"Clatter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a careful look around. They were not very close to any of the hangars, it happened; and none of the many helpers and attendants could possibly overhear what was said, with all that clatter constantly going on. ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach
... sae guid yoursel', Sae pious and sae holy, Ye've nought to do but mark and tell Your neebor's fauts and folly:— Whase life is like a weel-gaun mill, Supplied wi' store o' water. The heapet happer's ebbing still, And still the clap plays clatter. ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... trembling in their yellow leaves, loomed above the fringe of sugar saplings like some ancient crones in petticoats of scarlet. Sometimes a partridge ran for a moment through the dead leaves, and then whizzed away to some deeper tangle in the woods; now a grey squirrel climbed a shell-bark with the clatter of a carpenter shingling a roof, and sat by his door to see who rode by, or shouted his jeer, and, diving into his house, thrust his face out at the window. Sometimes, far beyond us, a pheasant walked across the road, strutting as straight as a harnessed brigadier,—an ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... opened the door and uttered a call. Presently, with a clatter of hoofs on the pavement, and a mighty rasping of the half-tree which they dragged, in burst eight Sable Island ponies, shaggy fellows, smaller than mastiffs, yet with large heads. The settles were hastily cleared away for them, and they swept their load ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... after having settled in consultation with him all that required to be done. Then that bull of Bharata's race, that foremost of men, with Krishna's assent, riding in his well-built car of gold equipped with rows of small bells and with every kind of weapon and the clatter of whose wheels resembled the roar of the clouds and whose splendour was like unto that of a blazing fire and which struck terror into the hearts of all foes and unto which were yoked the steeds Saivya and Sugriva, himself accoutred in mail ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... are crammed wi' fizenless bran instead of the sweet word in season; and mony an hungry, starving creature, when he sits down on a Sunday forenoon to get something that might warm him to the great work, has a dry clatter o' morality driven ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... lower part, to the grimy water-front, where there was ever a noise of the unloading of ships, the shouts of teamsters, and the clatter of dray-horses' big hoofs on bare cobblestones. Ken liked to walk there, even on such a dreary March day as this, when the horses splashed through puddles, and the funnels of the steamers dripped sootily black. He had left Felicia in the garden, investigating ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... himself swiftly up to this, and the end of his pole was dislodged by his departure and fell to the inlaid pavement with a bang that seemed to him to carry to the farthest echoes of the sounding court. Instantly there was an answering clatter ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... Scarcely had she finished speaking to husband and children, when wild shouts were heard outside the cottage, from the midst of the storm, 'Come on, men! come on—a wreck! a wreck!' Lights passed the little windows, and the clatter of many feet along the path close by told the family what manner ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... right to the joys and abandon of his years. There is danger, and very real danger, lest we should take for granted what the "Grad-grinds" tell us, that the only thing which matters is that we do work, and are not idle. Work for its own sake is not enough. It may turn men into machines—all clatter and monotony; or it may make them fussy nuisances. "A soulless activity," says Canon Ainger, "may save a man from vagrancy only by turning him into a thing; or it may keep him from idleness by making him an egotist." ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... and disappeared in the cool dim arch, and the remaining nun moved across the paved walk with the quick, noiseless, religious tread peculiar to those sacred conventual retreats where the clatter of heels ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... ran a feynd to feche Makfadyane[28] Far northwart in a nuke.[29] Be he the correnoch had done schout Erschemen so gadderit him about In Hell grit rowme they tuke. Thae tarmegantis with tag and tatter Full lowde in Ersche begowth to clatter, And rowp lyk revin and ruke. The Devill sa devit was with thair yell That in the depest pot of Hell ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait
... every time she appears, with her weird head and ghastly grin, the lights burn low, the music of the accompanying orchestra moans forth a sinister strain given by the flutes, mingled with a rattling tremolo which sounds like the clatter of bones. This creature evidently plays an ugly part in the piece,—that of a horrible old ghoul, spiteful and famished. Still more appalling than her person is her shadow, which, projected upon a white screen, is abnormally and vividly distinct; ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... rifles' clatter, The riveting racket machine guns gave, Until dawn comes and the clan must scatter As each one glides to his waiting grave; But here at the end of their last endeavor However their stark dreams leap the foam There is ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... more look at the captain, who lay there stern and calm now, as if sleeping more peacefully, and then followed Mr Handscombe to the engine-room, from which came up the clatter of an iron shovel and the rattle ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... and stiff to start it off." Both question and answer had taken on a fine flavour of impersonality. Quiet again, with only the clatter of hoofs on the roadway. Directly they turned a wide sweeping curve and before them appeared a wooden gateway set at the end of an avenue of elms, at the other end of which showed, dim and forbidding, a house with columns and a green roof. Joe dismounted and, ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... to the crank, and started turning, Frank leaped to the driver's seat of the flivver and manipulated throttle and spark. With a clatter the engine turned over ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge
... A clatter of hoofs was heard, and Orde looked up with vexation, but his brow cleared as a horseman halted under ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... presents itself. Iron columns support the roofs of this and its companion celliers, where the firm make their cuve, and the bottling of the wine takes place. On descending into the basement beneath, the popping of corks and the continual clatter of machinery intimate that the disgorging and re-corking of the wine are being accomplished, and in the dim light we discern groups of workmen engaged in the final manipulation which champagne has to undergo, while fresh relays of wine are ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... my embroidered blanket. I never go out when the weather is bad. Everybody who comes near pats me on the shoulder. What can be more beautiful than going out on a sunshiny afternoon to make an excursion through the park, amid the clatter of the hoofs of the stallions? I walk, or pace, or canter, or gallop, as I choose. Think of the beautiful life we live, with the prospect, after our easy work is done, of going up and joining ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... into the yard with a clatter and the driver unloaded the goods and piled them up in the coach-house. I stood as if turned to stone and silently watched this move in their game. 'What will come of it?' I ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous
... the clatter of a forge close to them, they had not heard a commotion in the court outside. Dennet had been standing on the steps cleaning her tame starling's cage, when Mistress Headley had suddenly come out on the gallery behind her, hotly scolding ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... very full, and there was a clatter of voices, and the clatter round the Prince was the noisiest and merriest. Mr. Bonteen was there, of course, and Phineas as he sat alone could hear him as he edged his words in upon the royal ears. Every now and again there was a royal joke, and then Mr. ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... come again the sooner, Aunt Jeanne, if he sees me no more after to-night." And Victorine gave a little mocking nod with her head, turned towards the dresser piled high with dishes, and began to make a great clatter washing them. ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... neither coat nor waist-coat and his shirtsleeves are unbuttoned. After he has finally succeeded in extracting the purse, he holds it in his right hand and brings it down repeatedly on the palm of his left so that the coins ring and clatter, At the same time he fixes a lascivious look on his daughter.] Hi-hee! The money'sh mi-ine! Hey? How'd y' like ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... interesting the results, one grows tired at length of the noise and clatter of machinery; and it was with a feeling of relief that we mounted to the packing-room, where all was so light, cheerful, and orderly, as to prove that the good management everywhere perceptible had here put on its pleasantest expression. The most perfect cleanliness ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... two daughters following. The Mayor, accompanied by his wife, Miss Mumbray, and young Mr. Raglan Mumbray, was seen moving forward; he acknowledged salutations with a heavy bow and a wave of the hand. Decidedly it was a field-day. From the street below sounded a constant roll of carriages and clatter of hoofs coming to a standstill before the Institute. Never, perhaps, had so many people in evening costume gathered under this roof. Even Mr. Chown, the draper, though scornful of such fopperies, had thought ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... me, you black dude!" retorted the darkey, and as he spoke a smart chambermaid pranced along, flirting back at another waiter, and ran plump against the boy, tray and all. Down went the dishes with a clatter which brought a bevy of waiters and maids on the scene, while the laundress rushed in, all dripping with soapsuds. This so irritated the head waiter that he seized a teacup and threw it at the unlucky tray man. Then followed ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... night she was awakened by pistol-shots, and her dream of Jason made her think that she was at home again. But no mountains met her startled eyes through the window. Instead a red glare hung above the woods, there was the clatter of hoofs on the pike, and flames shot above the tops of the trees. Nor could it be a forest fire such as was common at home, for the woods were not thick enough. This land, it seemed, had troubles of its own, as did her mountains, but ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... away and left me, and I turned to sleep with that great couplet going over and over in my head like the clatter of horses' hoofs: ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... close to the open door on each side of the kitchen. Stella slipped a pan of biscuits in the oven; she laid the table briskly, with a merry clatter of tinware; her face was cheerful and unclouded. The Major leaned back in one chair, his feet on another; he was deep in the paper; he puffed his pipe. John Wesley Pringle twirled the coffee mill between his knees and sang ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... closed her eyes, however, before she heard a curious noise in the vicinity of her ear, and something unmistakably gave her plait a violent wrench. She started up with a yell, in time to see an enormous head withdraw itself from the tent door. A clatter of ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... the room. No, she couldn't remember the name. But the old man often came up to watch the children at play. He said it made him happy to see them getting opportunities he never could have had. Wait a minute—he might be outside at this very moment. A clatter of heels and calls of triumph. "Yes! ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... to be taken back to Gangoil instead of to the mill. Perhaps he thought that Kate Daly might be a better nurse than his mother, or that the quiet of the sheep station might be better for him than the clatter of his own mill-wheels. It was midnight, and they had a ride of fourteen miles, which was hard enough upon a man with a broken collarbone. The whole party also was thoroughly fatigued. The work they had been doing was about as hard as could fall to a man's lot, and they had now ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope
... on the lawn there arose such a clatter, I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter. Away to the window I flew like a flash, Tore open the shutters ...
