. She falls stern first, our beam upon her; slides like a lost soul down that pitiless ladder of light, and ...
— With The Night Mail - A Story of 2000 A.D. (Together with extracts from the - comtemporary magazine in which it appeared) • Rudyard Kipling
... money-getting, despise us; and yet our eyes are as yellow as their louis d'or. Stupid men that they are, they believe us good for nothing but to catch rats; we, the wise, the meditative, the independent, who have slept upon the prophet's sleeve, and lulled his ear with the whir of our mysterious wheel! Pass your hand over our backs full of electric sparkles—we allow you this liberty, and say to Charles Baudelaire that he must write a ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... and shook his head up and down in an effort to regain his former temper, but that iron hand kept his nose down, now, and that quiet voice sounded above him—no cursing, no raking of sharp spurs to torture his tender flanks, no whir of the quirt, but a calm voice of authority and understanding. Red Pete broke into an easy canter and in this fashion they came up to Morgan in the road. Red Pete snorted and started to shy, for he recognized the clumsy, bouncing weight which had insulted his back not long ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... a whir, and a long line of men on motor cycles at the edge of the road crept up and then passed them. One checked his speed enough to run by the side of John's car, and the rider, raising his head a little, gazed intently at the young American. His cap closed over his face like ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... whir grew fainter, the gyrations stopped automatically. She wiped the blood from her face, and burst into hysterical weeping. The man, cursing horribly, rapped to find the spring that she must have pressed as she entered. It seemed to them both that there could be no spot he did not rap a thousand ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... pressed the well-known knob and watched the great discs begin to whir softly around under their glass dome. At the familiar sound her hunger for the coming comfort mounted fiercely, and she seized the long, supple, silk-wrapped cords and pressed the bulbs to either temple. A slight ...
— In the Border Country • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... every time she bucked into a sea, and the wash at her freeboard and the spray breaking on the deck outside made a great racket. Her old engines jolted and jarred and vibrated every inch of the Kut Sang, and I could hear the whir of the propeller as it lifted out of the water when her head plunged into ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... think that nothing is happening because you do not see yourself grow, or hear the whir of the machinery. All great things grow noiselessly. You can see a mushroom grow, but never a child. Paul said for the comforting of all slowly perfecting souls that they grew "from character to character." "The inward ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond
... kisses of morn again merged into the brighter prime. Near the cell the only sound had been the footstep of the warder, or the scampering of a rat, but now from afar seemed to come a faint whispering, like the murmur of the ocean. It was the voice of awakened nature; the wind and the trees; the whir of birds' wings, or the sound of other living creatures in the forest hard by. A song of life and buoyancy, it breathed just audibly its cheering intonation about the prison bars, when the captive once more stirred and gazed around him. ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... alarming episodes of the road, the hoot and whir of a passing motor-car or the loud vibrating hum of a wayside threshing-machine, were ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... taught me to recognize literary themes in the city, for he brought the same keen insight, the same tender sympathy to bear upon the crowds of the streets that he used in describing the songs of the thrush or the whir of the partridge. ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... spin, that my heart may not be sad. Spin and sing for my brother's sake, and the spinning makes me glad. Spin, sing with humming whir, the wheel goes round and round. For my brother's sake, the charm I'll break, Prince Hero shall be found. Spin, sing, the golden thread, Gleams in the sun's bright ray, The humming wheel my grief can heal, For love will ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston
... light, a gentle zephyr stirred a gray tuft of hair on the pale temple, and the big fly flew back again with a buzz past the white nose, motionless now. Round about, the ripe fruit fell heavily upon the turf, making the whir of the field-crickets cease for a moment. But yonder under the pear-tree sat Billy, looking into the evening sun with feverishly shining eyes, and still ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... gave a shout as a horse broke, or settled down to his work under the guttural snarl of his driver; at times the whole throng burst into impartial applause as a horse gained or lost a length; but the quick throb of the hoofs on the velvety earth and the whir of the flying wheels were the sounds that ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... sat still, listening to the tireless whir of the machine, and looking out at the purpling range with tear-mist eyes. At last she said: "I shall never think of my father as a bad man, he was always ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... with the gallant, and also with mamma. William Banks, detached by a nod from the procession of waiting vehicles over the dingy street, wheeled up to the entrance; halted with a whir; electrically self-started himself once more. Carlisle bowled off with J. Forsythe Avery, who was well pleased with this token of her regard, and resolved to make the most of it. But soon the time came when he was debarked from her conveyance; she ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... their exceeding multitude. Expresses, panting with as much impatience as the disciplined English expresses ever suffer themselves to show, await them in the stations, which are effectively parts of the great hotels, and whir away to London with them as soon as they can drive up from the steamer; but many remain to rest, to get the sea out of their heads and legs, and to prepare their spirits for adjustment to the novel conditions. These the successive trains carry into the heart of ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... round to bring up the loads of coal. The big yawning chasm, with the swinging steel rope, running away down into the great black hole, was awesome to look at, as the rope wriggled and swayed with its sinister movements; and the roar and whir of wheels, when the tables started, bewildered them. These crashed and roared and crunched and groaned; they would squeal and shriek as if in pain, then they would moan a little, as if gathering strength to break out in indignant protest; and finally, roar out in rebellious anger, giving ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... vehicles that were standing around the disabled truck, helping to pull it from the car-tracks. Getting into a clear road, he opened the throttle and they proceeded like the wind for about six blocks. Then, for no apparent reason, the car slowed down, and with a whining whir of machinery came to a dead stop. "I'm afraid I can't make good my promise to catch that car," said the friend in a vexed tone, after vainly trying to start the car for several minutes. "I'll have to be towed to a garage," Nyoda and Gladys jumped ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... "Tom," says she "Tom Cringle, I have got tired of you, Thomas; besides, I hear my next door neighbour, Madame Adversity, tirling at the door pin; so give me my down bed, Tom, and I'm off." With that she bangs open the window, and before I recover from my surprise, launches forth, with a loud whir, mattrass and all, leaving me, Pilgarlic, lying on the paillasse. Well, her nest is scarcely cold, when in comes me Mistress Adversity, a wee outspoken sour crabbit gizzened anatomy of an old woman—"You ne'erdoweel, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... broke up promptly at eleven o'clock, and a few minutes later the whir of the last motor bearing home the departing guests died away. There was a natural lingering to "talk things over," but by twelve the house ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson
... this turf, that formerly he pressed With agile feet, a dog is laid to rest; Him, as he sleeps, no well-known sound shall stir, The rabbit's patter, or the pheasant's whir; The keeper's "Over"—far, but well defined, That speeds the startled partridge down the wind; The whistled warning as the winged ones rise Large and more large upon our straining eyes, Till with a sweep, while every nerve is tense, The chattering covey hurtles o'er the fence; The double crack ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... travel now took more people where they could see for themselves the beauty of nature. In the new poetry we consequently find more definiteness. We can hear the whir of the partridge, the chatter of magpies, the whistle of the quail. Poets speak of a tree not only in general terms, but they note also the differences in the shade of the green of the leaves and the peculiarities ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... beeches and hickories were mingled with the willows and live oaks and cypresses, and the foliage was thick, green, and beautiful. The birds seemed innumerable, and now and then flocks of wild fowl rose with a whir from the creek's edge. Keen, penetrating odors of forest and wild ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... again, a rabbit scuttled off to cover, and often with the whir of drumming wings a grouse rose noisily and lumbered away with spread tail into the painted foliage. But all the beauty of it was a beauty of wildness and of nature's victory over man. For such beauty Ham felt no ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... never had it suggested to him by the fiend to break in at a funeral with a real character of the deceased, instead of that Mrs. Grundyfied view of him which the clergyman is so painfully elaborating in his prayer? Remove the pendulum of conventional routine, and the mental machinery runs on with a whir that gives a delightful excitement to sluggish temperaments, and is, perhaps, the natural relief of highly nervous organizations. The tyrant Will is dethroned, and the sceptre snatched by his frolic sister Whim. This state of things, if ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... sharp stony bottom for a short distance, and then halted to await the critical moment of the attack. Then, while they waited, the long white beam from a man-o'-war at sea settled along the ridge on the left and showed the strong wired entrenchments of the outpost. Whir-r-r went a shell overhead, and the first shot of the battle burst in an eruption of black smoke ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... his shoulder. His fingers sought the trigger. Cautiously he thrust it through the bars of the gate. Bending down, he took a long and deliberate aim. The fates seemed to be on his side. Rochester suddenly stiffened into attention, his gun came to his shoulder, as with a loud whir a pheasant flew out of the wood before him. The two reports rang out almost simultaneously. The pheasant dropped to the ground like a stone. Rochester's arms went up to the skies. He gave a little cry and fell over, a huddled heap, upon ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... had passed, when I heard a whir and a crash in the windows of the bath (where I had dined and was about to sleep), occasioned by the settling and again the flight of some pheasants. Abdul entered. 'Beard of the Prophet! what hast thou ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... my mind's eye I saw the dusky bird: shooting slantways upward in its low flight which ends in a nearly perpendicular slide down to within ten or twelve feet from the ground, the bird being closely followed by a second one pursuing. In reality I did not see the birds, but I heard the fast whir of their wings. ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... the stairs outside, men swore, women cried, feet shuffled hurriedly by as the tenement emptied. Occasionally, a pertinent invitation to him to remain where he was, there was a vicious rip through the panel, and the drumming whir of a bullet flying through the room. And then a curious, ominous crackling sound—and then the smell ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... who sat before that hearth was an American king. A simple word of command spoken in that room was the thunder of the law in the wilderness about, and men obeyed. There's a bat living there now. He tumbled about me in the dull light, filling the silence with the harsh whir of pinions. ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... leave the two capitals of luxurious wealth and giddy fashion and seek for the haunts of Philosophy among the quiet nooks which her few valleys and her splendid sea-coast afford, he might judge that meditation had been effectually frightened from them all, for nowhere can he escape the whir of countless spindles and the clash ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... quiet blue sky there shot like an arrow the great War-eagle. Beside the clear brown stream an old Beaver-woman was busily chopping wood. Yet she was not too busy to catch the whir of descending wings, and the Eagle reached too late the spot where she had vanished in the midst of the ...
— Wigwam Evenings - Sioux Folk Tales Retold • Charles Alexander Eastman and Elaine Goodale Eastman
... tree overhead, or seen the figure of a small boy in a fantastic tunic of goatskins, slipping down the tree-trunk near Ranulph. As the company rose from the table the troubadour moved away a little, still thrumming his refrain, and in that moment there was a whir of sudden wings and the air was dark with pigeons. As the birds alighted Lady Philippa was surrounded by the pretty creatures, and in a graceful little speech Ranulph presented to her Peirol as a Faun, the Master of the Pigeons, ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... out through the open doors the unceasing roar of the great city's life swept in drowning the soft strains of the organ—the jar and whir of wheels, the wheeze of brakes, the tremor of machinery, the rumble of cab, the clatter of hoof-beat, the cry of child and hackman, the haunting murmur of millions like the moan of the sea borne on ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... not satisfy Susan and she often thought about it. To enter the mill, to stand quietly and look about, was the best kind of entertainment, for she was fascinated by the whir of the looms, by the nimble fingers of the weavers, and by the general air of efficiency. Admiringly she watched Sally Ann Hyatt, the tall capable weaver from Vermont. When the yarn on the beam was tangled or there was something wrong ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... is not very far from Hyde Park Corner in London Town. Behind the whir and rattle of the traffic it stands, spacious and cool and very old, muffled by the little streets that guard it, happily unconscious, you would suppose, that there were any in all the world so unfortunate as to have less than five thousand a year for their support. ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... glimmering plain And uplands parched. 'Behold, the bending grain, Fair in the springtide, now is dead; and dry The brooks. If yet the rainfall fail, we die Of famine sore. No bleating lambs I hear in fold Safe shut, nor lowing kine; nor on the wold The whir of mounting bird: Nor thrives about me Any living thing. So seemeth, end must be Of striving. Since all the land is cursed, What matter if by famine scorched, or thirst, We die?' he saith. "And thick the warlock ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... until September the war dragged on. It was a dull and dreary time, and as September drew near Gordon thought of happy days in England, with the scent of autumn leaves, and the whir of a covey of birds rising from the stubble, and he longed for partridge-shooting. But they shot men, not birds, in the Crimea. "The Russians are brave," he wrote, "certainly inferior to none; their work is stupendous, their shell practice is beautiful." Gordon was ...