— Twas the Night before Christmas - A Visit from St. Nicholas • Clement C. Moore
... beer, and pastry, the whole heaped up and running over the sides of the basket. And oh, what a tumult of joy there was in that room! I stood close to the closed door and listened. There was the hurry-scurry of many feet, little and big, as they set the table; the quick commands; the clatter of plates and knives and forks; the constant chatter; the sounds of helping each other and of eating; and then Christina, her mouth, it seemed to me, partly filled with bread and butter, began to give her ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... struggle with the workhouse. Many a heavy-eyed, back-bent weaver has won his Waterloo in Thrums fighting on his stumps. There are a score or two of them left still, for, though there are now two factories in the town, the clatter of the handloom can yet be heard, and they have been starving themselves of late until they have saved up enough ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... Phoebe, the blue scarf about her shoulders, sat beside David as they drove over the country road, home from her graduation. The vehicle rattled somewhat, but the young folks on the rear seat could speak and hear above the clatter. ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... Such a clatter as there was when they came to the barnyard; for every thing was just awake, and in the best spirits. Ducks were paddling off to the pond; geese to the meadow; and meek gray guinea-hens tripping ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... beating; delegates from the provinces, the faubourgs and the clubs come constantly, with their furious harangues, and imperious remonstrances, their exactions, their threats and their summonses.—In the intervals between the louder racket a continuous hubbub is heard in the clatter of the tribunes.[2222] At each session "the representatives are chaffed by the spectators; the nation in the gallery is judge of the nation on the floor;" it interferes in the debates, silences the speakers, insults the president and orders the reporter of a bill ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... in through the open window and chilled the silent room, and the dead coals in the grate dropped one by one into the fender with a dismal echoing clatter; but the Picture still sat in the armchair with the same graceful pose and the same lovely expression, and smiled ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... he said at last. 'The speed and the clatter irk me. Moreover, my chela, I think that maybe ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... higher and higher in the still air, the clatter of hoofs, and two horses swept around the farthest house, carrying their riders at breakneck speed into the one and only street. At first Greek took it to be a race, and then he thought it a runaway. As it was the first interesting incident since Grand Central Station had ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... Jim, roused by vigorous kicks, was silently but briskly hitching in his team, Manuelito silently but suddenly buckling the harness about his mules. Irish Kate, aroused by the clatter, had poked her head from underneath the canvas to inquire what was the matter, and, at a few words from the captain, had shrunk in again, stricken ...
— Sunset Pass - or Running the Gauntlet Through Apache Land • Charles King
... surprise, which was much increased when he found the door of the gallery in question closed and locked. He listened, and heard quite distinctly, within the room, the noise of plates and dishes and the clatter of knives and forks. To this, after a time, succeeded the sound of shuffling cards and the rattle of money, as if thrown on the table in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... hitch slipped, and both went down beneath the water. In a moment they were up again, puffing a little and swearing a great deal. Just then another gun, and a clatter above their heads, brought them ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... in anticipation. But before he spoke again the door opened and they rose thankfully with a shuffle of feet and surreptitious clatter of desks. The clergyman waved to them. If the little dark man was like a blackbird, captive and resentful, the newcomer was like a meagre and somewhat fluttered hen. His hands and wrists were long and yellow and sinewy. He wore no cuffs, but one could see the beginnings of his ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... rush past. The cars lurched and he heard the great locomotive snort on the inclines. Now and then there was a roar as they sped across a bridge, and water glimmered among the rocks below; afterwards the roar sank into a steady clatter and a soothing throb of wheels. The car was warm, and Foster, who had given the porter his overcoat, was lighting another cigarette when a man came in and sat down opposite. He looked hard at Foster, who quietly returned his gaze. The man was ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... some five miles of his journey, to no other sound than the occasional note of some bird, when his quick ears caught the thud of a horse's feet on the trail ahead, with now and then a sharp clatter as the animal slipped on the stones. Wade slowed his own horse down to a walk, and eased his Colt in its holster. He expected to meet some harmless wayfarer, but, under the circumstances, it was just as well to be prepared for trouble. Soon, however, he smiled to himself, for whoever rode toward ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... and Virgie stole softly into her father's chamber, to do what she could for him, and her heart began to gather something of hope and courage when a few minutes later she heard the clatter of a horse's hoofs outside, and knew that her lover was on ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... vain! He raised his head and stared about him. The glaring lamp showed all the details of the room, and made it seem so real, so much more real than mere thoughts, let alone that of which one cannot think. He got up to alter the stove-damper, pushing it shut with a clatter of iron, burning his fingers slightly, and sat down again, feeling it a relief to know, if by the smart, that ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... swiftly in its quest of food and drink; a last half-hearted bawling of the virtue to be found in the "hot steak an' liver'n onions at the Royal Alexandry" gave way to a comforting silence—a silence broken only by a growing clatter of dishes, the subdued wheezing of the engines, and the raucous voice of a train-man telling the baggage-man that the hump between his shoulders was not a head but a knot kindly tied there by his Creator to keep him from unravelling. Even the promise of a fight—at ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... such motions as the terrier itself might make trying to walk on its hindlegs. Still backing away, expecting every instant to feel the terrier's teeth in his flesh, Mr. Trimm put one foot into a hotbed with a great clatter of the breaking glass. He felt the sharp ends of shattered glass tearing and cutting his shin as he jerked free. Recovering himself, he dealt the terrier a lucky kick under the throat that sent it back, yowling, to where it had come ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... traveller, like the burden of useless things that he carries painfully with him, things which he cannot bring himself to throw away because they might possibly turn out to be useful, and which meanwhile clank and clatter fruitlessly about the laden beast, and weigh him down. What we have rather to do is to disengage ourselves from these things: from the money which we do not need, but which may help us some day; from the luxuries we do not ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... strip of sky grew narrower, and was more often obscured by the low vaulted passages into which we plunged. The noises of the Bazaar had died out, and only the sound of fountains behind garden walls and the clatter of our mules' hoofs on the stones went with us. Then fountains and gardens ceased also, the towering masonry closed in, and we entered an almost subterranean labyrinth which sun and air never reach. At length our mules turned into a cul-de-sac blocked by a ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... Creator in the days o' yer youth, Mas'r George. And now, Good-bye, Mas'r George," said Tom, looking fondly and admiringly at him. "God Almighty bless you!" Away George went, and Tom looked, till the clatter of his horse's heels died away, the last sound or sight ...