— The Story of General Gordon • Jeanie Lang
... added the flutter of wings; for the birds had begun to shift perches, and to exchange slaps as well as to call names—the movement setting toward the tree-tops. None of the sparrows had left the roost. The storm of chatter increased and the buzz of wings quickened into a steady whir, the noise holding its own with that of the ice-wagons pounding past. The birds were filling the top-most branches, a gathering of the clans, evidently, for the day's start. The clock in Scollay Square station pointed to five minutes ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... with the odor of new-mown grass and the breath of wild strawberries that had fallen under the sickle, to make the sweet hay sweeter with their crimson juices. The whir of the scythes and the clatter of the mowing machine came from the distant meadows. Field mice and ground sparrows were aware that it probably was all up with their little summer residences, for haying time ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... yellow, square eyes. The mud plashed under their feet as if in mocking commiseration. Hoarse exclamations of sleepy voices were heard; irritated, peevish, abusive language rent the air with malice; and, to welcome the people, deafening sounds floated about—the heavy whir of machinery, the dissatisfied snort of steam. Stern and somber, the black chimneys stretched their huge, thick sticks high ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... over some footprints beside a small field-piece that, dismounted and rusted, lay half buried in ashes, a sudden whir-r-r caused him to spring back as though he had received an electric shock. Only his quickness saved him from the living death held in the fangs of a rattlesnake that had evidently just crawled from the black muzzle of the gun. The snake instantly re-coiled to repeat its venomous ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... heard a faint whir; the ventilator machinery had started. This drew air in from outside, and pumped it up to the necessary pressure for breathing in the ship, no matter what the external pressure might be. There was a larger pump attached similarly ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... love expressed through Jesus Christ; it will mean the transforming of human society so that ignorance, greed, disease and injustice shall be overthrown; so that "the bitter cry of the children" shall no longer be drowned by the whir of the wheels of industry; so that the sisterhood of women shall be established and that through the dominance of righteousness men shall cease to invoke war and strife, and, released from crushing burdens, into life and labor shall come joy and an ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen
... came up in the back water under the rock on which I stood, and there, almost at my very feet, it disappeared. I could not believe that a bass had taken it, but all doubt on the subject was dispelled by the shrill whir of my reel as the fine silk line spun out at a tremendous rate. The fish had darted across the current, and only stopped after he had taken out over two hundred ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... nodded at the back room, and said comprehensively, "Burning Daylight's on the tear." And the men who entered remained, and kept the barkeepers busy. The gamblers took heart of life, and soon the tables were filled, the click of chips and whir of the roulette-ball rising monotonously and imperiously above the hoarse rumble of men's voices and their oaths and ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... fro he twisted, turned, raced, and checked the combination, caressing it, humouring it, wheedling it, inexorably questioning it in the dumb language his fingers spoke so deftly. And in his ear the click and whir and thump of shifting wards and tumblers murmured articulate response in the terms of ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... like the sound of the wild hunt, and speedily the storm is laid. Merely a wanton whir still pulses in the breeze, a wave of weird voluptuousness, like the sensuous breath of unblest love, still soughs above the spot where impious charms had shed their raptures and over which the night now broods once more. But dawn begins to break; already from afar is heard again ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... tiny things that she remembered best, the little, friendly things ... a stretch of maple-shadowed streets heavy and still with the heat of a summer noon; a flurry of pigeons in the courthouse square; yellow dandelions in a green lawn, the whir of a lawnmower and the smell of the cut grass; ivy on old bricks and the rough feel of oak bark under her hands; water lilies and watermelons and crepe papery dances and picnics by the river in the summer dusk; and the library ...
— The Passenger • Kenneth Harmon
... gracious trees, forming so many isles of greenery, where the bland calm air was fragrant with the sweet subtle odours breathed from magnificent cactuses, orchids, and irises. Thousands of birds, surprised among the tall grasses by the passing caravan, sprang aloft, and filled the air with the whir and winnow of ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... reverie, not even turning his head to see the train fly along. This deep gravity in childhood is peculiar to the East. What could that boy, standing on his lump of earth as a Stylites on his pillar, be thinking of? From time to time flocks of pigeons, busy feeding, flew off with a sudden whir as the train passed by, and alighted farther away on the plain; aquatic birds swam swiftly through the reeds that outstretched behind them, pretty wagtails hopped about, wagging their tails, on the crest of the levees; and in the heavens at a vast height, soared hawks, falcons, ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... These, crowned by the dark, ragged line of the fir forest, rose in a soft, dense mass against the western sky, in which showed promise of a fair pageant of sunset. A covey of partridges ran up the sandy ruts before the horses, and, rising at last with a long-drawn whir of wings, skimmed the top of the crumbling bank and dropped in the stubble-field on the right. A pause, while the keeper's wife ran out to open the white gate,—the dogs meanwhile, from their wooden kennels under the Spanish chestnuts upon the hillock ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... Bradstreet's hammers on the bridge kept John for a long while awake and staring up at the high eastern ridges, black as ink against the radiance of a climbing moon. In the intervals of hammering, the swirl of the river kept tune in his ears with the whir-r-r of a saw in the rear of the mill, slicing up the last planks for the bridge. There was a mill in the valley at home, and he had heard it a hundred times making just such music with the stream that ran down from ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... during ten seconds, one could not see them for the profanity, except vaguely and dimly. Every windlass connected with every forehatch from one end of that long array of steamboats to the other, was keeping up a deafening whiz and whir, lowering freight into the hold, and the half-naked crews of perspiring negroes that worked them were roaring such songs as 'De las' sack! De las' sack!!' inspired to unimaginable exaltation by the chaos of turmoil and racket that was driving everybody else mad. By ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... How much character there is in it! How much thrift and independence! Of course his plumage is firm, his color decided, his wit quick. He understands you at once and tells you so; so does the hawk by his scornful, defiant whir-r-r-r-r. Hardy, happy outlaws, the crows, how I love them! Alert, social, republican, always able to look out for himself, not afraid of the cold and the snow, fishing when flesh is scarce, and stealing when other resources fail, the crow is a character ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... the girl. The little man took the necklace, seated himself in front of the wheel, and "whir, whir, whir," three turns, and the reel was full; then he put another on, and "whir, whir, whir," three times round, and the second was full, too. And so it went on until the morning, when all the straw was spun, and all the reels were full of gold. By daybreak the King was already ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... grasshopper of abnormal size went up with a whir. Big he was, in comparison with his kind, as the monster steer in the side-show, the Cardiff giant, ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... a brain since I had no heart. Still, at first I let myself go, and it was delightful—the opera, the dances, and the covered skating-rink with the music and the black ice flashing beneath the lights. The whir of the toboggans down the great slide was finer still, and the torchlight meets of the snowshoe clubs on the mountain. Yes, I think I was really young ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... to know where the doolies had gone. I got out of bed and looked into the darkness. There was never a sign of a doolie. Just as I was getting into bed again, I heard, in the next room, the sound that no man in his senses can possibly mistake—the whir of a billiard ball down the length of the slates when the striker is stringing for break. No other sound is like it. A minute afterward there was another whir, and I got into bed. I was not frightened—indeed I was not. ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... returned, trying instantly, with a whir of his inventive machinery, to phrase her. He made a sort of luxurious failure of it, and rested content with her face, which showed itself now in profile and now fronted him in full, and now was restless and now subsided in a look of delicate ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... for a single day will she pause. He arrives one night and perceives that she is a woman and that he must treat her as a woman. He had not bargained for this. Peace, ease, relaxation in a home vibrating to the whir of such astounding phenomena? Impossible dream! These phenomena were originally meant by him to be the ornamentation of his career, but they are threatening to be the sole reason of his career. If his wife lives ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... which the girl had hurled at me stunned me as effectually as an actual missile from her hand would have done. What did she mean? And then, before my dazed brain could work itself back through the mazes of memory, there came the whir of a taxi in the street, an imperative ring of the bell, a tramp of masculine footsteps in the hall, and then—my husband's arms were around me, his lips murmuring disjointed, incoherent sentences ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... call seemed re-echoed, so exactly, so cheerily, that for the moment I thought that the note was the mimicry of the shy mocking lyre bird, which mimics so merrily all that it hears in its coverts, from the whir of the locust to the howl ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... let them name themselves and their qualifications like ancient champions, and then proceed to lay about with a will. Sometimes the maiden literature, queen of the tournament, will be slain instead of the Knight of Error, and often the spectators will be scratched by the whir of a sword. Nevertheless, the fight is in the open, we know the adversaries, and the final judgment, whether to salute a victor or condemn ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... time the regular toil of cultivation is maintained. Back and forth between the young plants mules are drawing cultivators, and following these come a score or two women with light, sharp hoes. From the great crate manufactory is heard the whir of machinery and the click of hammers; at intervals the smithy sends forth its metallic voice, while from one centre of toil and interest to another the proprietor whisks in his open buggy at a speed that ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... had truly deemed that the woman should have been earlier at home cooking the supper. Dusk had deepened to darkness long before the meal smoked upon the board. The spinning-wheel had begun to whir for her evening stint when other hill-folks had betaken themselves to bed. Basil puffed his pipe before the fire; the flicker and flare pervaded every nook of the bright little house. Strings of red-pepper-pods ...
— The Christmas Miracle - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... his thoughts become thin and damp as the vapor about him. He shrugged his shoulders. He listened thankfully to the steady purr of the engine and the whir of the propeller. He would get across! He ascended, hoping for a glimpse of the shore. The fog-smothered horizon stretched farther and farther ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... a terrific whir the propeller flashes round. The sound increases, and then decreases slightly, and increases again. The gadfly moves. Moves more rapidly. Skims along the ground. Rises, rises, rises. Ah, the beautiful river! Every time I have flown ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... other lawyers in the building. I was wondering the other day if I could do anything at it myself, and thus pick up an additional dollar or two in the week. Of course, you would accomplish more than I could, and it would be a hundred times better than stitch! stitch! How I hate the whir of the thing!" And Bernard, with his juggler gift of mimicry, proceeded forthwith to turn himself into a sewing-machine, jerking his feet up and down in imitation of the motion of the treadle, and making an odd noise in ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... the boy produced a small pasteboard box which he opened guardedly, mindful of the numberless bright little eyes that were watching every move. All about him now sounded the whir and flutter of wings, the cooing of doves, the saucy twitter of the sparrows. Sir Lancelot, alert and eager, occupied one arm of the wheel chair. Another bushy-tailed little fellow, less venturesome, sat back on his haunches five feet away. ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... came the distant, sullen thunder, followed by the unmistakable whir of a Parrott shell. Suddenly shrapnel shells began to come over, screaming, exploding, filling the air with the rush ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... the lowest floor and the press rooms were a whir of noise and clatter. As the three entered, the hum of the machinery ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... that folks like we can understand," the carter continued, by way of passing the time. "On'y foreign tongues used in the days of the Tower of Babel, when no two families spoke alike. They read that sort of thing as fast as a night-hawk will whir. 'Tis all learning there—nothing but learning, except religion. And that's learning too, for I never could understand it. Yes, 'tis a serious-minded place. Not but there's wenches in the streets o' nights... You know, I suppose, that they raise pa'sons there like radishes ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... Penelope's lessons, and the "exercises" were supplemented by occasional "pieces"—simple, yet boasting a name. But when Penelope played "Down by the Mill," one heard only the notes—accurate, rhythmic, an excellent imitation; when Hester played it, one might catch the whir of the wheel, the swish of the foaming brook, and almost the spicy smell of the sawdust, so vividly was the ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... answered the girl, "I have to spin straw into gold, and haven't a notion how it's done." "What will you give me if I spin it for you?" asked the manikin. "My necklace," replied the girl. The little man took the necklace, sat himself down at the wheel, and whir, whir, whir, the wheel went round three times, and the bobbin was full. Then he put on another, and whir, whir, whir, the wheel went round three times, and the second too was full; and so it went on till the morning, when all the straw was spun away, and all the bobbins were full ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... her brother. "It's a chap I met last night; he's just out of a convalescent home, and a bit down on his luck." His voice died away in a complicated jumble of whir and buzz, the bell rang frantically, and Norah, like thousands of other people, murmured her opinion of the telephone ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... just entered it. Her captain was sitting on deck with his right hand grasping the wheel, his body leaning forward, rigid as bronze, while his roving eye scanned water and sky, reefs, banks and keys. A roll of the wheel, and the launch darted toward him. When within a hundred yards the whir of the big engine and the chugging of the two-cycle motor of the yawl stopped, and as the boats were passing each other, Mr. Barstow hailed the skipper ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... that they should settle on the precise patch of water that was fully commanded by both sportsmen, and some three seconds later both guns spoke practically at the same instant, and up went the teal again with a great whir of wings and loud cries of consternation, leaving behind them a round dozen or more of dead and wounded floating upon the rippled ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... thirst, saw a goblet of water painted on a signboard. Not supposing it to be only a picture, she flew towards it with a loud whir and unwittingly dashed against the signboard, jarring herself terribly. Having broken her wings by the blow, she fell to the ground, and was caught ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... with his triumph and his greeting to the Folk he came to rescue, he landed with a whir upon ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... more significant to him—the tangle of tenacious roots that thrust through the greensand soil of the lane they entered, the suave, gray columns of the beeches above, the blurred mauves and russets of the woods, the swift, awkward flight of a pheasant that crossed their way with a creaking whir of wings, the amethyst stars of a bush of Michaelmas daisies, showing over a whitewashed cottage wall, the far blue distance before them, framed in the tracery of the beech-boughs. He knew that she loved it all from the way she looked ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... at the little station and hunted our way up, making great sweeps and jogs, as hunters must, to take in certain spots we thought promising—certain ravines and swamp edges where we are always sure of hearing the thunderous whir of partridge wings, or the soft, shrill whistle of woodcock. At noon we broiled chops and rested in the lee of the wood edge, where, even in the late fall, one can usually find spots that are warm and still. It was dusk by the time we came over the crest of the farm ledges ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... helmets, broad round shields, quilted corselets, and long, heavy, two-edged swords. They range themselves on either side of the roadway, and stand like statues, waiting for the appearance of Pharaoh. There is a whir of chariot-wheels, and the royal chariot sweeps through the gateway, and sets off at a good round pace towards the temple. The spearmen in front start at the double, and the guardsmen, in spite of their heavy equipment, keep pace with their ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Ancient Egypt • James Baikie