— Pictures and Stories from Uncle Tom's Cabin • Unknown
... point, in fact. He desires ardently to avoid your society and all society but his own; therefore his nose and ears are marvelously alert to discover your coming. Often, when you think yourself quite alone in the woods, Mooween is there. The wind has told your story to his nose; the clatter of your heedless feet long ago reached his keen ears, and he vanishes at your approach, leaving you to your noise and inquisitiveness and the other things you like. His gifts of concealment are so much greater than your powers of detection ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... way from Frankfort to Halle, in a "nich rauchen" car, too, a jolly old gentleman, whose joyous and abundant German sounded to me like the clatter of a thousand of brick, wound up a kind of promiscuous avalanche of declamation by pulling a matchbox from his pocket, and proceeding deliberately to light his pipe. The tobacco was detestable. Now, if a man must smoke, I think he is under ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the house like a country landlady at an unexpected arrival; for ever giving the young girls tasks to perform, which the little hussies as often neglected; poking into every corner, and rummaging over bundles of old tappa, or making a prodigious clatter among the calabashes. Sometimes she might have been seen squatting upon her haunches in front of a huge wooden basin, and kneading poee-poee with terrific vehemence, dashing the stone pestle about ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... other side of the wall the clatter of muskets and the imprecations of Javert resounded; from the convent ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... imagined that the animals were less convinced of the necessity of this performance than their masters. Wonderful was the clatter and confusion, horrible the uproar raised behind to make the poor things proceed at all, desperate the shout when some half- frantic creature kicked or attempted a charge wild the glee when a persecuted ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... farmers; they sprang from their beds and looked out. They could not see the speeding horse, but they heard the clatter of its hoofs far down the road, and they understood the cry, ...
— Fifty Famous People • James Baldwin
... easy, later on, to go into particulars with Isa. With the roar and clatter growing hourly more deafening in the tavern, Isa and Joyce, sitting on the back porch under the calm stars, spoke freely ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... numerous individual congratulations of his friends; but these were as nothing to the one great accumulated onus of an oration which he had long known that he should have to sustain after the cloth was taken away. Someone of course would propose his health, and then there would be a clatter of voices, ladies and gentlemen, men and girls; and when that was done he would find himself standing on his legs, with the room about him, going round and ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... German, and did not concern Julia; she took the tray of cups and went. But near the door there was an iron tripod lying on the floor; she caught her foot in it, stumbled and fell headlong, dropping tray and cups with a great clatter. ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... sewing-machine from morning till night. It was hard labor, as she had to work with her feet as well as her hands, producing slop clothing at the rate of a yard a minute. Never for an instant might her eyes wander from the seam; and all this severe work was done in the midst of an ear-splitting clatter, which alone would have worn out a person not ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade
... that Jane discovered that her much-vaunted temper was not one-two-three to that of the red-haired person. He turned a sort of blue-white, shoved Jane out of his way as if she had been a chair, and she heard him clatter down the stairs and slam out ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... sudden bursts of silvery radiance where the valley lay open to the moon, and its depths of darkness in many a sinuous recess, that even Madame Pfeiffer's rude companions felt the influence of its strange beauty; and, as they rode along, not a sound was heard but the clatter of the horses' hoofs, and the fall of rolling stones into the chasm below. But all at once thick clouds veiled the moon, and so intense a darkness prevailed that the travellers could scarcely discern ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... opera-singer, and from his stupendous chest sent forth a hurrah so formidable that it was heard above all the clatter of machinery. ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... larger room, with open windows, and the hum of a softer language rising in frequent snatches from the steep street outside; with a faint perfume of wood fires in the balmy, shimmering air, a merry clatter and jingle of hoofs, and bells, and harness; and another daintier child voice ringing quaint, colloquial Italian in his ears. The awakening was certainly cruel, sometimes with almost the shock of a sudden savage blow, but the ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... and an old woman, with a torn cap, appeared, who, having heard his request, called out to those within, "Here is one from Ostrau, Itzig Veitel by name, who wishes to speak to Mr. Ehrenthal." A loud voice replied, "Let him wait;" and the clatter of plates showed that the man of business meant to finish his supper before he gave the future millionnaire a hearing. Accordingly, Veitel sat upon the steps admiring the brass plate and the white door, and wondering how the name of Itzig would look upon ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... All this clatter and clamour of harsh voices, mouthing the wild gipsies' jargon, had no effect on Baltic. Seeing that he could gain nothing from the mocking crowd, he pushed back one or two, who seemed disposed to be affectionate with a view to ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... "Stop your clatter about dyin', Bill. I'm sick o' that kind of talk. It's time enough to talk of death when ...