... awoke at the sound of high words. His jealous affection perceived at once that Malcolm was being insulted. He sprang to his feet, stepped swiftly to the wall, caught down his broadsword, and rushed to the door, making the huge weapon quiver and whir about his head as if it had been a ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... trills out, and far up the rocks the hoof-strokes of the mountain sheep strike with a rattle of stones that seems music in the crystal air. Yonder the wild turkey calls from the pine trees, or we hark to the whir of the grouse or the pine-hen. Noisy magpies startle the silence of the northern districts, and the sage-hen and the rabbit everywhere break the solitude of your walk. Turn up a stone and sometimes you see a revengeful scorpion: anon the huge tarantula comes ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... she was a changeling; others that she had found the four-leaved clover or the fairy ointment, and rubbed her eyes with it. But it was her own secret; for whenever the people tried to follow her to the "Gardens," whir! whir! whir! buzzed in their ears, as if a flight of bees were passing, and every limb would feel as if stuck full of pins and pinched with tweezers, and they were rolled over and over, their tongues tied as if with cords, and at last, as soon as they could manage, they ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the cat as I went in the door. I saw Miss Polly Marsh and her sister, Mrs. Snow, stepping back and forward together spinning yarn at a pair of big wheels. The wheels made such a noise with their whir and creak, and my friends were talking so fast as they twisted and turned the yarn, that they did not hear my footstep, and I stood in the doorway watching them, it was such a quaint and pretty sight. They went together like a pair of horses, ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... Clamour rings in his sad ear; And noise so slight it would surpass Credence:—drinking sound of grass, Worm-talk, clashing jaws of moth Chumbling holes in cloth: The groan of ants who undertake Gigantic loads for honour's sake— Their sinews creak, their breath comes thin: Whir of spiders when they spin, And minute whispering, mumbling, sighs Of idle grubs and flies. This man is quickened so with grief, He wanders god-like or like thief Inside and out, below, above, Without relief ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... and offered to accompany her, but she declined. She hastily asked the direction of Baker's dock from the butler, and then ran out of the house and sprang to the steering-wheel of her waiting car. With a whir of the ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... had disappeared beneath the ocean, a strange noise boomed forth from the central shrine of Boupari. Those who heard it clapped their hands to their ears and ran hastily forward. It was a noise like distant rumbling thunder, or the whir of some great English mill or factory; and at its sound every woman on the island threw herself on the ground prostrate, with her face in the dust, and waited there reverently till the audible voice of the god had once more subsided. For no woman knew how that sound ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... one of all can put in verse, Or to this presence could rehearse The sights and voices ravishing The boy knew on the hills in spring, When pacing through the oaks he heard Sharp queries of the sentry-bird, The heavy grouse's sudden whir, The rattle of ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the Raven flying out of the oak-tree into the west. This, too, was what the old witchwife had foretold. "Whir-r-r" went the two black wings, and then it seemed as if the Raven melted into the night. Now, this was strange enough, but what followed was ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... nowadays do not throw fire-balls, or know about them. They were made of cotton rags wound tight and sewed, and then soaked in turpentine. When a ball was lighted a boy caught it quickly up, and threw it, and it made a splendid streaming blaze through the air, and a thrilling whir as it flew. A boy had to be very nimble not to get burned, and a great many boys dropped the ball for every boy that threw it. I am not ready to say why these fire-balls did not set the Boy's Town on fire, and burn it down, ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... the blood curdled in my veins! A shrill cry, piercing, prolonged, and melancholy, echoed through the hollow arches of my tomb. A cold perspiration broke out all over my body—my heart beat so loudly that I could hear it thumping against my ribs. Again—again—that weird shriek, followed by a whir and flap of ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... in the room, so that the whir of the great stones in the mill came to us insistently. I stood there, they all watching me, and spoke into ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... jist take him in me lap an' say whir he's hurted for meself," said Mrs. O'Malligan briskly and forthwith laid her energetic hand upon the little fellow. At her well meant but rough handling, the child cried out, ...
— The Angel of the Tenement • George Madden Martin
... fool! I'm not a ghost!" shouted Gay, but the only response came in an hysterical babble of moans from the negro quarters somewhere in the rear and in the soft whir in his face of a leatherwing bat as it wheeled low in the twilight. There was no smoke in the chimneys, and the square old house, with its hooded roof and its vacant windows, assumed a sinister and inhospitable look against the background ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... call it abnormal," I began, and I was sensible of my wife's thoughts leaving her own injuries for my point of view so swiftly that I could almost hear them whir. ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... immortal lover who has seen clearly the way of chivalry—the task which was to be, as the Hindus say, the fruit of his birth.... Thus he would go down, face glowing with new and luminous resolves.... And once dawn was breaking as he descended, and the whir of wings aroused him. Looking upward he saw (as did Another of visions), in the red beauty of morning—a flock of swans ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... got to London. Crash and whir of battle, and when the smoke cleared, there were the gallant Highland clansmen scattered, and the sturdy English nobles, and the bonny Irish gentlemen. And a king on ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... were open, and with every sea, which as she lurched, washed her decks, they received whole tons of water. The difficulties were increased by a fresh breeze which began to blow, whistling among the shrowds, dashing the sails this way and that, and rending them with horrid split, and such whir as may have visited the dreams of Milton, when he imagined the winnowing of the arch-fiend's van-like wings, which encreased the uproar of wild chaos. These sounds were mingled with the roaring of the sea, the splash of the chafed ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... could find words to reply she gathered up her cloak and ran. Before I could determine whether or not to follow her (for her words had aroused anew all my worst suspicions) she had disappeared! I heard the whir of a restarted motor at no great distance, and, in the instant that Nayland Smith came running down the steps, I knew that I had nodded ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... we took, alternately running and walking. The Belgian trenches were perhaps a half mile beyond us, and we could make out the tap-tap of the rifle fire which had been only a continuous cracking a mile in the rear. Into this the machine guns cut with a whir. Spent bullets dropped here and there in the inundated field to the west of us, but the German shell fire must have ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... of the apparatus, I began taking scenes of actual life and conditions in the trenches—that mysterious land about which millions have read but have never had the opportunity of seeing. No mere verbal description would suffice to describe them. Every minute the murderous crack of rifles and the whir of machine-guns rang out. Death hovered all round. In front the German rifles, above the bursting shrapnel, each shell scattering its four hundred odd leaden bullets far and wide, killing or wounding any unfortunate man who happened to ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... its whir, and the clerk weighed the cotton. Religion watched him sharply, and counted the checks ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... it. Worth the drive! a drive any where in these hills 'pays'—to borrow the slang of this bank-note world—for itself. It is a pure enjoyment. On our return we repeatedly saw young partridges in our path, nearly as tame as the chickens of the Casse-cour. The whir-r-ing of their wings struck a spark even from our sportsman's eye, and—a far easier achievement—started the blood in my father's veins. The instinct to kill game is, I believe, universal with man, else how should it still live in my father, who, though he blusters ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... as she returned to her kitchen, was: "Well, it was nearer than the battle. Perhaps next time—" She shrugged her shoulders, and we all laughed, and life went on as usual. Well, I've heard the whir-r of a German bomb, even if I did not see the ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... is the savage splendor of the swamp, With pomp of scarlet and of purple bloom, Where blow warm, furtive breezes faint and damp, Strange insects whir, and stalking bitterns boom— Where from stale waters dead Oft ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... a chance to spring when I have grown even more helpless from futile struggle. There is a whir of wing, a dart of rainbow light, a hole torn in the net. The spider is tossed from his footing and falls wounded to earth. There is another welcome whir of wings and I, torn loose, half flutter, half fly to a nearby limb. Sir Knight has ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... ended, and the road went overboard in a long, steep cascade. She pushed out the clutch and coasted. The whir of the engine ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... out to fine hair points, through which the air can make no sound as it rushes in the swift wing-beats. The whish of a duck's wings can be heard two or three hundred yards on a still night. The wings of an eagle rustle like silk in the wind as he mounts upward. A sparrow's wings flutter or whir as he changes his flight. Every one knows the startled rush of a quail or grouse. But no ear ever heard the passing of a great owl, spreading his five-foot wings ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... eyrie on a lofty rock, seized upon a lamb, and carried him aloft in his talons. A jackdaw, who witnessed the capture of the lamb, was stirred with envy, and determined to emulate the strength and flight of the eagle. He flew around with a great whir of his wings, and settled upon a large ram, with the intention of carrying him off; but his claws becoming entangled in his fleece he was not able to release himself, although he fluttered with his feathers as much as he could. The shepherd, seeing what had ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... boats. Suddenly an explosion came from the water's surface near the boat and the man standing next to him fell with his face smashed by a bomb fragment. Hoover seized him and dragged him around the deck-house to the other side of the boat. Another bomb burst on that side. He then heard the whir of an airplane and looking up saw several English bombing planes. Their intention was excellent, but their aim uncertain. The anti-aircraft guns of the German destroyers soon drove them away, and the convoy came into Zeebrugge harbor ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... there hain't a stir. Less it's a night-hawk's sudden whir, Or cottonwoods a-whisperin while The red moon smiles a lovin' smile. An' there I set an' hold her hand So glad I jes can't understand The reason of it all, or see Why all the world looks good to me; Or why I sees in it heap more Of ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... stood holding Ben Bow by the bridle, the old horse reared, plunged violently, snapped his halter, and broke away. The boy, at the same instant, was hurled to the ground. The ringing of hoofs and whir of wheels made strange sensations in his ears. He thought what a fool he was to be knocked down ...
— A Lost Hero • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward and Herbert D. Ward
... deliciously green and cool and alive with the piping of robins. Over the lake which glimmered faintly through the trees ahead came the whir and hum of a giant bird which skimmed the lake with snowy wing and came to rest like a truant gull. Of the habits of this extraordinary bird Rex, barking, frankly disapproved, but finding his mistress's attention ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... motor and the Snowbird began to quiver throughout her frame. He touched the lever by which the propellers were started. With a whir and a bound the flying machine left ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... spherical in shape, but he wasn't sure. The first fact that had hit him was that the objects were traveling too fast to be conventional aircraft. He jammed on the brakes, stopped his car, and shut off the engine. No sound. All he could hear was the quiet whir of a generator in the research lab. In a few seconds the ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... been cut and steeped and roasted, it was put on a spinning wheel. "Whir-r-r, whir-rr-r," went the spinning wheel; it went so fast that the ...
— The Child's World - Third Reader • Hetty Browne, Sarah Withers, W.K. Tate
... its seconds with the same monotonous sound, and the finger crept towards the fateful hour. Then came the wheeze and whir preliminary to the strokes of four, conveying to familiar ears that only eight more minutes remained. At this warning Joseph arose from his seat, and, walking out into the graveyard, made direct to an eminence overlooking the ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... Archie's mind as a rule worked in rather a languid and restful sort of way, but now it got going with a rush and a whir. He glared round the room. He had never seen a room so devoid of satisfactory cover. And then there came to him a scheme, a ruse. It offered a chance of escape. It was, indeed, a ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... grew dark to Carey, and seemed to whir around him; the other men saw his face grow deadly white and his lips close firmly. He did not seem to notice them, but he pulled his hat over his eyes and ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... fretting of the aide-de-camp's horse outside the cottage could be heard. Then, like the grating of a coffee mill in a distant kitchen when one is just waking out of a sound sleep, they heard the faint, smothered whir of machinery, a sharper metallic ring of steel against steel followed by a gigantic detonation which shook the ground upon which the cottage stood and overthrew every glass upon the table. With a roar like the fall ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... preceding the day there is heard everywhere the whir of sewing machines. New dresses are feverishly cut and made; old ones ripped and remade. Hats are bought, old ones are retrimmed. Buggies are repainted and baby carriages oiled. Dick does a thriving business ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... the floor, he bursts into music and song, something about his being a chickety chickety chick chick, and will Tweeny please to tell him whose chickety chick is she. Retribution follows sharp. We hear a whir, as if from insufficiently oiled machinery, and over the passage door appears a placard showing the one word 'Silence.' His lordship stops, and steals ...
— The Admirable Crichton • J. M. Barrie
... and the Monument with its bristling head of golden hair; the dray horses crossing London Bridge show grey and strawberry and iron-coloured. There is a whir of wings as the suburban trains rush into the terminus. And the light mounts over the faces of all the tall blind houses, slides through a chink and paints the lustrous bellying crimson curtains; the green wine-glasses; the coffee- cups; ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... shoulders, when (after giving just a preparatory balance or two) they fly up to the counter and perch there for a minute, hop down again, and affectionately kiss the other young ladies, and say, "Good-by, dears! We shall meet again la haut." And then with a whir of their deliciously scented wings, away they fly for good, whisking over the trees of Brobdingnag Square, and up into the sky, as the ...