— Wild Bill's Last Trail • Ned Buntline
... The night was so quiet you could hear things plain from a long ways off. It growed a little louder and a little nearer. And then it struck a plank bridge somewheres, and come acrost it with a clatter. Then I knowed it wasn't cattle. Cows and steers don't make that cantering kind of noise as a rule; they trot. It was hosses crossing that bridge. And they was quite ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... undaunted brow. "I'm not afraid," she proclaimed; and at the same instant she dropped her tea-spoon with a clatter and shrank back into her seat. "There's the bell," she exclaimed, "and I ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... a light, discreet step the house-steward presented some grilled mullet. So noiseless was the service amid the cheerful perfumed warmth that not even the faintest clatter of crockery was heard. Without anyone knowing how it had come about, however, the conversation had suddenly changed; and somebody inquired: "So the revival of the ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... box at the play; engross the conversation there, call 'em by their Christian names; talk louder than the players;—from thence jaunt into the city—take a frolicksome supper at an India house—perhaps, in her gaiete de coeur, toast a pretty fellow—then clatter again to this end of the town, break with the morning into an assembly, crowd to the hazard table, throw a familiar levant upon some sharp lurching man of quality, and if he demands his money, turn it off with a loud ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... pane three weeks ago; I couldn't hit them all. After you have broken a good many, the stones are apt to go through the holes you've already made. They only finished mending them the day before yesterday; I came out and asked the men when they were likely to get done;' and clatter! clatter! went another. ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... me, 't is something to be cast Face to face with one's self at last, To be taken out of the fuss and strife, The endless clatter of plate and knife, The bore of books, and the bores of the street, From the singular mess ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... out more brilliant prophecies, but she was cut short by the sound of a great disturbance without. There was a violent clatter on the brick walk outside, followed by a crashing thump, which was accompanied by the ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... notion, occupied as they were with their crops and the commissions of their wives and their hare-hunting. I am very sorry that I cannot recollect for what reason the general made up his mind one fine day to give a grand dinner. The preparations were overwhelming. The clatter of knives in the kitchen was heard as far as the town gates. The whole of the market was laid under contributions, so much so that the judge and the deacon's wife found themselves obliged that day to be satisfied with hasty puddings and cakes ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... to laugh and to answer her all together. There was such a clatter of tongues that she could hear only a few of the words now and then, such as "chimney," "Santa Claus," "stockings," "reindeer," "Christmas Eve," "candies and toys." Piccola put her hands over her ears ...
— Christmas Stories And Legends • Various
... the two bailiffs, awakened by a clatter of hoofs over the rocky hills behind them, were doubly shocked to find the only tenant of the "jury ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... the meadow; trust him for looking after the grass! It shouldn't be his fault if man or beast, or the fiend himself, got a blade of grass. So, when evening came, he set off to the barn, and lay down to sleep; but a little on in the night came such a clatter, and such an earthquake, that walls and roof shook, and groaned, and creaked; then up jumped the lad, and took to his heels as fast as ever he could; nor dared he once look round till he reached home; and as for the hay, why it was eaten up this year ...
— East of the Sun and West of the Moon - Old Tales from the North • Peter Christen Asbjornsen
... body; well mouth-cloven however, having a goodly pair of wide, broad jaws, lined with two rows of teeth, upper tier and under tier, which, by the magic of a small twine hid in the hollow part of the golden staff, were made to clash, clatter, and rattle dreadfully one against another; as they do at Metz with ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... fine. But you reminded me of a cartoon back home where the cat's in the kitchen and has upset some pots and pans and is trying to catch them before they fall and make a clatter." ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... the door, Leneli sat down on the step, and Mother Adolf put the baby in her arms and went at once into the quiet house. Then there was a sound of quick steps about the kitchen, a rattling of the stove, and a clatter of tins which must have pleased the cuckoo, and soon she reappeared in the door with a bowl and ...