— A Little Dinner at Timmins's • William Makepeace Thackeray
... lip, seemed to indicate, in spite of his strength and color, some pulmonary weakness. He, however, rose after a moment's rest with undiminished energy and cheerfulness, readjusted his knapsack, and began to lightly pick his way across the fallen timber. A few paces on, the muffled whir of machinery became more audible, with the lazy, monotonous command of "Gee thar," from some unseen ox-driver. Presently, the slow, deliberately-swaying heads of a team of oxen emerged from the bushes, followed by the clanking chain of the "skids" of sawn planks, which they were ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... room, and said comprehensively, "Burning Daylight's on the tear." And the men who entered remained, and kept the barkeepers busy. The gamblers took heart of life, and soon the tables were filled, the click of chips and whir of the roulette-ball rising monotonously and imperiously above the hoarse rumble of men's voices and their oaths and ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... breaking our rear in this way, for our men fell into confusion, the horses and mules plunging and trying to break away. There were now men leaning on their elbows, blood dripping from their mouths. There were cries, sounding far away, inconsequent to us still standing. The whir of many arrows came, and we could hear them chuck into the woodwork of the wagons, into the leather of saddle and harness, and now and again into something that gave out ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... the meaning he so plainly implied, but she was perfectly content with the explanation, and sat there dreamily, expecting to hear the reassuring whir of the motor at any moment. But the minutes dragged themselves out, and the only sound that came from the engine was the tapping of the tools Bates was ...
— A Campfire Girl's Happiness • Jane L. Stewart
... the window frame, Marcia closed her eyes. There was still the illusion of a purr about her. Probably because, as her kitten warmed in its circle, its coziness began to whir mountingly. The September afternoon was full of drone. The roofs of the city from Hattie's kitchen window, which overlooked Morningside Heights, lay flat as slaps. Tranced, indoor quiet. Presently Hattie began to tiptoe. The seventy-two jars were ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... the blanket of night, through which no sound from her could have reached the shore. There was little sound, and none agreeable save the whir of the ship's sewing machine at which Smee sat, ever industrious and obliging, the essence of the commonplace, pathetic Smee. I know not why he was so infinitely pathetic, unless it were because he was so pathetically unaware of it; but even strong men had to turn hastily from looking at him, ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... throw fire-balls, or know about them. They were made of cotton rags wound tight and sewed, and then soaked in turpentine. When a ball was lighted a boy caught it quickly up, and threw it, and it made a splendid streaming blaze through the air, and a thrilling whir as it flew. A boy had to be very nimble not to get burned, and a great many boys dropped the ball for every boy that threw it. I am not ready to say why these fire-balls did not set the Boy's Town on ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... weak Clamour rings in his sad ear; And noise so slight it would surpass Credence:—drinking sound of grass, Worm-talk, clashing jaws of moth Chumbling holes in cloth: The groan of ants who undertake Gigantic loads for honour's sake— Their sinews creak, their breath comes thin: Whir of spiders when they spin, And minute whispering, mumbling, sighs Of idle grubs and flies. This man is quickened so with grief, He wanders god-like or like thief Inside and out, below, above, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... magnificent. Great beeches and hickories were mingled with the willows and live oaks and cypresses, and the foliage was thick, green, and beautiful. The birds seemed innumerable, and now and then flocks of wild fowl rose with a whir from the creek's edge. Keen, penetrating odors of forest and wild flower came to ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the chariot sprang to earth That glorious man: he swung the long spear up. But in his brawny hand his foe hath seized A monstrous stone: full at the golden shield Of Neoptolemus he sped its flight; But, no whir staggered by its whirlwind rush, He like a giant mountain-foreland stood Which all the banded fury of river-floods Can stir not, rooted in the eternal hills; So stood unshaken still Achilles' son. Yet not for this Eurypylus' dauntless might ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... not good—that is enough; I pry no farther—that is not the way. Here, O my potter, is thy making stuff! Set thy wheel going; let it whir and play. The chips in me, the stones, the straws, the sand, Cast them out with fine separating hand, And make a vessel of ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald
... over the city every day, and at night you can see their lights moving overhead in the darkness. Sometimes they fly so low that you can hear the whir of their engines. For the moment you don't know if they're ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... useful things of more account than pleasant ones? Hmm; most young ladies who have visited us have seemed afraid rather than pleased. The whir of the machinery ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... overgrown with turf and moss, and even with seedling shrubs; so he felt sure that this entrance was never used. The lane, he noted, swept away to the right toward Issy and not toward the Clamart road. He heard, as he stood there, the whir of a tram from far away at the left, a tram bound to or from Clamart, and the sound brought to his mind what he wished to do. He turned about and began to make his way round the rose-gardens, which ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... obstacles to our awkward and incumbered pedestrianism. The woods were largely pine, though yellow birch, beech and maple were common. The satisfaction of having a gun, should any game show itself, was the chief compensation to those of us who were thus burdened. A partridge would occasionally whir up before us, or a red squirrel snicker and hasten to his den; else the woods appeared quite tenantless. The most noted object was a mammoth pine, apparently the last of a great race, which presided over a cluster of yellow birches, on ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... ever-increasing confusion and whir, and nothingness, till some time or other there was a fresh coming of the dawn, in the midst of which he felt something that seemed wonderfully cool and moist laid upon his head, and a voice that seemed to come from miles ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... by enterprise and industry. The fertile prairies of the far West not only supply the inhabitants of the Eastern States with food, but they export large quantities of meat and of grain. The workshops and factories resound with the whir of wheels and the hum of well-paid labor, which, in turn, furnishes a market for agricultural and horticultural products. There has been of late a fomentation of ill-feeling and jealously between classes dependent upon each other, and both equally ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... ejaculation.) "Come in! come in!" And in a second more a vision, it seemed to the dazed Donald,—but it was not a vision at all, only a buxom young girl in a blue homespun gown,—had seized him with one hand and Katie with the other, and drawn them both into the room, into the general whir and melee of wheels, merry faces, and still ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... to hide it, her fingers thrust the card back inside its envelope. And she was tucking it away in its warm hiding place within the scant fullness of the white blouse when the clock on the wall behind her began to beat out the hour with a noisy whir of loosened cogs. ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... here, where an old man is patiently knitting a flat web of ten inches with a series of five motions between the rows of stitches, while just by are the circular machines, whose motions are so rapid that the clicks of the needles merge into a whir, and a man is able to attend to six machines, making one hundred and thirty pounds of knitted goods ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... at a funeral with a real character of the deceased, instead of that Mrs. Grundyfied view of him which the clergyman is so painfully elaborating in his prayer? Remove the pendulum of conventional routine, and the mental machinery runs on with a whir that gives a delightful excitement to sluggish temperaments, and is, perhaps, the natural relief of highly nervous organizations. The tyrant Will is dethroned, and the sceptre snatched by his frolic sister Whim. This state of things, if continued, must become ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... when the two girls were working over their sewing-machines, the whir of the numerous machines filling the great warehouse, Agnes ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade
... produced a small pasteboard box which he opened guardedly, mindful of the numberless bright little eyes that were watching every move. All about him now sounded the whir and flutter of wings, the cooing of doves, the saucy twitter of the sparrows. Sir Lancelot, alert and eager, occupied one arm of the wheel chair. Another bushy-tailed little fellow, less venturesome, sat back on his haunches ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... He pranced sideways a little and shook his head up and down in an effort to regain his former temper, but that iron hand kept his nose down, now, and that quiet voice sounded above him—no cursing, no raking of sharp spurs to torture his tender flanks, no whir of the quirt, but a calm voice of authority and understanding. Red Pete broke into an easy canter and in this fashion they came up to Morgan in the road. Red Pete snorted and started to shy, for he recognized the clumsy, bouncing weight which had insulted his back not long before; ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... dipping about in the margin shallows, he either sets off with a rapid whir to some other feeding-ground up or down the stream, or alights on some half-submerged rock or snag out in the current, and immediately begins to nod and courtesy like a wren, turning his head from side to side with ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... locusts, whose shrill cries came from who could tell where—the tall swale-grass on the river edge, erect now again after the April floods, or the brown broom-corn nearer the road, or from the sky above? We could hear the squirrels' mocking chatter in the tree-tops, the whir of the kingfishers along the willow-fringed water—the indefinable chorus of Nature's myriad small children, all glad that spring was come. But above these our ears took in the ceaseless clang of the drums, and the sound of hundreds of armed men's feet, tramping in unison upon the road ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... saving love expressed through Jesus Christ; it will mean the transforming of human society so that ignorance, greed, disease and injustice shall be overthrown; so that "the bitter cry of the children" shall no longer be drowned by the whir of the wheels of industry; so that the sisterhood of women shall be established and that through the dominance of righteousness men shall cease to invoke war and strife, and, released from crushing burdens, into life and labor shall come joy and an ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen
... was silent for several moments. She seemed to be thinking. Louise's face was expressionless. She had made one attempt to check Wrayson, but recognizing its futility she had at once abandoned it. From below in the valley came the faint whir of the reaping machines, from the rose garden a murmur of bees. But between the two women and the man there was silence—silence which lasted so long that Monsieur Jules, who was watching from a window, called softly upon all the ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... unfrightened as the electrodes were fastened to their skulls, entirely undisturbed by the whir of the machine. In less than an hour they were able to use the common language of the Federation. Another record; most ...
— Impact • Irving E. Cox
... them; but birds of varied plumage and song, and troops of squirrels, with footprints here and there of the grizzly bear, and a drove of wild turkeys, with red heads aloft, rushing over an eminence at our left as we approached, and an occasional whir of a rattlesnake at our feet, sufficiently indicated the kind of denizens by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... hadn't realized how the time had been flying. But there was the sawmill. She could hear the whir and buzz! And there was the old livery-stable, and the place where farm implements were sold, and the little harness shop jammed in between;—and there, to convince her no mistake had been made, was the lozenge of grass with "Silvertree" on it in white stones. Then, in a second, ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... pretty near bother the life out of me. They creep in through the cracks and crannies and eat the grain. If I go over by the grain chest, the first thing I know, there's a whir, and a cloud of them darts up in front of my face. Sometimes it makes my heart come right up in my mouth. I wish there wasn't a whale ...
— Ben Comee - A Tale of Rogers's Rangers, 1758-59 • M. J. (Michael Joseph) Canavan
... The gin stopped its whir, and the clerk weighed the cotton. Religion watched him sharply, and counted the checks he ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... for that fate which rules the destiny of wild duck ordained that they should settle on the precise patch of water that was fully commanded by both sportsmen, and some three seconds later both guns spoke practically at the same instant, and up went the teal again with a great whir of wings and loud cries of consternation, leaving behind them a round dozen or more of dead and wounded floating upon the rippled ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... out of the black darkness ahead came a long-drawn, weird, clanging noise, growing louder and louder till it swept over their heads and into the distance, hushed, as it were, by the whir and whistle of the heavy pinions beating ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... seconds the whir grew fainter, the gyrations stopped automatically. She wiped the blood from her face, and burst into hysterical weeping. The man, cursing horribly, rapped to find the spring that she must have pressed as she entered. It seemed to ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... had been continuing its smooth whir through fields, wooded lands, and queer, dead-and-alive little villages for some time before it drew up at last at a small station. Bereft by the season of its garden bloom and green creepers, it looked ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... delay. "Tom," says she "Tom Cringle, I have got tired of you, Thomas; besides, I hear my next door neighbour, Madame Adversity, tirling at the door pin; so give me my down bed, Tom, and I'm off." With that she bangs open the window, and before I recover from my surprise, launches forth, with a loud whir, mattrass and all, leaving me, Pilgarlic, lying on the paillasse. Well, her nest is scarcely cold, when in comes me Mistress Adversity, a wee outspoken sour crabbit gizzened anatomy of an old woman—"You ne'erdoweel, Tam," quoth she, "is it no enough that you ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... her, at all. When she got tired of the game at last, she rose from almost under my hand and flew aloft with the rush and whir of a shell and lit on the highest limb of a great tree and sat down and crossed her legs and smiled down at me, and seemed gratified to see ...