— The Swiss Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... fall of a spit in the kitchen, or the clatter of a pot-lid. Would they never come? Would she never know? At this moment—what was that? That surely was something. They were returning! In a moment she would know. She rose to her feet and stared with stony eyes at the door. But when she had listened long—it was nothing. ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... up a native. Dazer Falls is a study in village still life. In Gorley silence and race suicide are equally common and not noticed except by strangers. Up in the fifth flat we got away from the world almost as well, except that the clatter of our dish-washing and the thumping of our disagreeing opinions would at times sound like the whirr of industry, for Jim and I did our own housework, our own thinking and lived as cheaply as monopoly will permit (monopoly, that is the thing I am against as a political ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... his words, the long, even reverberations changed to a quick, harsh, discordant clatter ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... for his comrade, Gamelin took his leave of his hostess of the moment. As he was crossing the Pont-Neuf, he saw a detachment of National Guards debouch from the Quai des Morfondus. They were mounted and carried torches. They were driving back the crowd, and amid a mighty clatter of sabres escorting a cart driving slowly on its way to the guillotine with a man whose name no one knew, a ci-devant noble, the first prisoner condemned by the newly constituted Revolutionary Tribunal. He could be seen by glimpses between ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... a step outside, and the figure of Colonel Wragge stood in the doorway. Though entering on tiptoe, he made considerable noise and clatter, for his free movements were impeded by the burden he carried, and we saw a large yellowish bowl held out at arms' length from his body, the mouth covered with a white cloth. His face, I noted, was rigidly composed. He, too, was master of himself. And, as I thought ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... paper continued and I with it, and upon the third summer there fell a hot night, a night issue, and a strained waiting for something to be telegraphed from the other side of the world, exactly as had happened before. A few great men had died in the past two years, the machines worked with more clatter, and some of the trees in the office garden were a few feet taller. But that ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... the last to hear the cry of 'Fire!' which rang out from the house, and they were still sitting undisturbed while men ran with hose and buckets, and a clamour arose in the stable-yard for more water, and a clatter of horses' hoofs could be heard as a groom galloped off for the nearest fire-engine. The yew-hedged garden where they sat was distant a long way from the house, and it was not until a heavy cloud of smoke rose up against the sky that Peter's attention was ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... screaming, running, trying to attract some one's attention, a sickening sense of terror and failure, and the last car slatted itself past with a mocking clatter, as if it ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... from Abner's Court, but that did not matter. If they occurred on a Saturday, when we were free from school—and, as good luck would have it, they usually did—many of us, myself invariably included, would go to see them. The blare of trumpets, the beat of drums, the playing of the band, the rhythmic clatter of thousands of feet, the glint of rows and rows of bayonets, the red or the blue of the uniforms, the commanding officer on his mount, the spirited singing of the men marching back to barracks—all this ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... With a clatter of wheels the light frame raced down the slight incline, and unloaded its occupants violently when it ran into the back of the construction train which they had stopped just in time. We did not, however, follow it, because we wanted time to think; and both ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... into the passage with his right. Two movements of this angry Hercules, and the man was literally whirled out of sight with a rapidity and swiftness almost ludicrous; it was like a trick in a pantomime. A clatter on the stairs betrayed that he had gone down the first few steps in a wholesale and irregular manner, though he had just managed to ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... wilful, school-hating scamp, of whom only he and Aunt Judy ever boded any good, stole away from his playmates and his games, every afternoon when school was dismissed, and with that baleful phantom before him, and that doleful cry in his ears, flew through the bustle and clatter of the wharves to where his father's warehouse was, two miles away; and, dodging like a thief among crates and boxes, bales and casks, and choking down the appeal of his lonely, shame-faced terror, watched that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... the east and the little valley was full of shadows, when suddenly the sentinel's cry of "Indians! Indians!" aroused the sleeping force. The shouts of our guards, the clatter of ponies' hoofs, the rattling of dry skins, the swinging of blankets, the fierce yells of the invading foe made a scene of tragic confusion, as a horde of redskins swept down upon us like a whirlwind. In this mad attempt to stampede our stock nothing but discipline saved us. A few of the ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... girls and boys of that uncertainty of age that hovers between childhood and maturity, were moving down Canal Street when there was a sudden jostle with another crowd meeting them. For a minute there was a deafening clamor of laughter, cracking of whips, which all maskers carry, jingle and clatter of carnival bells, and the masked and unmasked extricated themselves and moved from each other's paths. But in the confusion a tall Prince of Darkness had whispered to one of the girls in the unmasked crowd: "You'd better come with us, Flo, you're wasting ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... and creaking hinges announced the opening of the great gate; and this, followed by a confused clatter of hoof-strokes, told that the mule-driver with his train of animals was also about to receive the hospitality of the hacienda. This circumstance, contrary to all usage, somewhat surprised the young girls, who were wondering why the house was being thus turned into an hostelry. ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... vocations, or, often, doing nothing at all beyond continuing a placid organic existence. Boys and men saunter in and out of the court-yard, chatting or calling in their musical patois; once in a while there is a thud and clatter of hoofs, a rider arriving or departing. It is an entertaining scene, charming in its monotony of small changes and evolutions; you can sit watching it in a half-doze for twenty years at a stretch, and it may seem only as many minutes, ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... looked at each other in surprise. Honeybird had a way of repeating things she had picked up; but only Jane knew where she could have heard this, and a kick from Jane told her to be quiet. Aunt Charlotte's knife and fork dropped with a clatter on her plate. Her face was white as chalk. For a minute no one spoke. Aunt Charlotte drank some coffee, and shut her eyes. The children thought she had forgotten to say her grace till now; they went on with their breakfast, and in a few minutes ...