— The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... rushes through the trees and fans the traveller's opened pores. With a sudden, startling whir, mounting with their hearts, a bird flushes from the ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... From all about arose the clacking whir of manure- spreaders. In the distance, on the low, easy-sloping hills, he saw team after team, and many teams, three to a team abreast, what he knew were his Shire mares, drawing the plows back and forth across, contour-plowing, turning the green sod of the hillsides to the rich dark brown ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... Holroyd maltreated him, Azuma-zi went presently to the Lord of the Dynamos and whispered, "Thou seest, O my Lord!" and the angry whir of the machinery seemed to answer him. Thereafter it appeared to him that whenever Holroyd came into the shed a different note came into the sounds of the dynamo. "My Lord bides his time," said Azuma-zi to himself. "The iniquity of the fool is not yet ripe." ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... approach, at a signal from the mother, as if a whirlwind had swept them away, and they so exactly resemble the dried leaves and twigs that many a traveler has placed his foot in the midst of a brood, and heard the whir of the old bird as she flew off, and her anxious calls and mewing, or seen her trail her wings to attract his attention, without suspecting their neighborhood. The parent will sometimes roll and spin round before you ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... at my shoulder and the trigger drawn; before I heard the crack I saw him cringe; and, as the white smoke drifted off to leeward, he fell heavily, completely riddled by the shot, into the brake before me; while at the same moment, whir-r-r! up sprung a bevy of twenty quail, at least, startling me for the moment by the thick whirring of their wings, and skirring over the underwood right toward Archer. "Mark, quail!" I shouted, and, recovering instantly my nerves, fired my one remaining ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... her father had retired with a bounce she remained alone in the gymnasium, eyes downcast, lips quivering. Later still, sitting in precisely the same position, she heard the soft whir of the touring car outside; then the click of ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... amazement. His automobile, his wonderful, beautiful, clashing, dashing automobile unrepairable! It was impossible. But a quarter of an hour's demonstration by the foreman convinced him. The car was dead. The engine would never whir again. All the petrol in the world would not stimulate her into life. Never again would he sit behind that wheel rejoicing in the insolence of speed. The car, which, in spite of her manifold infirmities, he had fondly imagined to be immortal, ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... had noticed him leave the room, no one knew where he was. A party went in search of him. The others, too unnerved to go back into the ball-room, crowded outside the door and listened. They could hear the steady whir of the wheels upon the polished floor as the thing spun round and round; the dull thud as every now and again it dashed itself and its burden against some opposing object and ricocheted off in ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... during the twelvemonth to twice its floor space, the business day waned and died; in the workrooms the whir of machines sank into the quiet maw of darkness; in the showrooms the shower lights, all but a single cluster, blinked out. Alphonse Michelson slid into a tan, rain-proof coat, turning up the ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... my heels; yet I did not turn to see what pursued me, for I was intent upon reaching my father. Suddenly like thunder an angry voice shouted curses and threats into my ear! A rough hand wrenched my shoulder and took the meat from me! I stopped struggling to run. A deafening whir filled my head. The moon and stars began to move. Now the white prairie was sky, and the stars lay under my feet. Now again they were turning. At last the starry blue rose up into place. The noise in my ears ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa
... arms, two legs, a whole face with eyes, nose, mouth, chin, and ears, complete. He could see, for he had glanced about him as he dressed. He could speak, for he sang loudly. He could hear, for he had turned quickly at the whir of pigeon-wings behind him. His skin was smooth all over, and nowhere on it were the dark scarlet maps which the child found so interesting on the arms, face, and breast of the burned man. He did not strangle every little while, or shiver madly, and scream at ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... came on a visit. Aunt Emma was much older than Mother. She was going abroad to be a governess. She was very busy getting her clothes ready, and they were very ugly, dingy clothes, and she had them always littering about, and the sewing-machine seemed to whir—on and on all day and most of the night. Aunt Emma believed in keeping children in their proper places. And they more than returned the compliment. Their idea of Aunt Emma's proper place was anywhere where they were not. So they saw very little of her. ...
— The Railway Children • E. Nesbit
... Even now, as I sit on this trunk waiting for the hour of departure, I have a foretaste of the joy of being away from the insidious cries of hawkers, the tormenting bells of the rag-man, the incessant howling of children, the rumbling of carts and wagons, the malicious whir of cable cars, the grum shrieks of ferry boats, and the thundering, reverberating, smoking, choking, blinding abomination of an elevated railway. A musician might extract some harmony from this chaos of noises, ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... start the reflector rotating." There was a faint whir, and the mirror was spinning smoothly, still with only a slightly blurred image of myself. "Listen, now," continued van Manderpootz. "Here is what you are to do. You will think of a generic noun. 'House,' for instance. If you think of house, you will see, not an individual house, but ...
— The Ideal • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... underbody colloid, swings the heavy pithing-iron out of its rack which in liners is generally cased as a settee, and at two hundred feet releases the catch. We hear the whir of the crescent-shaped arms opening as they descend. The derelict's forehead is punched in, starred across, and rent diagonally. She falls stern first, our beam upon her; slides like a lost soul down that pitiless ladder of light, and ...
— With The Night Mail - A Story of 2000 A.D. (Together with extracts from the - comtemporary magazine in which it appeared) • Rudyard Kipling
... hour later a whir-r and a single note. "Half-past five," I said to myself. "Will Peter never find that mistake?" Once during the long wait the night watchman shifted his leg—he was on the other side of the stove—and once Peter reached up above his head for a pile ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the darkness, came something that moved on a whir of caterpillar treads. Something hard and metallic slammed against Mike's shoulder, spinning him against ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... patiently to await the night and the time for action. The tiny encampment was hidden from them by the thick boughs, but through the screen of delicate, aromatic leaves they could see the bridge of rock. Around them was the stir and murmur of the summer afternoon—the wind in the trees, the whir of insects, the song of birds, the babble of the water—but far above, where the great arch cut the sky, the world seemed asleep. The trees dreamed, resting against the crimson and gold of the heavens. The Indian's appreciation of the wonders of nature was limited—with ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... loud jangling whir of a telephone bell from the adjoining room cut into the air, drowning out conversation; and it rang on and on and on as though Central had ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... king, with all his new chivalry around him, dashed down the narrow valley—the white standard of France on one side of him, his keen-eyed little son on the other—and began to deploy the whole advance battalion, preliminary to a grand charge—whiz! whiz! whir! whir! from both sides came the arrows, as thick as hail and as terrible as javelins, from the hidden archers. The astonished Frenchmen fell back. That crowded still more those who were yet wedged in the ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... moss-covered, that led to Middle Patent. So, he ran at right angles until he also reached it, and as now he was close to where it entered the main road, he approached warily. But, he was too late. There was a sound like the whir of a rising partridge, and ahead of him from where it had been hidden, a gray touring-car leaped into the highway. The stranger was at the wheel. Throwing behind it a cloud of dust, the car raced toward Greenwich. Jimmie had time to note only that it bore a Connecticut ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... so eager to have him go on that she had forgotten all about being afraid of him. "And when they whir up from the road, sir, ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody
... and the road went overboard in a long, steep cascade. She pushed out the clutch and coasted. The whir of the engine stopped. ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... ran round and up And down the height, most like the whir of wings Through tangled trees of forests old and dim. A moment thus—the time a crisped leaf, Held, armlength overhead, will take to fall— And then a man was sitting face ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... multitude. Expresses, panting with as much impatience as the disciplined English expresses ever suffer themselves to show, await them in the stations, which are effectively parts of the great hotels, and whir away to London with them as soon as they can drive up from the steamer; but many remain to rest, to get the sea out of their heads and legs, and to prepare their spirits for adjustment to the novel conditions. These the successive trains ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... to him, but he has a good, strong, native speech, nevertheless. How much character there is in it! How much thrift and independence! Of course his plumage is firm, his color decided, his wit quick. He understands you at once and tells you so; so does the hawk by his scornful, defiant whir-r-r-r-r. Hardy, happy outlaws, the crows, how I love them! Alert, social, republican, always able to look out for himself, not afraid of the cold and the snow, fishing when flesh is scarce, and stealing when other resources fail, the ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... booming "clumpety-clump! clumpety-clump!" of a stamp-mill on a shoulder of a hill high above the camp, drowned the whir and chirp of night insects, and from the second story of a house they passed they heard the crude banging of a piano, and a woman's strident voice wailing, "She may have seen better da-a-ys," with a mighty effort to ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... Sardinians of the guard, heavily armed, with bright helmets, broad round shields, quilted corselets, and long, heavy, two-edged swords. They range themselves on either side of the roadway, and stand like statues, waiting for the appearance of Pharaoh. There is a whir of chariot-wheels, and the royal chariot sweeps through the gateway, and sets off at a good round pace towards the temple. The spearmen in front start at the double, and the guardsmen, in spite of their heavy ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Ancient Egypt • James Baikie
... bending over some footprints beside a small field-piece that, dismounted and rusted, lay half buried in ashes, a sudden whir-r-r caused him to spring back as though he had received an electric shock. Only his quickness saved him from the living death held in the fangs of a rattlesnake that had evidently just crawled from the ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... "exercises" were supplemented by occasional "pieces"—simple, yet boasting a name. But when Penelope played "Down by the Mill," one heard only the notes—accurate, rhythmic, an excellent imitation; when Hester played it, one might catch the whir of the wheel, the swish of the foaming brook, and almost the spicy smell of the sawdust, so vividly was ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... confronted. Richard did not speak, but deliberately reached out his left hand, which he caught securely into Bittridge's collar; then he began to beat him with the cowhide wherever he could strike his writhing and twisting shape. Neither uttered a word, and except for the whir of the cowhide in the air, and the rasping sound of its arrest upon the body of Bittridge, the thing was done in perfect silence. The witnesses stood well back in a daze, from which they recovered when Richard released Bittridge ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... at Drake Hill both as to men and women folk. The fields were full of ebony backs and plying arms of toil at sunrise, and the hum and whir of loom and spinning-wheels were to be heard in the negro cabins and the great house as soon ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... rose with cry and clamor, With a whir and beat of pinions, Rose up from the reedy Islands, From the water-flags and lilies. And they said to Pau-Puk-Keewis: "In your flying, look not downward, Take good heed and look not downward, Lest some strange mischance should happen, Lest some ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... haven't a notion how it's done." "What will you give me if I spin it for you?" asked the manikin. "My necklace," replied the girl. The little man took the necklace, sat himself down at the wheel, and whir, whir, whir, the wheel went round three times, and the bobbin was full. Then he put on another, and whir, whir, whir, the wheel went round three times, and the second too was full; and so it went on till the morning, when all the straw was spun away, and all the ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... to one of the long windows, which she unbolted and flung open, expecting to hear the shrill whir of the burglar-alarm, which, every night, ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... knows how to take care of himself, and to find both food and shelter in the evergreens, when the snow lies fresh upon the ground. There, in some sunny glade among the pines, he will ensconce himself in the thickest branches, and whir off as you come near, sailing down the opening with his body ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... always the chug-chug-chug of the gleaming, fierce-eyed motor cars filled one's ears. They darted past, flaming scarlet, somber olive, and livid white; a crouching, masked figure intent at the wheel, veiled, shapeless women behind, a whir of dust to show where they had been ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... notwithstanding his usual good fortune, Capt. Barold was doomed this morning to make remarks of a nature objectionable to his revered relation. On their way they passed Mr. Burmistone's mill, which was at work in all its vigor, with a whir and buzz of machinery, and a slight odor of oil in its ...
— A Fair Barbarian • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... machine, her tongue clattering an unwearied accompaniment to the whir of the wheel, as Mrs. Donovan ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... broad as many an English river, but so small here that it scarcely has a name; now catch hasty glimpses of a distant town, with its clean white houses and their cool piazzas, its prim New England church and school-house; when whir-r-r-r! almost before you have seen them, comes the same dark screen: the stunted trees, the stumps, the logs, the stagnant water - all so like the last that you seem to have been transported back again ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... as much interested in Mr. Schwab's answer as Winthrop, leaned forward. Winthrop raised his voice above the whir of flying wheels, the rushing ...
— The Scarlet Car • Richard Harding Davis
... out of her cradle; then their wings went "whir-r-r, whir-r-r"—you 've heard a green fly buzzing against a window-pane, have n't you? That was the kind of whirring noise the Dream-Fairies' wings made, with the pleasing difference that the Dream-Fairies' wings produced a soft, soothing music. The cricket under the honeysuckle ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... the odor of new-mown grass and the breath of wild strawberries that had fallen under the sickle, to make the sweet hay sweeter with their crimson juices. The whir of the scythes and the clatter of the mowing machine came from the distant meadows. Field mice and ground sparrows were aware that it probably was all up with their little summer residences, for haying time was at its height, and the Giant, mounted on the Avenging ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... they heard a faint whir; the ventilator machinery had started. This drew air in from outside, and pumped it up to the necessary pressure for breathing in the ship, no matter what the external pressure might be. There was a larger pump attached similarly to each of the engines to supply it with ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... Soon I could see people going about the streets and laundry-maids hanging out the family washing in the back gardens. I even came low enough to witness a minor household tragedy—a mother vigorously spanking a small boy. Hearing the whir of my motor, she stopped in the midst of the process, whereupon the youngster very naturally took advantage of his opportunity to cut and run for it. Drew doubted my veracity when I told him about this. He called me an ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... no little difficulty. My cork came up in the back water under the rock on which I stood, and there, almost at my very feet, it disappeared. I could not believe that a bass had taken it, but all doubt on the subject was dispelled by the shrill whir of my reel as the fine silk line spun out at a tremendous rate. The fish had darted across the current, and only stopped after he had taken out over two hundred ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... in travel now took more people where they could see for themselves the beauty of nature. In the new poetry we consequently find more definiteness. We can hear the whir of the partridge, the chatter of magpies, the whistle of the quail. Poets speak of a tree not only in general terms, but they note also the differences in the shade of the green of the leaves and the peculiarities of the bark. Previous to ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... that nothing is happening because you do not see yourself grow, or hear the whir of the machinery. All great things grow noiselessly. You can see a mushroom grow, but never a child. Paul said for the comforting of all slowly perfecting souls that they grew "from character to character." "The inward man," he says elsewhere, "is renewed from day to day." ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond
... reached the lowest floor and the press rooms were a whir of noise and clatter. As the three entered, the hum of the machinery rendered ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... flies. There were crowds of them, but they did not attack human beings. You might sit on a bank in the fields with endless insects passing without being irritated; but everywhere out of doors you must listen for the peculiar low whir of the stoat-fly, who will fill his long grey body with your blood in a very few minutes. This is ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... quite forgotten. There was a lolling trailing grace about the lifted length, the head slightly inclined to us, the hood but partly spread—something winged in the undulation, a suggestion of that which we could not see, faintly like the whir of a humming bird's wings. That is it—an intimation of forces we had not senses to register—also colours and sounds! . . . My hand was lost in the great hand. My uncle did not turn back. He was speaking. There was that about ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... holding up that scabbard and handle before him, while Rodriguez held the bare sword. And so they came to a room lit by the flare of one candle, which their guide told them the Professor had prepared for his guest. In the vastness of it was a great bed. Shadows and a whir as of wings passed out of the door as they entered. "Bats," said the ancient guide. But Morano believed he had routed powers of evil with the handle of his frying-pan and his master's scabbard. Who could say what they were in such a house, where bats and evil spirits sheltered ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... deities, avid of Is-ness, Resurge from the Flivvers that Were, While the wild Chaotical Whizness Gives place to a Cosmic Whir, ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis
... seed-plots when it rained, pitting their surface all over as with pock-marks, till Melbury declared that gardens in such a place were no good at all. The two trees that had creaked all the winter left off creaking, the whir of the night-jar, however, forming a very satisfactory continuation of uncanny music from that quarter. Except at mid-day the sun was not seen complete by the Hintock people, but rather in the form of numerous little stars staring through ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... that too; look upon me earnestly, And move not any ways your eyes from this place, This Button here? pow, whir, whiss, shake your pockets. ...