— The Weans at Rowallan • Kathleen Fitzpatrick
... establishment. Nothing could have been more meridional; indeed, both the dirty little inn and Narbonne at large seemed to me to have the infirmities of the south without its usual graces. Narrow, noisy, shabby, belittered and encumbered, filled with clatter and chatter, the Hotel de France would have been described in perfection by Alphonse Daudet. For what struck me above all in it was the note of the Midi as he has represented it—the sound of universal talk. The landlord sat at supper with sundry friends in a kind of glass cage, ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... man sitting by the table set down his mug with a clatter upon it. "Wall now, tain't my idea thet thet's exectly what's taken Newell. I saw a case of a man thet was taken under the preacher Finney. 'Twas over to Ithica. The hull town knew about it. A lot of folks went in. I jest looked in when I was passing, ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... from it I dismounted and tethered my horse in the shadow of some trees. A brief reconnaissance under the circumstances was advisable; and approaching the mansion silently, without allowing my sabre to make any clatter, I gained the long portico in front, and went to a window reaching down to the flooring ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... the thunder, so that it is far more glorious here than on the plain. Hark!—someone at the door. Who is this that chooses a time of thunder for making calls? And why don't he, man-fashion, use the knocker, instead of making that doleful undertaker's clatter with his fist against the hollow panel? But let him in. Ah, here he comes. "Good day, sir:" an entire stranger. "Pray be seated." What is that strange-looking walking-stick he carries: ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... leathern purse, with something less than three dollars, all our available wealth. The immense movement and stir of the busy town, the crash and bustle of trade, the roll of wagons, the cranking clatter of cranes and windlasses, the incessant flux and reflux of population, all eager and intent on business, were strange spectacles to our eyes as we loitered, houseless and friendless, through the streets, staring in wonderment at the wealth and prosperity of that land we were taught to believe ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... Molly. After climbing up a very narrow, dirty staircase, the hot air heavy with smells, he had emerged into a small back and front room holding some half-dozen tables, at each of which four people could be seated. Through the open windows the noises of the street below came into collision with the clatter of plates and knives and forks. The heat was intense, the cloths were not clean, neither were the hands of the two waiters who rushed about with a certain litheness and facility of motion unlike ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... had sat so long without moving that his legs bent under him. There was a pail of water with a dipper in it on a bench. He caught up a dipperful of water, drank it empty, and let it fall in the pail again with a clatter. ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... friend's, the aforesaid examining magistrate, we found a numerous company; from the anteroom we could hear bursts of laughter, noisy conversation, accompanied by the clatter of plate and crockery, which was being placed upon the table. I was a little excited; I knew that I was the youngest of the party, and I was afraid of appearing awkward on that night of revelry. I said to myself: "Old boy, you must face the music, do the grand, ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... strange being who called himself "Jack o' Judgment" stood outside the door of Boundary's flat. He had taken a key from his pocket and had it poised, when he heard the clatter of the other's feet. He stood undecidedly, but only for a second, then the key slipped into the lock and the door opened. The butler from his little pantry saw the figure and slammed his own door, bolting it with ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... sparkle over all things. Ahead of the wagon coveys of quail broke and ran swiftly in the track until tired, when, with a side movement the tall grass by the border absorbed them. Flocks of prairie-chickens, frightened by the clatter, sprang winging from the roadside, and together sailed away on spread wings. The man in the wagon looked about him and forgetting all else in the quick-flowing ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... ran upward to the summit and away from the crunching of their own little outfit in the bed of the dry river, they were struck by the sound of clatter of hoofs and voices. ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... strong men to row it, although no vessel of such a size and burden had heretofore been seen in the world. So the head carpenter and all his journeymen and apprentices began their work; and for a good while afterward there they were busily employed hewing out the timbers and making a great clatter with their hammers, until the new ship, which was called the Argo, seemed to be quite ready for sea. And as the Talking Oak had already given him such good advice, Jason thought that it would not be amiss to ask for a little more. He visited it again, therefore, and standing beside its huge, ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... shouting had died away in a confused clatter of hoofs, and the pistol cracklings were coming only at intervals and from an increasing distance, that the corridor door opened and the night despatcher's off-trick man came in ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... the pretty kitten whirled the industrious boy's pigtail around in a circle until it pulled. Then he cast his almond eyes at her, and addressed her in a tone like the clatter of rolling rocks. ...
— Little Sky-High - The Surprising Doings of Washee-Washee-Wang • Hezekiah Butterworth
... Master's eye is on us, Never off us, still upon us, Night and day! Work away! Keep the busy fingers plying, Keep the ceaseless shuttles flying, See that never thread lie wrong; Let not clash or clatter round us, Sound of whirring wheels, confound us; Steady hand! let woof be strong And firm, that has to last so long? ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... vestments stiff with gold, and military uniforms; there were trousers and jackboots and bare legs; blasters, and swords, and pistols, and bows and quivers, and spears. And the place was loud with a babel of voices and the clatter of teleprinters. ...
— Time Crime • H. Beam Piper
... incense rising, curled the smoke of my cigar, With the lamplight gleaming through it like a mist-enfolded star—; And as I gazed, the vapor like a curtain rolled away, With a sound of bells that tinkled, and the clatter of a sleigh. ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... a shot rang out, followed by another. He ran into the back-yard and came upon the equally frightened Maciek. Shouts, curses, and the clatter of horses' hoofs came from beyond the ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... new, fearful noise without? That is no more the sound of singing and shouting, and crying—that is the battle-cry-that is the rattle and clatter of muskets. The three women sprang up, moved as if by one thought, animated by one purpose. They moved the chairs back from the door, ready, as soon as danger should approach, to go into the chamber of the queen and awaken her. Campan then slipped across the room to the ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... his couch violently with his fist; and then, as if the clatter of the metal vessels on it had brought him to himself, he added, meditatively: "A hundred thousand! If they burned their dead here, it would take a forest to reduce ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the musket; but in his haste tumbled down the attic stairs, losing his grasp of the musket, which fell down with a clatter. ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... roar Of the monster guns; And the sharp bark Of the lesser guns; The whine of the shells, The rifles' clatter Where the bullets patter, The rattle, rattle, rattle Of the mitrailleuse in battle, And the yells Of the men who charge through hells Where the poison gas descends. And the bursting shrapnel rends Limb from limb In the dim Chaos ...