— Beggars Bush - From the Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Vol. 2 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... holding Ben Bow by the bridle, the old horse reared, plunged violently, snapped his halter, and broke away. The boy, at the same instant, was hurled to the ground. The ringing of hoofs and whir of wheels made strange sensations in his ears. He thought what a fool he was to be knocked ...
— A Lost Hero • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward and Herbert D. Ward
... But I was curious to know where the doolies had gone. I got out of bed and looked into the darkness. There was never a sign of a doolie. Just as I was getting into bed again, I heard, in the next room, the sound that no man in his senses can possibly mistake—the whir of a billiard ball down the length of the slates when the striker is stringing for break. No other sound is like it. A minute afterward there was another whir, and I got into bed. I was not frightened—indeed I was not. I was very curious to know what had ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... of the morning has given place to a silence broken only by the shrill whir of the locust. The distant shore lines that ran clear and white against the low background of green have become dim and indistinct; all things are touched by a soft haze which changes the sentiment of the landscape from movement to repose, ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... should quadruple the fitly trained teachers, the school sittings, the adequately equipped recreation centres and all incitements to higher uses of leisure time. The early years of every child should be held sacredly apart from the whir of wheels and the din of machinery; he should then rehearse in some degree, as will be later shown, the handicraft age of industry and its personalizing influence. His entrance into the world of modern labor should be not a plunge or a tumble but along a regulated highway of well-outlined ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... chirp of the crickets and the fretting of the aide-de-camp's horse outside the cottage could be heard. Then, like the grating of a coffee mill in a distant kitchen when one is just waking out of a sound sleep, they heard the faint, smothered whir of machinery, a sharper metallic ring of steel against steel followed by a gigantic detonation which shook the ground upon which the cottage stood and overthrew every glass upon the table. With a roar like the fall of a skyscraper the first ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... clearly the way of chivalry—the task which was to be, as the Hindus say, the fruit of his birth.... Thus he would go down, face glowing with new and luminous resolves.... And once dawn was breaking as he descended, and the whir of wings aroused him. Looking upward he saw (as did Another of visions), in the red beauty of morning—a flock of swans flying off to ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... Whir! whir! whir! and a brood of half-grown partridges start up like an explosion, a few paces from me, and, scattering, disappear in the bushes on all sides. Let me sit down here behind the screen of ferns and briers, and hear this wild hen of the woods call together her brood. ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... fly along. This deep gravity in childhood is peculiar to the East. What could that boy, standing on his lump of earth as a Stylites on his pillar, be thinking of? From time to time flocks of pigeons, busy feeding, flew off with a sudden whir as the train passed by, and alighted farther away on the plain; aquatic birds swam swiftly through the reeds that outstretched behind them, pretty wagtails hopped about, wagging their tails, on the crest of the levees; and in the heavens at a vast height, soared hawks, falcons, and gerfalcons, ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... dull whir and tiny clicking of the ball as it rebounded from the metal grooves struck across the tense stillness. As though this was the releasing signal, a roar of activity burst forth. Men all talked at once. The other tables and the bar were ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... anything at it myself, and thus pick up an additional dollar or two in the week. Of course, you would accomplish more than I could, and it would be a hundred times better than stitch! stitch! How I hate the whir of the thing!" And Bernard, with his juggler gift of mimicry, proceeded forthwith to turn himself into a sewing-machine, jerking his feet up and down in imitation of the motion of the treadle, and making an odd noise ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... the shadows on the Inyan-kara, and with the cool of evening his strength began to revive. Now he fought the ghost with renewed spirit, calling from time to time on his medicine-bat, till at last when all the shadows had merged and gone together, with a whir came the little brown bat, ...
— The Way of an Indian • Frederic Remington
... twig on the few unsevered tendons that have not yet felt the keen edge of the woodman's steel. See the first leaning it cannot recover. Hear the first cracking of the central vertebra; then the mournful, moaning whir in the air; then the tremendous crash upon the green earth; the vibration of the mighty trunk on the ground, like the writhing and tremor of an ox struck by the butcher's axe; the rebound into the air of dismembered branches; ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... poured his spirit and life more earnestly into the strain. And finally,—or else the sculptor's hope and imagination deceived him,—soft treads were audible upon the fallen leaves. There was a rustling among the shrubbery; a whir of wings, moreover, that hovered in the air. It may have been all an illusion; but Kenyon fancied that he could distinguish the stealthy, cat-like movement of some small forest citizen, and that ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... chair, awoke at the sound of high words. His jealous affection perceived at once that Malcolm was being insulted. He sprang to his feet, stepped swiftly to the wall, caught down his broadsword, and rushed to the door, making the huge weapon quiver and whir about his head as if it had been ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... disappeared amid the dark cypress-trees of the hunting park. The immense enclosure stretching from the edge of the morasses that bordered the walls of Babylon far into the country, soon echoed with the shouts of the attendants beating the coverts for game, the baying of the dogs, the hiss of lances and whir of arrows. Bright-hued birds, roused by the tumult, flew wildly hither and thither, now and then the superb plumage of a bird of paradise flashing like a jewel among the dense foliage of ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... can make no sound as it rushes in the swift wing-beats. The whish of a duck's wings can be heard two or three hundred yards on a still night. The wings of an eagle rustle like silk in the wind as he mounts upward. A sparrow's wings flutter or whir as he changes his flight. Every one knows the startled rush of a quail or grouse. But no ear ever heard the passing of a great owl, spreading his five-foot wings in ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... the tree overhead, or seen the figure of a small boy in a fantastic tunic of goatskins, slipping down the tree-trunk near Ranulph. As the company rose from the table the troubadour moved away a little, still thrumming his refrain, and in that moment there was a whir of sudden wings and the air was dark with pigeons. As the birds alighted Lady Philippa was surrounded by the pretty creatures, and in a graceful little speech Ranulph presented to her Peirol as a Faun, the Master of the Pigeons, who ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... Burt sprang through the intervening copsewood, and witnessed a scene that he never forgot, though he paused not a second in his horror. Even as he rushed toward her a huge rattlesnake was sending forth the "long, loud, stinging whir" which, as Dr. Holmes says, is "the dreadful sound that nothing which breathes can hear unmoved." Miss Hargrove was looking down upon it, stupefied, paralyzed with terror. Already the reptile was coiling its thick body for ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... and lookout, imported from Coldriver for the event, opened Brill's roulette layout in one corner, a game he usually operated himself on the occasions when his patrons chose to try their fortune against the bank. The rattle of chips, the whir of the ivory ball and the professional chant of lookout and croupier ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... the rhythmic whir and the ensuing rattle of the little ivory ball at the roulette wheel, he did not disdain the quieter faro, playing that dignified game exclusively with the chocolate-coloured chips, which cost a thousand dollars a stack. Sometimes he ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... that my heart may not be sad. Spin and sing for my brother's sake, and the spinning makes me glad. Spin, sing with humming whir, the wheel goes round and round. For my brother's sake, the charm I'll break, Prince Hero shall be found. Spin, sing, the golden thread, Gleams in the sun's bright ray, The humming wheel my grief can heal, For love ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston
... strong Flemish accent. He was, he said, a mechanic, whose duty it was to care for the bells and the machinery. He had an assistant who went on duty at six o'clock. He served watches of eight hours. There came a "whir" from a fan above, and a tinkle from a small bell somewhere near at hand. He said that the half hour would strike in three minutes. Had I ever been in a bell tower when the chimes played? Yes? Then ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... Elizo; Marius, their elder son, a man over forty, who is the active manager of affairs; their younger son, Esperit, and their daughter Nanoun; and the wife of Marius, Janetoun, to whose skirts a small child was clinging while three or four larger children scampered about her in a whir of excitement over the imminent event by which Christmas really ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... like we can understand," the carter continued, by way of passing the time. "On'y foreign tongues used in the days of the Tower of Babel, when no two families spoke alike. They read that sort of thing as fast as a night-hawk will whir. 'Tis all learning there—nothing but learning, except religion. And that's learning too, for I never could understand it. Yes, 'tis a serious-minded place. Not but there's wenches in the streets o' nights... You know, I suppose, that they raise pa'sons there like radishes in a bed? ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... you will come. I will call in if I may, and chat it over with you when you come home. We have not breakfasted yet. Goodbye!" There was a whir of wheels, and the yellow cloud rolled away down the road again. By some legerdemain the Admiral found that he was clutching in his right hand one of the obnoxious bills. He crumpled it up, and threw it ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... qualifications like ancient champions, and then proceed to lay about with a will. Sometimes the maiden literature, queen of the tournament, will be slain instead of the Knight of Error, and often the spectators will be scratched by the whir of a sword. Nevertheless, the fight is in the open, we know the adversaries, and the final judgment, whether to salute a victor or condemn an impostor, ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... I reckon that'll be better," answered Udell; and soon the whir of the motor, and the stamp of the press filled ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... to the tireless whir of the machine, and looking out at the purpling range with tear-mist eyes. At last she said: "I shall never think of my father as a bad man, he was always so gentle ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... summer moon All swollen to uncanny girth, And hanging, like the sun at noon, Above the center of the earth; But with a sad and sallow light, As it had sickened of the night And fallen in a pallid swoon. Around me I could hear the rush Of sullen winds, and feel the whir Of unseen wings apast me brush Like phantoms round a sepulcher; And, like a carpeting of plush,0 A lawn unrolled beneath my feet, Bespangled o'er with flowers as sweet To look upon as those that nod Within the ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... were tuning up their voices preparatory to the late-afternoon concert, soon to begin. They hummed a few bars of one melody, then of another; and at last, Angela's voice leading, there burst upon the room in full chorus, to the rhythmic whir of the wheels, the melodious music and maudlin stanzas of "The ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... now and then getting blocked and jammed together, and then, during ten seconds, one could not see them for the profanity, except vaguely and dimly. Every windlass connected with every forehatch from one end of that long array of steamboats to the other, was keeping up a deafening whiz and whir, lowering freight into the hold, and the half-naked crews of perspiring negroes that worked them were roaring such songs as 'De las' sack! De las' sack!!' inspired to unimaginable exaltation by the chaos of turmoil and racket that was driving everybody ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... the proper altitude, safe from fire from below, and with all enemy planes driven off. The growl of the big guns came less furiously to their ears, so far removed from the ground were they. The incessant whir of the Liberty motor that had come from American shops and the buzz of the propellers rendered it difficult for him to hold converse ...
— Air Service Boys Flying for Victory - or, Bombing the Last German Stronghold • Charles Amory Beach
... Aunt Hannah did not finish her sentence. The whir of an electric bell had sounded through the house. A few moments later Rosa appeared in the ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... bloodshed. Outlawed by his father on account of his unbearable ruthlessness, and soon after presented by Alver with a government, he spent his whole life in arms, visiting his neighbours with wars and slaughters; nor did he, in his estate of banishment, relax his accustomed savagery a whir, but would not change ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... attention had been diverted from the thread of his own reminiscences by the fact that the little flax-wheel of Peninnah Penelope Anne had ceased to whirl, and the low musical monody of its whir that was wont to bear a pleasant accompaniment to the burden of his thoughts was suddenly silent. He lifted his eyes and saw that she was gazing dreamily into the flare of the great fire, the spinning-wheel still, the ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... splash of fruit falling around us, announcing that birds were feeding overhead; and looking up, we discovered flocks of parakeets, or bright blue chatterers, or pompadours having delicate white wings and claret-coloured plumage. Again, with a whir a trogon on the wing would seize some fruit, or a clumsy toucan would make the branches shake as he alighted above our heads. We saw several species of trogons, and frequently caught sight of that curious black umbrella-bird which I have before described. Clumps of the light ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston
... eternity he sits, this god who has grown old. His rounded eyes are open on the whir of time, but man who ...
— Profiles from China • Eunice Tietjens
... friend, dodging between the vehicles that were standing around the disabled truck, helping to pull it from the car-tracks. Getting into a clear road, he opened the throttle and they proceeded like the wind for about six blocks. Then, for no apparent reason, the car slowed down, and with a whining whir of machinery came to a dead stop. "I'm afraid I can't make good my promise to catch that car," said the friend in a vexed tone, after vainly trying to start the car for several minutes. "I'll have to be towed to ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... of the stillness— A stillness so alive. The whisper of the leaves, The song of the brook over golden stone The whir of a bird's wings; And I know the ...
— A Little Window • Jean M. Snyder
... the birds had begun to shift perches, and to exchange slaps as well as to call names—the movement setting toward the tree-tops. None of the sparrows had left the roost. The storm of chatter increased and the buzz of wings quickened into a steady whir, the noise holding its own with that of the ice-wagons pounding past. The birds were filling the top-most branches, a gathering of the clans, evidently, for the day's start. The clock in Scollay Square station pointed to five ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... of all can put in verse, Or to this presence could rehearse The sights and voices ravishing The boy knew on the hills in spring, When pacing through the oaks he heard Sharp queries of the sentry-bird, The heavy grouse's sudden whir, The ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... minutes after the last dinner guest has departed, his chauffeur will drive him some twenty miles to a much simpler abode on a secluded dirt road. Here, he really lives. Whistling tree toads replace the constant whir of ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... hadn't perfected his automatic elevator then. The starting indicator was already set for my position. I adjusted the direction disk. The little green light showed that the power broadcast was in operation. I snapped over the starting switch and the whir of the helicopter vanes overhead told me all was well. The machine leaped into the air. Nothing to do now till the warning bell told me I was within a hundred miles of my destination. The battle shot ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... red-and-gray blankets were saturated with sunlight, and she sometimes fell asleep as soon as she stretched her body on their warm surfaces. She used to wonder at her own inactivity. She could lie there hour after hour in the sun and listen to the strident whir of the big locusts, and to the light, ironical laughter of the quaking asps. All her life she had been hurrying and sputtering, as if she had been born behind time and had been trying to catch up. Now, she reflected, as she drew herself out long upon the rugs, it was as if she were waiting for ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... The big yawning chasm, with the swinging steel rope, running away down into the great black hole, was awesome to look at, as the rope wriggled and swayed with its sinister movements; and the roar and whir of wheels, when the tables started, bewildered them. These crashed and roared and crunched and groaned; they would squeal and shriek as if in pain, then they would moan a little, as if gathering strength ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... in the air and, turning quite around, lighted with his nose pointed, as it was before he sprang. Chad cocked the old gun and stepped forward. A low hissing whir rose a few feet to one side of the path and, very carefully, the boy climbed a fallen trunk and edged his way, very carefully, toward the sound: and there, by a dead limb and with his ugly head reared three inches above his coil of springs, was a rattlesnake. The ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... before speaking, because the words were hardly out of his mouth before Gussie was out of the cupboard. I have commented on the speed with which he had gone in. It was as nothing to the speed with which he emerged. There was a sort of whir and blur, and he was no ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... dread foreboding at his heart, Jack rode forward into the isolated valley, when, from a small opening in the centre of the place the sudden whir of wings and the rapid flight of many dark bodies told him ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... which is which,' observed Jinny, watching the introduction. Her voice ran past him like the whir of a shooting star through space—far, far away. 'Excuse me!' she cried, as she cannoned off Monkey against Cousinenry. 'I'm not a terminus! This is a ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... the boudoir had been dismantled and shunned; the servants believed it to be haunted by the assassin's ghost. With the aid of the passion vine the ingress was easy; the interior window was open; the rustle of dead leaves on the bare floor as he entered, and the whir of a frightened bird by his ear, told the story of its desolation and the source of the strange noises that had been heard there. The door leading to the corridor was lightly bolted, merely to keep it from rattling in the wind. Slipping the bolt ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... the underbody colloid, swings the heavy pithing-iron out of its rack which in liners is generally cased as a settee, and at two hundred feet releases the catch. We hear the whir of the crescent-shaped arms opening as they descend. The derelict's forehead is punched in, starred across, and rent diagonally. She falls stern first, our beam upon her; slides like a lost soul down that pitiless ladder of light, and ...
— With The Night Mail - A Story of 2000 A.D. (Together with extracts from the - comtemporary magazine in which it appeared) • Rudyard Kipling
... retreating footfalls of the mustangs. She was too stunned to think, to realize the horrible fate that had befallen her. She crouched down against the wall of the cave nearest the light, her ear alert for the growl of a panther or the whir of a ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... quickly; and again and again he was repeating to himself Honnor Cunyngham's counsel, and wondering whether he would disgrace himself at the very outset, when some bewildering brown thing sprang from the ground, there was a terrific whir, a crack from Captain Waveney's gun—and away along there the grouse came tumbling down into the heather. Almost at the same moment there was another appalling whir on his right—followed by a bang from Sir Hugh's gun—and ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... settled down to his work under the guttural snarl of his driver; at times the whole throng burst into impartial applause as a horse gained or lost a length; but the quick throb of the hoofs on the velvety earth and the whir of the flying wheels were the sounds that ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... and the glittering machine, every part assembled, refurbished, repolished, and connected, having been given preliminary speed-tests at the horse show, and a tuning up at the opera, was now running under full velocity; and its steady, subdued whir quickened the clattering pulse of the city, keying it to ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... came and went curiously. She tried to fix her gaze upon one of them, but it was extinguished immediately and appeared elsewhere. She found another—and another, but they fled from her like ignes fatui. She heard the whir of a machine, fast and then slow again, near and then at a distance. Was it an automobile or an aeroplane? The notion of an automobile speeding in space was incongruous, the milky way—a queer concept! She smiled in her dreams.... ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... morning, the turtle-doves whose pairing he blessed, and all the feathered flock whom Benozzo represents him preaching to in the lovely fresco at Montefalco—if, as I say, there is throughout his life and thoughts a sort of perpetual whir and twitter of birds, it is, one feels sure, because the creatures of the air, free to come and go, to sit on beautiful trees, to drink of clear streams, to play in the sunshine and storm, able above all to be like himself, poets singing ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... absolute calm. Bronson had been right. I was aware of everything. I took in every meter indication simultaneously and correlated their data in my mind, without the help of the computer. I was aware of every sound, the faint hum of the gas tubes and transformers, the whir of the gyros, the reedy buzz of hydraulic actuators, the periodic clicking of the oxygen reclaim unit. I was aware of everything that was happening in the ship, as if ...
— Last Resort • Stephen Bartholomew
... the horses and mules plunging and trying to break away. There were now men leaning on their elbows, blood dripping from their mouths. There were cries, sounding far away, inconsequent to us still standing. The whir of many arrows came, and we could hear them chuck into the woodwork of the wagons, into the leather of saddle and harness, and now and again into something that gave out a softer, ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... shadows on the Inyan-kara, and with the cool of evening his strength began to revive. Now he fought the ghost with renewed spirit, calling from time to time on his medicine-bat, till at last when all the shadows had merged and gone together, with a whir came the little brown ...
— The Way of an Indian • Frederic Remington
... comes the robin, sometimes in March, but in most of the 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 ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... green and cool and alive with the piping of robins. Over the lake which glimmered faintly through the trees ahead came the whir and hum of a giant bird which skimmed the lake with snowy wing and came to rest like a truant gull. Of the habits of this extraordinary bird Rex, barking, frankly disapproved, but finding his mistress's attention held unduly by ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... of the Turk! While in its banks our fiery tide of War serenely slept, Their subtle serpentry unrolled, and up the hill-side crept. In the Ruins of the Valley do the birds of carnage stir? A creaking in the gloom like wheels! feet trample—bullets whir— By God! the Foe is on us! Now the bugles with a start Thrill—like the cry of a wronged queen—to the red roots of the heart; And long and loud the wild war-drums with throbbing triumph roll— A sound to set the blood on fire, and ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... the doolies had gone. I got out of bed and looked into the darkness. There was never a sign of a doolie. Just as I was getting into bed again, I heard, in the next room, the sound that no man in his senses can possibly mistake—the whir of a billiard ball down the length of the slates when the striker is stringing for break. No other sound is like it. A minute afterward there was another whir, and I got into bed. I was not frightened—indeed I was not. I was very curious to know what had become of the doolies. I jumped into ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... making of shoes, than to find myself dropping into the death of sleep! how much sweeter then must it not be to sink into the sleepiest of sleeps, the father-sleep, the mother-bosomed death of nothingness and unawaking rest! Then shall all this endless whir of the wheels of thought and desire be over; then welcome the night whose darkness doth not seethe, and which no morning shall ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... assiduously to accomplish his purpose, the whir of wings was heard overhead. Glancing quickly up, he perceived that a small flock of willow-grouse had settled on the bushes close to him. He was not surprised, though very thankful, for these birds were numerous enough and he had heard them flying about from time to time, but that they should settle ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... structure is balancing itself, and quivering through every fibre and leaf and twig on the few unsevered tendons that have not yet felt the keen edge of the woodman's steel. See the first leaning it cannot recover. Hear the first cracking of the central vertebra; then the mournful, moaning whir in the air; then the tremendous crash upon the green earth; the vibration of the mighty trunk on the ground, like the writhing and tremor of an ox struck by the butcher's axe; the rebound into the air of dismembered branches; the frightened flight of leaves and dust, ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... of the valves, a soft panting from the exhaust, and a whir of wheels, a huge red machine flew past them in a cloud ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... afternoon of Christmas Day Irene went into the greenhouse to gather a bouquet for an invalid friend in town, and had almost accomplished her errand when the crash and whir of wheels drew her to the window that looked out on the lawn. Her father had gone to the plantation early that morning, and she had scarcely time to conjecture whom the visitor would prove, when Hugh's loud voice rang through the house, and, soon after, he came clattering ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... when Bragdon, who had picked up some knowledge of the new machines in his earlier singlestate, tipped up the hood and dove for the carburetor. After a time he signalled to the Hawaiian to work the crank, and then with a whir, a rumble, at last a clear bellow, the monster responded, trembled, turned its snout up the narrow road, and disappeared. Milly threw a kiss to her husband, who waved his hat in answer. He had saved the day, and she was proud ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... intellect. Archie's mind as a rule worked in rather a languid and restful sort of way, but now it got going with a rush and a whir. He glared round the room. He had never seen a room so devoid of satisfactory cover. And then there came to him a scheme, a ruse. It offered a chance of escape. It was, indeed, ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... rustle rise, Stretching out their seven necks, One before, and two behind, And the others all arow, And as steady as the wind With a swivelling whistle go, Through the purple shadow led, Till we only hear their whir In behind ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... a small pasteboard box which he opened guardedly, mindful of the numberless bright little eyes that were watching every move. All about him now sounded the whir and flutter of wings, the cooing of doves, the saucy twitter of the sparrows. Sir Lancelot, alert and eager, occupied one arm of the wheel chair. Another bushy-tailed little fellow, less venturesome, sat back on his ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... What a whir of wings, and what Sudden drench of dews upon The young brows, wreathed, all unsought, With the apple-blossom garlands Of the poets of those far lands Whence all dreams are drawn Set herein and soiling not ...
— The Book of Joyous Children • James Whitcomb Riley
... a bit hysterically, because laughter is, after all, akin to tears. And the little green car shot off with a whir as I turned to enter my new world ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... terrific whir the propeller flashes round. The sound increases, and then decreases slightly, and increases again. The gadfly moves. Moves more rapidly. Skims along the ground. Rises, rises, rises. Ah, the beautiful river! Every time I have flown the beauty of that river ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... suggest it," said Mr. Ball, rubbing his hands and raising his voice above the whir of the machine, "but of course I knew Mr. Flint was an intimate friend. A word ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... of a German song about the Christ-child. Christmas in the East Side tenements begins with the sunset on the "Holy Eve," except where the name is as a threat or a taunt. In a hundred such homes the whir of many sewing-machines, worked by the sweater's slaves with weary feet and aching backs, drowned every feeble note of joy that struggled to make itself heard above the ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... Near the cell the only sound had been the footstep of the warder, or the scampering of a rat, but now from afar seemed to come a faint whispering, like the murmur of the ocean. It was the voice of awakened nature; the wind and the trees; the whir of birds' wings, or the sound of other living creatures in the forest hard by. A song of life and buoyancy, it breathed just audibly its cheering intonation about the prison bars, when the captive once ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... will persist in growing up. Not for a single day will she pause. He arrives one night and perceives that she is a woman and that he must treat her as a woman. He had not bargained for this. Peace, ease, relaxation in a home vibrating to the whir of such astounding phenomena? Impossible dream! These phenomena were originally meant by him to be the ornamentation of his career, but they are threatening to be the sole reason of his career. If his ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... pandemonium of Civilisation. Even now, as I sit on this trunk waiting for the hour of departure, I have a foretaste of the joy of being away from the insidious cries of hawkers, the tormenting bells of the rag-man, the incessant howling of children, the rumbling of carts and wagons, the malicious whir of cable cars, the grum shrieks of ferry boats, and the thundering, reverberating, smoking, choking, blinding abomination of an elevated railway. A musician might extract some harmony from this chaos of noises, this ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... it seemed a crowded metropolis to Alec's eyes, accustomed to the quiet life of the little inland village. But it was not as a gaping backwoodsman he viewed its sights. If he had never seen a trolley-car before, he had carefully studied the power that propels one. The whir and clang, the rush of automobiles, the pounding of machinery in the great factory all seemed familiar, because they were a part of the world he had learned to know in his extensive reading. Keenly alive to new impressions, he ...
— Flip's "Islands of Providence" • Annie Fellows Johnston
... emerged. Soon I could see people going about the streets and laundry-maids hanging out the family washing in the back gardens. I even came low enough to witness a minor household tragedy—a mother vigorously spanking a small boy. Hearing the whir of my motor, she stopped in the midst of the process, whereupon the youngster very naturally took advantage of his opportunity to cut and run for it. Drew doubted my veracity when I told him about this. He called me an aerial eavesdropper and said that I ought ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... to see it. Worth the drive! a drive any where in these hills 'pays'—to borrow the slang of this bank-note world—for itself. It is a pure enjoyment. On our return we repeatedly saw young partridges in our path, nearly as tame as the chickens of the Casse-cour. The whir-r-ing of their wings struck a spark even from our sportsman's eye, and—a far easier achievement—started the blood in my father's veins. The instinct to kill game is, I believe, universal with man, else how should it still live in my father, who, though he blusters like Monkbarns, is very ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... said her brother. "It's a chap I met last night; he's just out of a convalescent home, and a bit down on his luck." His voice died away in a complicated jumble of whir and buzz, the bell rang frantically, and Norah, like thousands of other people, murmured her opinion of the telephone and all ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... slipping over the uncovered rocks toward the shore, then sliding back as though for very weariness they despaired of reaching it. The muffled, pulsing sound of the sea filled the silence. Broomhurst thought suddenly of hot Eastern sunshine, of the whir of insect wings on the still air, and the creaking of a wheel in the distance. He turned ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... two hours had passed, when I heard a whir and a crash in the windows of the bath (where I had dined and was about to sleep), occasioned by the settling and again the flight of some pheasants. Abdul entered. 'Beard of the Prophet! what hast ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... in the forest when they heard a whir overhead. They looked up quickly to see a number of partridges sailing past ...
— The Rover Boys on a Hunt - or The Mysterious House in the Woods • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)
... and from the chariot sprang to earth That glorious man: he swung the long spear up. But in his brawny hand his foe hath seized A monstrous stone: full at the golden shield Of Neoptolemus he sped its flight; But, no whir staggered by its whirlwind rush, He like a giant mountain-foreland stood Which all the banded fury of river-floods Can stir not, rooted in the eternal hills; So stood unshaken still Achilles' son. Yet ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... cry and clamor, With a whir and beat of pinions, Rose up from the reedy Islands, From the water-flags and lilies. And they said to Pau-Puk-Keewis: "In your flying, look not downward, Take good heed and look not downward, Lest some strange mischance should happen, Lest ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... London-reared Inna; the lads showed her a squirrel or two, a dormouse not yet gone to its winter snooze, in its mossy bed-chamber. A snake wriggled past them, which made her shudder; frogs and toads leaped here and there in dark places. Then, oh, the whir and whisper of the autumn wind among the trees! the lights and shadows! Oh, for the magic hand of her artist father to make them hers for ever in a picture for her bedroom! But the delight of a morning's nutting must come ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield
... her head, and swung The aged wheel with whispering whir; And as it turned, it softly sung (In ...
— Along the Shore • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... establishment, enlarged during the twelvemonth to twice its floor space, the business day waned and died; in the workrooms the whir of machines sank into the quiet maw of darkness; in the showrooms the shower lights, all but a single cluster, blinked out. Alphonse Michelson slid into a tan, rain-proof coat, turning up the collar and buttoning across the flap, then fell to ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... him in me lap an' say whir he's hurted for meself," said Mrs. O'Malligan briskly and forthwith laid her energetic hand upon the little fellow. At her well meant but rough handling, the child cried out, ...
— The Angel of the Tenement • George Madden Martin
... little hands to touch me, the golden echo of her laughter,—I want my wife, I say! Oh, you gods, demons, preta of a thousand hells!" he shrieked, springing to a sitting posture in his bed, and beating the air about him with distracted hands. "These are the memories that whir down and close about me in a cloud of stinging wasps! I cannot endure! In the name of Shaka, whom you worship, strike me dead with the staff you hold,—then will I bless you and believe!" In a transport of madness, he leaned out, clutching at the staff, clawing down the stiff robes from the abbot's ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... useless to attempt that way of impressing the Chinese. One is reminded of the conversation in Eothen between the English country gentleman and the Pasha, in which the Pasha praises England to the refrain: "Buzz, buzz, all by steam; whir, whir, all on wheels," while the Englishman keeps saying: "Tell the Pasha that the British yeoman is still, thank ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... war-shout, the dark-faced Asiatics dropping upon the decks, the whir of javelins, the scream of dying men, the clash of steel on steel. A frantic charge, but stoutly met. Themistocles was in the thickest melee. With his own spear he dashed two Tyrians overboard, as they sprang upon the poop. The band that had leaped down ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... is that heralding wind, with a throbbing note in its character. That day, too, came the white squalls, lasting a minute or two each, with puffs of furious wind and a bucketful of rain, like bombs fired in advance of the hurricane by some huge aeolian howitzer. Steadily the whir of the advancing wind became louder, steady, without gusts, and more and more frequent became the ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... noise of spinning in the house, and my dog scurried off after the cat as I went in the door. I saw Miss Polly Marsh and her sister, Mrs. Snow, stepping back and forward together spinning yarn at a pair of big wheels. The wheels made such a noise with their whir and creak, and my friends were talking so fast as they twisted and turned the yarn, that they did not hear my footstep, and I stood in the doorway watching them, it was such a quaint and pretty sight. They went together like a pair of horses, and kept ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... the destiny of wild duck ordained that they should settle on the precise patch of water that was fully commanded by both sportsmen, and some three seconds later both guns spoke practically at the same instant, and up went the teal again with a great whir of wings and loud cries of consternation, leaving behind them a round dozen or more of dead and wounded floating upon the rippled surface ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... never the least "factory atmosphere" about the place. It used to make me think of a reception, the voice of the machines for the music, with always, always the sound of much talk and laughter above the whir. Sometimes—especially Mondays, with everyone telling everyone else what she had done over the week end, and for some reason or other Fridays, the talk was "enough to get you crazy," Margaret used to say. "Sure it ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... light, and turning eastern window-panes into flaming beacons. The glowing colour of the sky was reflected in the waters of the Arno, which flowed beneath its many bridges like a stream of molten gold. Pigeons wheeled and circled above the roofs, and the air was filled with gentle croonings and the whir of wings. ...
— The Italian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... into the timber he went, avoiding the outreaching skidways and the sound of axes. Broad-webbed snow-shoe rabbits leaped from under foot and scurried away in the timber, and the whir of an occasional ptarmigan or ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... went the chain again, and whir-r-r the engine, and up would come a pair of oil casks, as though the crane were some giant forceps which was plucking out the great wooden teeth of the vessel. It seemed to Tom, as he stood looking down, note-book in hand, that some of the actual malarious air of the coast had been ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... park made them both hot, and it was a relief to sit down on her favourite tree-root above the stream and yield herself to the luxury of summer idleness. A robin was chirping far overhead, and from the grass at her feet there came the whir of a grasshopper. Otherwise, save for the music of the stream, all was still. An exquisite, filmy drowsiness crept over ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... power and beauty of the cobra fascinated me. I have never quite forgotten. There was a lolling trailing grace about the lifted length, the head slightly inclined to us, the hood but partly spread—something winged in the undulation, a suggestion of that which we could not see, faintly like the whir of a humming bird's wings. That is it—an intimation of forces we had not senses to register—also colours and sounds! . . . My hand was lost in the great hand. My uncle did not turn back. He was speaking. There was that about his tones which you had to listen for—a ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... she returned "he'll stand it better now, and I'm not one moment too soon," leading her unsuspecting escort up to Madame, who stood leaning on the arm of Lord Rivers, her husband near welcoming late arrivals; and the air was sweet with perfume, and laden with the ceaseless murmur and everlasting whir-whir with the music of the laughter of the beautiful, the noble, and the fair, and as they follow, and crowd around Madame, their goal, the ball-room, some condole with others on their later entree, saying, "Oh, darling! what! you have missed such a sensation!" ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... south, west, a mile each way from his home, went the father, shouting, "Birdie! Birdie, little maid!" and the echoes repeated, "Birdie! Birdie, little maid!" but no other sound he heard except the rustling of the leaves and the whir of insect wings. The sun was beginning to sink in the west when, tired and heart-sick, he came back again. "Perhaps she is there now," he thought, a ray of hope lighting up his face as he neared the garden gate; but a glance at his wife's tearful eyes as she came to meet ...
— Harper's Young People, February 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... and fro he twisted, turned, raced, and checked the combination, caressing it, humouring it, wheedling it, inexorably questioning it in the dumb language his fingers spoke so deftly. And in his ear the click and whir and thump of shifting wards and tumblers murmured articulate response in the terms ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... knob and watched the great discs begin to whir softly around under their glass dome. At the familiar sound her hunger for the coming comfort mounted fiercely, and she seized the long, supple, silk-wrapped cords and pressed the bulbs to either temple. A slight shock ran ...
— In the Border Country • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... spot which the railway station has usurped, with its long slate roof, wooden signal-box, and advertisements in blue and white enamel, I can recall a still pool shining between beds of the flowering rush; and to this day, as I wait for the train, the whir of a vanished water-wheel comes up the valley. Sometimes I have caught myself gazing along the curve of the narrow-gauge in full expectation to see a sagged and lichen-covered roof at the end of it. And sometimes, of late, it has occurred to me that there never was such a mill as I used to know ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... become a thriving city. I saw the glaciers part to let pass a great traffic in men and merchandise. I saw the unpeopled north grow into a land of homes, of farms, of mining-camps, where people lived and bred children. I heard the mountain passes echo to steam whistles and the whir of flying wheels. It was a wonderful vision that I saw, but my eyes were true. They called me a fool, and it took the sea and the hurricane to show them I was right." He paused, ashamed of his outburst, and, taking the girl's hand in his, ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... and hung among its branches, and all along its ditch border the starry stitchwort lifted its childish faces and chorused in lines and masses. Never had I seen such a symphony of note-like flowers and tendrils and leaves. And suddenly, in its depths, I heard a chirrup and the whir of startled wings. ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford
... she remembered best, the little, friendly things ... a stretch of maple-shadowed streets heavy and still with the heat of a summer noon; a flurry of pigeons in the courthouse square; yellow dandelions in a green lawn, the whir of a lawnmower and the smell of the cut grass; ivy on old bricks and the rough feel of oak bark under her hands; water lilies and watermelons and crepe papery dances and picnics by the river in the summer dusk; and the library steps in the evening, with fireflies in the cool grass and ...
— The Passenger • Kenneth Harmon
... from some of the other lawyers in the building. I was wondering the other day if I could do anything at it myself, and thus pick up an additional dollar or two in the week. Of course, you would accomplish more than I could, and it would be a hundred times better than stitch! stitch! How I hate the whir of the thing!" And Bernard, with his juggler gift of mimicry, proceeded forthwith to turn himself into a sewing-machine, jerking his feet up and down in imitation of the motion of the treadle, and making an odd noise in ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... himself in front of the wheel, and whirr, whirr, whirr, three times round, and the bobbin was full. Then he set up another, and whir, whir, whir, thrice round again, and a second bobbin was full; and so he went all night long, until all the straw was spun, and the bobbins were full of gold. At sunrise the King came, very much astonished to see the gold; the sight of which ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... really alarming episodes of the road, the hoot and whir of a passing motor-car or the loud vibrating hum of a wayside threshing-machine, were treated ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... bats, and the night moths—and looked with wonder at the queer little pair lying prone amongst the green clover. Thousands of wonderful night noises also began to awaken in all directions—the merry chirp of the cricket, the whir of the bat on its circling flight, the hum of the moths—but the children heard nothing, although the creatures of the night were curious about these strange little beings who, by good rights, ought not to ...
— A Little Mother to the Others • L. T. Meade
... pedestrianism. The woods were largely pine, though yellow birch, beech and maple were common. The satisfaction of having a gun, should any game show itself, was the chief compensation to those of us who were thus burdened. A partridge would occasionally whir up before us, or a red squirrel snicker and hasten to his den; else the woods appeared quite tenantless. The most noted object was a mammoth pine, apparently the last of a great race, which presided over a cluster of yellow birches, on the side ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... stump with his brush until the flames had entirely disappeared. But fearing that sparks might yet be smouldering under the bark or in the dry wood, Charley began scraping the sides of the stump. As his hand reached the top of the stump, there was a sudden startling whir of wings and something shot upward into the dark. Charley recoiled as though shot. His heart beat a tattoo against his ribs. His first thought was of the sudden blow the rattler had given the ranger. Yet he knew it was no rattler that ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... captain just how to aim. As he pulled the lanyard, the little bronze cannon spit out fire viciously, and the long projectile, to which had been attached the end of the coiled line, sailed off on its errand of mercy. With a whir the line spun out of the box coil after coil, while the crew peered out over the breaking seas to see if the keeper's aim was true. At last the line stopped uncoiling and the life-savers knew that the shot had landed ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
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