— The Red Flower - Poems Written in War Time • Henry Van Dyke
... in a state of physical and mental inertia that would drive an Englishman mad. A Boer farmer, sitting on his stoep, large and strong, but absolutely lethargic, is the very incarnation of the spirit of the veldt. At the same time, when one remembers the clatter and gabble of our civilisation, it is impossible to deny him a certain dignity, though it may be only the ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... which yelled horribly, and leaped hither and thither—terrifying everybody except the brave King, who pursued the Dwarf closely, till he, drawing a great knife with which he was armed, challenged the King to meet him in single combat, and rushed down into the courtyard of the palace with a terrible clatter. The King, quite provoked, followed him hastily, but they had hardly taken their places facing one another, and the whole Court had only just had time to rush out upon the balconies to watch what was going on, when suddenly the sun became as red as blood, and it ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... that noise? A clatter as of falling boards. There is a sound as of hammering. At first it seems to Romeo Augustus like Mephibosheth's death-knell. Thud, thud, thud, go the blows. Drawn almost against his will, Romeo Augustus stealthily approaches the window. He glances fearfully ...
— Harper's Young People, March 23, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... our advancing footsteps. I thought the enemy, if any were near, must surely hear the cartridges rattle in my cartridge box as we double-quicked to close up, and I put my hand behind me to stop the clatter. If any enemy were near, indeed! There seemed an enemy behind every bush, a rebel in every corner of the worm fence. I am in the rear of the column, I thought, and my heart went thump, bump, and my great central nervous ganglion ached amain. 'Sergeant-major,' whispers Major Heavysterne; ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... can understand, why their ports and towns are silent after the tramp of so many regiments who have left a great tract of country open and undefended. In that corner of France the people listen intently for the first clatter of hoofs and for the first cry "Les Uhlans." Rumors came that the enemy has been seen in neighboring towns and villages. Can one wonder that mothers and fathers rush from their houses and wander forth in a blind, unreasoning way to swell the panic tide of fugitives, homeless ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... reeds creak in the dawn By the dead pond; Dry tongues respond From grasses yellow and drawn; And ever scourged by the wind, The alders clatter and grind. ...
— England over Seas • Lloyd Roberts
... after him but was not able to overtake him, for that rascal Pinocchio leaped in front of him like a hare and knocking his wooden feet together against the pavement made as much clatter as twenty ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi
... the bed and lay there till evening—till the door had shut gently behind the last rat to leave the sinking ship. All the clearness, the calmness were gone again. Round and round in dizzy sickening flare and clatter his thoughts whirled. Contempt, fear, loathing, blasphemy, laughter, longing: there was no end. Death was no end. There was no meaning, no refuge, no hope, no possible peace. To give up was to go to perdition: to go forward was to go ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... me after luncheon; the idea being that I should spend the evening, and perhaps also pass the night, at the country-house where his family lived. Only when we had left the city and exchanged its grimy streets and the unbearably deafening clatter of its pavements for the open vista of fields and the subdued grinding of carriage-wheels on a dusty high road (while the sweet spring air and prospect enveloped us on every side) did I awake from the new impressions and sensations of freedom into which the past two days had plunged ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... still: the song of birds and the rustle of leaves alone met the ear. Neither man nor beast was stirring to challenge Colonel Philibert's approach, but long ere he reached the door of the Chateau, a din of voices within, a wild medley of shouts, song, and laughter, a clatter of wine-cups, and pealing notes of violins struck him with amazement and disgust. He distinguished drunken voices singing snatches of bacchanalian songs, while now and then stentorian mouths called for fresh brimmers, and new toasts were drunk ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... were going to drive the team in to Dry Lake. They did not talk much about anything, for that matter; even the knives and forks seemed to share the general depression of spirits, and failed to give forth the cheerful clatter which was a daily accompaniment of meals ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... clatter the proprietor came out from an inner room, and seeing the Italian standing there, broke into a passionate torrent of speech, ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... always run down this country, doctor? It's a glorious country, a magnificent country. I declare I hate the clatter and racket and rush of Chicago more and more every time I go ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... a tone so impressive, that, even amid the clatter of twenty machines around me, not a word was lost,—"you may be sure that this prejudice against women working for their own support will never die out. It is one of those excrescences of the human mind that cannot be extirpated. It is a distortion of the reasoning faculty ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... thereby in such fight the hatred, and the fear, and the avoidance, and the terror that men felt for him should be increased. In no short time the charioteer of Ferdia heard the roar of Cuchulain's approach; the clamour, and the hissing, and the tramp; and the thunder, and the clatter, and the buzz: for he heard the shields that were used as missiles clank together as they touched; and he heard the spears hiss, and the swords clash, and the helmet tinkle, and the armour ring; and the arms sawed one against the other, ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... brain wearied by the din of the city, the clatter of wheels, the jingle of street cars, the discord of bells, the cries of venders, the ear-splitting whistles of factory and shop, how refreshing is the heavenly stillness of the country! To the soul tortured by the sight of ills it cannot cure, wrongs ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller |
