"Clatter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... southern express stopped at some big station. The rhythmic sway and clatter of a moving train had given place to a comparative stillness that awoke John Riviere from sleep. He murmured "Dijon," and composed himself to a fresh position for rest. Some hours later there was again a stoppage, and instinctively ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... to one side, when the tin pan fell. It made a great clatter; and he kept very still for a few moments, while he listened. But no one stirred. And then Fatty ...
— Sleepy-Time Tales: The Tale of Fatty Coon • Arthur Scott Bailey
... steam-heating, but the steam was on! It wanted but a turn of the hand at the radiators, and the rooms were warm. The rooms themselves responded to our appeal and looked down into a silent inner court, deaf to the clatter of the streets, and sleep haunted the very air, distracted, if at all, by the instant facility and luxury of the appliances. Was it really in Spain that a metallic tablet at the bed-head invited the wanderer to call with one button for the camerero, another for the camerera, ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... The clatter was a relief to Carol after months of smug houses. She wished that she could work in the mill; that she did not belong to ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... thread of water and verdure amid towering walls of bare, sun-baked rock, has lost much of its poetry and romance. The stream flows clear as in the poet's time, but the solitude he loved so well is invaded. Of his garden not a trace remains. The perpetually whirring wheels of a water-mill, the clatter of washerwomen beating clothes on the bank, now drown the murmur of the waves, whilst at every turn the traveller is beset by vendors of immortelles and photographs. Truth to tell, an element of vulgarity has found its ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... certain constrained civility mixed with sullenness, marks the manners of the male portion near large towns; for elsewhere, humble civility has always met the traveller in this class of Welsh cottagers. The frequent appearance of dragoons, the clatter of their dangling accoutrements of war, and grotesque ferocity of hairy headgear, and mock-heroic air of superiority to the more quietly grotesque groups of grey-coated men, and muffled up Welsh women gives a new ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... growling, after that assertion!" Clem said to Nattie, somewhat to Quimby's internal agitation, for, to tell the truth, he was not really quite certain of being in a state of rapture at six thirty every morning, even when awoke by the clatter of a sounder, of which the motive power ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... back? But while yet he recalled the words, another sound mingled again with the stream-clac-clac! clac-clac! Suddenly it came to him who was the wearer of the sabots making this peculiar clatter in the night. It was Dormy Jamais, the man who never slept. For two years the clac-clac of Dormy Jamais's sabots had not been heard in the streets of St. Heliers—he had been wandering in France, a daft pilgrim. Ranulph remembered how these sabots used to pass and repass the doorway of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... no screams, no cries, not a sound of human voices. The poor victims of the catastrophe were exhausted or frightened out of their wits, and gave no utterance to the pain they felt. Only the never-ceasing clatter of the falling stones was heard, nothing else. Awful is the voice of the elements, and dreadful their revenge on their human antagonists! The thundering heavens, the roaring sea, are awful to behold and to listen to; but most fearful of all is the voice of the earth, when, quivering ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... full health, all would have been lost. Cartier spared no efforts. The knowledge of his situation was concealed from the Indians. None were allowed aboard the ships, and, as far as might be, a great clatter of hammering was kept up whenever the Indians appeared in sight, so that they might suppose that Cartier's men were forced by the urgency of their tasks to remain on the ships. Nor was spiritual aid neglected. An image of the Virgin ...
— The Mariner of St. Malo: A Chronicle of the Voyages of Jacques Cartier • Stephen Leacock
... grander man when you were guiding the yacht through the storm than you are sitting here beside me eating and drinking. My blood begins to flow quick when I go into big rooms filled with a thousand power looms. Their noise and clatter is in my ears a song of praise, and very often the men and women who work at them are singing grandly to this accompaniment. Sometimes I join in their song, as I walk among them, for the Great Master hears as well ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... passed the gallows when the ghost jumped down and ran after him. The driver was horribly afraid, and lashed on the horses, as everybody else had done before, and they, taking fright, galloped away over the log-road with a marvellous clatter. Meanwhile, however, the young nobleman saw by the light of the moon how that the apparition flattened a ball of horse-dung whereon it trod, and straightway felt sure within himself that it was no ghost. Whereupon he called to the driver to stop; and as ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... from Margery's hand, and so did the distaff, which rolled over the floor with a clatter. She never heeded it. A terrible, indefinite dread had taken hold ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt
... he dropped the lute to his feet with a clatter, and, wrapping himself in the syrma, stood as if petrified, like one of those statues of Niobe which ornamented the courtyard of the Palatine. Soon a storm of applause broke the silence. But in the distance this was answered by the howling of multitudes. No one doubted then that Caesar had ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... church the mass was nearly over. The Indians, on entering, made quite a noise, and clatter. They would' not remove their hats or head-dresses, they Would not shut the door, nor remain silent, in fact, they did anything they considered provoking and ugly. The good priest, the ill-fated Father Fafard, ...
— Two months in the camp of Big Bear • Theresa Gowanlock and Theresa Delaney
... clatter of hoofs and Polly heard Scott's parting yell. It brought a glorious relief to her mind for surely no one who was badly hurt could be as mad as that! She heard the answering yells of the Mexicans, then she felt and heard the door of the car flung open; someone had jumped ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... hammock, sleeping soft and sleeping sound, Without a care or trouble on your mind, And there's nothing to disturb you but the engines going round, And you're dreaming of the girl you left behind; In the middle of your joys you'll be wakened by a noise, And a clatter on the deck above your crown, And you'll hear the corporal shout as he turns the picket out, 'There's ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... keep his counsel and disturb no one. He had blown his candle out before first trying the bar, and had been working by the bright moonlight. Then he fastened his skates round his neck, so that they should neither impede his movements, nor clatter, and put one leg out of window, then the other, turned round, let himself down by the hands, and dropped into the lane. He looked up to see that the scarf was hanging all right; it was within easy reach of both hands; he gave it a pull to try it, and being ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... behind me, and a clatter of falling glass; I turned to see a soldier, inside the Royal Hotel, engaged in chopping out the plate-glass window of the lobby with a chair. There were twenty or thirty uniformed men behind him, who wanted to get out and see the fun; but the door of the hotel was blocked by the crowd, ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... of it. Huge concerns they were, well horsed and loaded, the men in their shirt-sleeves, the women swathed in veils, the long whip cracking like a pistol; and as they charged upon that slumbering hostelry, each shepherding a dust storm, the dead place blossomed into life and talk and clatter. This the Toll House?—with its city throng, its jostling shoulders, its infinity of instant business in the bar? The mind would not receive it! The heartfelt bustle of that hour is hardly credible; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... almost Babylonian, something very splendid in the vast courtyard which formed the centre of what appeared, to Sylvia's fascinated eyes, a grey stone palace. The long rows of high, narrow windows which now encompassed her were all closed, but with the clatter of the horses' hoofs on the huge paving-stones the ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... crept by me upon the waters" And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street. O City city, I can sometimes hear Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street, 260 The pleasant whining of a mandoline And a clatter and a chatter from within Where fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls Of Magnus Martyr hold Inexplicable splendour ...
— The Waste Land • T. S. Eliot
... tired of plutocrats who struggle and scheme but for themselves; we turn with loathing from the concrete selfishness of Newport and Saratoga; the clatter of arms and the blare of battle-trumpets in time of peace are hideous to our ears—we want no wealth gained from ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... mother's, and had called for 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 ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... into words at this, incoherent words and bursts of indignation that took his breath away in gasps. "Moira! Moira! What are ye sayin' to me? Me wid a family! Anyone who's iver had th' quiet to listen to th' blessed little people—him to fill up his ears wid th' clatter of mortial tongues. No? Since I lift here I've had no minute o' peace—oh, Moira, th' country there—th' great flat hidjious country of thim—an' th' people like it—flat an' fruitful. An' oh, Moira, aroon, it's my heart breakin' in me, that now I've worked ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... A clatter of approaching wheels caused Anton to look up. It was the buggy, with his father whipping the pony to full speed, returning along the road to find out what accident had happened. Anton ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... carried down his fiery cross and set it in the bouman's window. He was troubled when he came back; for the dogs had barked and the folk run out from their houses; and he thought he had heard a clatter of arms and seen a red-coat come to one of the doors. On all accounts we lay the next day in the borders of the wood and kept a close look-out, so that if it was John Breck that came we might be ready to guide him, and if it was the red-coats ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... their victuals stop their mouths." They used to eat as though it were a religious ceremony—a very solemn thing. Life should not be treated as a solemn matter. I like to see the children at table, and hear each one telling of the wonderful things he has seen and heard. I like to hear the clatter of knives and forks and spoons mingling with their happy voices. I had rather hear it than any opera that was ever put upon the boards. Let the children have liberty. Be honest and fair with them; be just; be tender, and they will make you rich in ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... the top of exhilaration. There was one broad grin from one end of the column to the other; it might soon have been a caravan of elephants instead of camels, for the ivory and the blackness; the chatter and the laughter almost drowned the tramp of feet and the clatter of equipments. At cross-roads and plantation gates the colored people thronged to see us pass; every one found a friend and a greeting. "How you do, aunty?" "Huddy (how d'ye), Budder Benjamin?" "How you find ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... but how little did the state of the town correspond to it! In the same night, while Masaniello was entertained by Cardinal Filomarino, a cry was again raised of treason and banditti; watch-fires were kindled, and the clatter of arms heard. The captain-general of the people governed, as there was no magistrate in Naples. In the obscurity of the night he caused the heads of fourteen persons to be cut off, without trial or ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... the boards were collected for the stage. Agamemnon and Solomon John gave themselves to the work, and John Osborne helped zealously. He said the Pan-Elocutionists would lend a scene also. There was a great clatter of bandboxes, and piles of shawls in corners, and such a piece of work in getting up the curtain! In the midst of it came in the little boys, shouting, "All the tickets are sold, ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... his bag with a clatter upon the pavement, and his lips moved for a moment without any speech coming from them. Da Souza picked up the bag and devoutly hoped that none of his City friends were ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... fine summer morning - sunny, soft, and still. But through the air there runs a thrill of coming stir. King John has slept at Duncroft Hall, and all the day before the little town of Staines has echoed to the clang of armed men, and the clatter of great horses over its rough stones, and the shouts of captains, and the grim oaths and surly jests of bearded bowmen, billmen, ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... and a fine company of gentlefolks, men with powdered wigs and ladies with elegant toilettes, Maimon started back with a painful shock. An under-consciousness of mud-stained boots and a clumsily cut overcoat, mixed itself painfully with this impression of pretty, scented women, and the clatter of tongues and coffee-cups. He stood rooted to the threshold in a sudden bitter realization that the great world cared nothing about metaphysics. Ease, fine furniture, a position in the world—these were the things ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... pointed out, like one to whom minutes were hours. All this time he seemed to forget George who certainly had as much reason as himself for finding the time long. But when, after some half hour of this tedium and suspense, there rose from below the faint clatter of ascending footsteps, he remembered his meek companion and beckoning him to one side, began a studied conversation with him, showing him a note-book in which he had ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... had come to call, and call she would. Nothing daunted by his coolness, she hopped in. The robin was amazed; then declared war in his peculiar way,—first a hop of six inches, with wings spread, then a savage clatter of the bill. His guest met this demonstration quite calmly. She lowered her head, to defend herself if necessary, but made no other movement. Her calmness filled the robin with horror; he fled the ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... in great 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
... roar and boom—a deep murmur as of ten hundred million million moths humming away on a still evening in autumn! On a nearer view it is more like a Tower-of-Babel concern, with its click and clatter. The explosion of voices, the confused clamour, the dreadful disorder—cars, wagons, omnibuses—it makes you feel religious and rather cold down the back. What a needle in a haystack a poor girl must be here if there is nobody above to ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... uttered this remark, she felt a jewel producing itself in some mysterious way from the tip of her tongue, and saw it fall with a clatter into her plate. 'I'll pretend not to notice ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... the clatter of glasses, the rapping of knuckles, the bravos, and hears, are nothing more on all similar occasions than the reverberations of such an appeal. Captain W—— ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... a clatter of boots on the marble floor, as Payne and Granger, followed by the rest of the Englishmen, ran up the hall, cheering. They crowded round Dermot, nearly shook his arm off, thumped him on the back, ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... reference to the 'clatter aroused' by the first publication of the wonderful volume now reprinted, the first series of Poems and Ballads, Swinburne has said with tact, precision, and finality all that need ever be said on the subject. He records, with a touch of not unkindly humour, his own ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... another, till, the plug being pulled out of the barrel, the leaden shot began to pour out at a strange rate. At the bottom of the closet was placed a tin pan, and the shot falling upon this pan made such a clatter that George was frightened half out of ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... popping his head out of every window, and stumping up and downstairs with his wooden leg in such brisk and incessant motion, that, as we are informed by an authentic historian of the times, the continual clatter bore no small resemblance to the music of ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... little of that play I was telling you about last night"—she was picking up her papers with frantic haste as she spoke—"and I had no idea it was getting so late." She cast an appalled glance around the room, and hurried out to begin clearing off the table, making a great clatter with the dishes in ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... blacksmith. His shop stood on the bank of the river, not far from the dam. The great wheel below the flume rolled all day, throwing over its burden of diamond drops, and tilting the ponderous hammer with a monotonous clatter. What a palace of wonders to the boys was that grim and sooty shop!—the roar of the fires, as they were fed by the laboring bellows; the sound of water, rushing, gurgling, or musically dropping, heard in the pauses; the fiery shower of sparkles that flew when the trip-hammer fell; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... acquaintance of Mr. Langley, the steward has brought aft the dishes containing the cabin supper. A savory smell issues from the open sky-light, through which also ascends a ruddy gleam of light, the sound of cheerful voices, and the clatter of dishes. After the lapse of a few minutes the turns of Mr. Langley in pacing the deck grow shorter, and at last, ceasing to whistle and beginning to mutter, he walks up to the sky-light and looks down ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... meal after an early morning ride, and people have then not only good appetites but good spirits. Half-a-dozen kangaroo-dogs, attracted by the clatter of knives and the tempting savour that arose from the large dish of sheep's fry, crowded round the open door, whilst they seemed to feel keenly the selfishness of those who appropriated the whole of the feast to themselves. Every now and then arose a howl of anguish ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... britchka's top there fell some large drops of rain—"one, two, three:" then suddenly, and as though a roll of drums were being beaten over our heads, the whole countryside resounded with the clatter ...
— Boyhood • Leo Tolstoy
... at once, a kind of sputtering series of small explosions began to rip along the edge of the south wall. And now, machine-guns began to talk, with a dry, hard metallic clatter. And—though whence these came, Flint could not see—grenades began flying over the wall and bursting in the court. Though unwounded, men fell everywhere these gas-projectiles exploded—fell, stone dead and stiffening at once—fell, in strange, ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... of this 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
... announcement created the greatest dissatisfaction. The boxes might have borne the oppression, but the dignity of the pit was wounded. A war-cry was raised immediately. For some weeks previous to the opening, a continual clatter was kept up in clubs and coffee-rooms, against what was considered a most unconstitutional aggression on the rights of play-going man. The newspapers assiduously kept up the excitement, and represented, day after day, to the ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... exceedingly merry. The food they had left behind was enough for three Brownies at least, but this one managed to eat it all up. Only once, in trying to cut a great slice of beef, he let the carving-knife and fork fall with such a clatter that Tiny, the terrier, who was tied up at the foot of the stairs, began to bark furiously. However, he brought her her puppy, which had been left in a basket in a corner of the kitchen, and so ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... There came a clatter on the stairs which broke the reverie which held him, and he stepped forward to the door, peering out into the hall to see the cause of the unusual noise. An officer approached, and, tightly gripped by her right ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... to tell your Highness," said Bianca, "if you would permit me. So as I was rubbing the ring—I am sure I had not gone up three steps, but I heard the rattling of armour; for all the world such a clatter as Diego says he heard when the Giant turned him about ...
— The Castle of Otranto • Horace Walpole
... and rivers boiled, And how the shingles rattled! And oaks were scattered on the ground, As if the Titans battled; And all above was in a howl, And all below a clatter,— The earth was like a frying-pan, Or some ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... fastened on it in a glowering stare. Mackenzie braced himself for the storm of wrath which seemed bursting the doors of Swan Carlson's gloomy heart. But Swan did not speak. He picked up the chain, examined the cut link, threw it down with a clatter. At the sound of its fall Mackenzie saw Mrs. Carlson start. She turned her head, terror in her eyes, her face blanched. Swan bent over the basin, snorting water like ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... my heel was still painful, and feeling sorely begrimed. I saw the Pall Mall Gazette on the table by the door. I found the date was indeed to-day, and looking at the timepiece, saw the hour was almost eight o'clock. I heard your voices and the clatter of plates. I hesitated—I felt so sick and weak. Then I sniffed good wholesome meat, and opened the door on you. You know the rest. I washed, and dined, and now I am telling you ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... cried the 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
... staircase. It was like a game of "Follow my leader," and Rhoda could not but admire the ease and skill with which "Tom" avoided collision, and marshalled her party to its own table in the great dining-hall. When every one was seated, and grace said, the clatter of cups and saucers began, and Rhoda had her first ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... since he cannot see out of it he leaves off looking, and, picking up the lid of one of the tins, peers into it, as if trying to make a companion of his own face. It has grown very nearly dark. Suddenly the lid falls out of his hand with a clatter—the only sound that has broken the silence—and he stands staring intently at the wall where the stuff of the shirt is hanging rather white in the darkness—he seems to be seeing somebody or something ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... in the afternoon when they returned. Cousin Magdalen ran joyously up-stairs to the nursery carrying a very funnily-shaped parcel in her hand. The children were all at tea. She heard their voices and the clatter and tinkle that always accompanies a nursery meal as she came along the passage, and she opened the door so softly that for a moment or two she stood watching the little party before ...
— Hoodie • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... Trojans. There was no need to drive us, nor was a single harsh word spoken. Nothing was heard but the almost incessant clatter of the windlass pawls, abrupt monosyllabic orders, and the occasional melancholy wail of a gannet overhead. No word had been spoken on the subject among us, yet somehow we all realized that we were working ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... schedule, note, Cere, wax over, embalm,; cerel, Certes, certainly, Chafe, heat, decompose,; chafed, heated, Chaflet, platform, scaffold, Champaign, open country, Chariot (Fr charette), cart, Cheer, countenance, entertainment, Chierte, dearness, Chrism, anointing oil, Clatter, talk confusedly, Cleight, clutched, Cleped, called, Clipping, embracing, Cog, small boat, Cognisance, badge, mark of distinction, Coif, head-piece, Comfort, strengthen, help, Cominal, common, Complished, complete, Con, know, be ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... lived in an excessively small, unheated hall bedroom, on the fourth floor of an enormous old house filled with the clatter of the elevated railroad. On the night of the inquirer's call, she was pathetically concerned lest her visitor should catch cold because "she wasn't used to it." She lighted a small candle to show ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt
... the vans almost float on human beings. Now the streams slacken, and now they rush amain, but never cease; dark waves are always rolling down the incline opposite, waves swell out from the side rivers, all London converges into this focus. There is an indistinguishable noise—it is not clatter, hum, or roar, it is not resolvable; made up of a thousand thousand footsteps, from a thousand hoofs, a thousand wheels—of haste, and shuffle, and quick movements, and ponderous loads; no attention can resolve it into a ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... 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 ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge
... follow a great noise and uproar and hurry in the castle court-yard below; men shouting and calling to one another, the ringing of armor, and the clatter of horses' hoofs upon the hard stone. With the creaking and groaning of the windlass the iron-pointed portcullis would be slowly raised, and with a clank and rattle and clash of iron chains the drawbridge would fall crashing. Then over it would thunder ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... the habit of patronizing the place there floated to his ears such phrases as "bad colour scheme!" "sophomoric treatment!" "miserable drawing!" "no atmosphere!" But all that was years ago. When the writer dined there last, a month or so back, fragments of conversation caught from the clatter of the tongues of the Bohemians were: "Take it from me, kid!" "If old man Weinstein thinks he can put that over, he's got another guess coming!" "And then I give her the juice and we lost that super-six in the dust!" "Yes, Huggins ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... height, have the same perpendicularity. In some cases they rise sheer from the roadway with a vertical face of 450 ft. Unfortunately an energetically worked quarry has wrecked one side of the ravine, and the clatter of the machinery detracts considerably from the repose of the scene. Near the entrance of the pass a detached mass of rock roughly resembling a crouching lion guards it like a sentinel. At its feet is spread a pretty little sheet of water fed ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... hundred yards from a sea-battery, which we found mounted no less than ten long 18-pounders; and as they pointed directly on the reef, they could very soon have knocked us all to pieces. Fortunately, the garrison slept so soundly, or the rain and wind made such a clatter, that they did not discover us. Overboard we all jumped, and soon had the boats afloat, and pulling on, we reached a snug little sandy cove, surrounded by trees or jungle. Here the captain mustered us, and found that he had ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... towards the small hours of the morning, and the clatter of carriages dashing up to the door of the mansion, gave the signal to the guests that it was time to depart. No one had seen the odd-looking bundle that lay on the street steps, half buried in the snow, and which might have lain there until the morning had not some one stumbled ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... busily at work by the window, when the clatter of the well known hoofs sounded upon her ear, and she raised her eyes just in time to see her well remembered steed flying toward the mountain pass with the speed of lightning, while the frightened Araminta was clinging to his mane to prevent ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... which I had looked for, and I heard the clatter of horses' hoofs behind us, and knew that Monsieur de Puysange and his men were at hand to rescue the Lady Adeliza from my fine-looking young cousin, to put her into the bed of a rich fool. So I essayed ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... trap of a terrible kind. Comrade Ossipon had no settled conception now of what was happening to him. Catching his thigh against the end of the counter, he spun round, staggered with a cry of pain, felt in the distracting clatter of the bell his arms pinned to his side by a convulsive hug, while the cold lips of a woman moved creepily on his very ear to form ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... grass-grown lane that knew our romping feet leads nowhere now. But in my memory it is all as it was that day nearly forty years ago, and it is always summer there. The bees are droning among the forget-me-nots that grow along shore, and the swans arch their necks in the limpid stream. The clatter of the mill-wheel down at the dam comes up with drowsy hum; the sweet smells of meadow and field are in the air. On the bridge a boy and ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... 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, ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... his overflowing heart to his eager female listeners, who in turn relate, inquire, sympathize, or cheer. If I dare express a doubt that the path to victory will be a flowery one, eyes flash, cheeks burn, and tongues clatter, till all are checked up suddenly by a warning rap for "Order, order!" from the amiable lady presiding. Thus we swallow politics with every meal. We take a mouthful and read a telegram, one eye on table, the other on the paper. One ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... with every new pulse of his strength: the Genius of Brute Force, handsome as he was evil. And yet not evil, unless a wild beast is evil; which it probably is not. He soon reached us, pulled up short with a clatter of hoofs, and hailed me in a raw dialect, asking what I did, whence and who I was, whither I went, what I would? As he spake—looking at me with fierce eyes in which pride, suspicion, and the shyness of youth struggled and rent ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... said he, "to be sure I do. I have been that way often and often. That was the case when I was to Lowel factories, with the galls a taking of them off in the paintin' line. The dear little critters kept up such an everlastin' almighty clatter, clatter, clatter; jabber, jabber, jabber, all talkin' and chatterin' at once, you couldn't hear no blessed one of them; and they jist fairly stunned a feller. For nothin' in natur', unless it be perpetual motion, can equal a woman's tongue. It's most ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... a college dormitory at night! The rooms with their green-hooded lights and boyish similarity of decoration, the amiable buzz and stir of a game of cards under festoons of tobacco smoke, the wiry tinkle of a mandolin distantly heard, sudden clatter subsiding again into a general humming quiet, the happy sense of solitude in multitude, these are the partial ingredients of that feeling no alumnus ever forgets. In his pensive citadel, my friend J—— would be sitting, with his ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... it might seem—with startling distinctness, before being finally lost in the distance, as it is on clear, frosty nights. So with the sounds of horses' hoofs, stumbling on the rough bridle-track through the "saddle", the clatter of hoof-clipped stones and scrape of gravel down the hidden "siding", and the low sound of men's voices, blurred and speaking in monosyllables and at intervals it seemed, and in hushed, awed tones, as though they carried a corpse. To practical eyes, grown used to such ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... best, so that Nausicaa and her maidens might feast together. The fine clothes were piled into the wagon, the basket of food was placed carefully beside them, and Nausicaa climbed in, took the whip and shining reins, and touched the mules. Then with clatter of ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... the edge of the gangway with one of the Chittagong crew in the push to come aboard. The old lady's face puckered as she went over, but she was out in a second, and came aboard with the jolly crowd, smiling like the rest. The pretty girls drop their red and blue velvet sandals with a clatter on to our iron deck when they come up the gangway, shuffle their toes into them and waddle off to the stalls with an air. No—waddle is not the word, its a little body twist rather like that of our French cousins, and their frank look is Spanish, ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... flights of stairs with thunderous tread came Butch, Beef, Monty, Biff, Hefty, Pudge, Tug, Ichabod, Bunch, Buster, Bus Norton, and several second-team players, Cherub, Chub Chalmers, Don, Skeet, and Scoop Sawyer with his letter. With a terrific, blood-chilling clatter, and hideous howls, the Hicks-quelling Expedition roared down the third corridor of Bannister, and surged into the room of that tantalizing T. ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... on a raised dais by the cashier while he handed the little pile of hardly-earned shillings and coppers to each successive workman as the long procession filed past his table. It was usual with the employees to clatter away the instant that they had been paid, like so many children let out of school; but to-day they waited, forming little groups over the great dreary room, and discussing in subdued voices the misfortune which had come upon ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... repaired such machines as they could and returned to work. The clatter of mowing machines filled the valley; the horses were speeded up to recover lost time. Transley and Y.D. rode about, carefully scrutinizing the short grass for iron stakes, and keeping a general eye ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... snowing a little earlier in the evening, and the brief blast had swept the sky clean, so that even the brightest stars seemed sunken and waterlogged in the white floods of moonlight. Under my hand lay the city. Even the feet of the watch made no clatter on the pavements. The fresh-fallen snow masked the sound. The kennels of the blood-hounds were silent, for their dreadful tenants were abroad that night ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... yourself, where you may select what you wish to eat, have it at any hour you please, and pay for just what you order. This is not only less expensive, but far more quiet and comfortable after the fatigue of a journey, than the crowded and imposing table d'hote, with its never-ceasing clatter and chatter, where you will be lucky if you find a dish that will prove agreeable to your palate. Sometimes, however, the change is enjoyable, as you cannot fail to be amused at the eccentricities of your neighbours; ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... the door, and standing off to one side, tore it open with a ray from their pistols. It fell with a clatter to the rounded metal floor of the tube, and lay there vibrating noisily, but no rays of death lanced out from beyond it. Cautiously they peered around the corner of the long corridor, then seeing nothing, entered. Wade came next, then ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... famous Bohemian place in the city, the rendezvous of artists, sculptors, writers, physicians, and civil authorities. The military seldom patronized it, because it was not showy enough. Merrihew enjoyed the scene, with its jabber-jabber and its clatter-clatter. And he was still hungry when he left, but he would not admit it to Hillard, who adapted himself to the over-abundance of oil with all the zest ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... some chagrin, would, I believe, in spite of me, since they outnumbered me vastly, have forced Catherine into that rude pageant as Maid Marion. But while I was thrusting them aside, holding myself before her as firmly as I might, there came a quick clatter of hoofs, and Mistress Mary had dashed alongside on Merry Roger. She scattered the merry revellers right and left, calling out to her sister to go homeward with a laugh. "Fie on thee, Catherine!" she cried out. ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... box was nailed down, lines were taken from the harness of one of the teams standing by and were placed around the long box, and it was lowered with a splash into the hole. Then several men seized spades and the clods fell with clatter and echo. The men shoveled very hard, filling up the hole, and when it was full and heaped up, they patted it all over with the backs ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... body, a dimness in his mind, but he was conscious of her horse rearing, lifting its feet high—one of them a white-stockinged foot, as he marked with painful precision—and falling backward in a clatter of shod ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... don't know. But your uncle seems to be one of the people who make a great clatter about liberty and equality and the rights of man. And you know Aunt Estelle belonged to the old aristocracy in France. They wanted to guillotine her in the Terror. I don't think she will ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... that came down to Mrs. Brown made her laugh heartily. But it was a laugh of sympathy. She remembered that she had once been young herself. Presently the racket up-stairs subsided. Then came the clatter of noisy and eager feet on the stairs. And a moment later Henry and Willie skipped out of the door, tore through the gate, and went racing up the street toward Roy ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... ragged, unkempt garden in front of the tenement house was so trodden that the snow was packed and hard. The gate swung back with a jar and clatter, and two limp frosted hens flew shrieking out from the shelter of the ash-heap behind it. The door was open, and Helen could see the square of the entry, papered, where the plaster had not been broken away, with pale green ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... clad in mackinaws and heavy laced boots. Thompson, habitually diffident, asked no questions, struck up no conversations after the free and easy manner of the North. He laid down his bag and roll, sat awhile listening to the shift of feet and the clatter of cargo winches on deck and pierhead. Then, growing drowsy, he stretched himself on a cushioned seat with his bag for a ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... the clatter of dishes, the confused murmur of many voices, male and female—all the mingled sounds of a crowd ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill
... lithe and light withal, the wrath of battle and the hope of better times lifting up their hearts till nothing could withstand them. So was all mingled together, and for a minute or two was a confused clamour over which rose a clatter like the riveting of iron plates, or the noise of the street of coppersmiths at Florence; then the throng burst open and the steel-clad sergeants and squires and knights ran huddling and shuffling towards their horses; but some cast down their ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... affords the same wonder and delight. For it entices like the old, from stifling streets to the haunts of Pan. There do you find leafy walks, and dells of shade, and pathways by the great cool river leading to sequestered spots where you may sit and forget the clatter of flagstones and the stuffy apartment above them for which the rent is due; where the air of early June is perfumed by wild thyme and marjoram and the far-flung sweetness of new mown hay, and where the nightingales ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... so little that I care so little for it. The music I mean is what I hear, when, in a summer's afternoon, I carry my book out into the barn to read as I lie on a bed of hay. I don't read, but I listen. The cooing of the doves, the clatter even of the fowls in the barn-yard, the quiet noises, with the whisperings of the great elm, and the rustling of the brook in the field beyond,—all this is the music I like to hear. It puts me into delicious dreams, and stirs me, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... whispered to the members of the National Guard and the government, who slipped quietly out. The pastor, oblivious to this circumstance, went on with his sermon, but uneasiness arose in the congregation, and when at last the clatter of cavalry and the roll of artillery were heard passing the church all order was at an end. The worshippers rushed into the street in a mass, the preacher following. Within ten minutes a state of peace had been changed into ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... and modified his melodies. In himself he had the spirit of Nature, and it made his music come forth as it makes the flowers blow. The very spirit of the earth seemed to find its voice through him, the spirit of storm and the spirit of fair weather that sports when sweet rains make a musical clatter among the leaves. The music in which he found a voice for Nature cannot grow old while the earth renews its youth with each returning spring. In its pathos and in its joy the soul of seventeenth-century England is in his music in ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman
... Partington, as he shook a half handful of copper cents before her, grinning all the while like a rogue that he is; "have you found the hornicopia or has anybody given you a request?" She was a little anxious. "I got it from bets," said he, chucking them into the air, and allowing half of them to clatter and rattle about the floor with all the importance of dollars. "Got them from Bets, did you?" replied she; "and who is Bets that she should give you money?—she must be some low creature, or you would ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... town was in commotion; kettledrums and tomtoms were beating, and crackers and guns firing; the din and clatter was continuous and deafening. An eclipse of the sun was commencing—it was the 6th of April—"the sun was being swallowed by the Dog of Heaven," and the noise was to compel the monster to disgorge its prey. Five months ago the Prefect of the city had been advised of the impending ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... the sound, it is vibrating in the tendon Achilles. It is said by some, that salmon get accustomed to crimping; and I suppose that, in like manner, the American tympanum gets accustomed to this abominable clatter and noise. ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... 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?' ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous
... advance was maintained over the low kopjes, until by evening we were faced by the more serious line of the Pieter's Hills. The operations had been carried out with a monotony of gallantry. Always the same extended advance, always the same rattle of Mausers and clatter of pom-poms from a ridge, always the same victorious soldiers on the barren crest, with a few crippled Boers before them and many crippled comrades behind. They were expensive triumphs, and yet every one brought ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... sullen look; she rose slowly, dropping the slate with a clatter on her desk, whence it slid with a bang to the floor, without any effort on her part to arrest it. Miss Tucker did not observe—she was nearsighted—that in its fall, and in Henrietta's picking it up, it ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... the wheat; we followed it, counting the sheaves as they dropped with mechanical precision; we stepped along untiringly in its wake, as though the rough stubble were the smoothest of paths, and the clatter of the machine the sweetest of music. Above the raucous clacking I heard my mother calling, and, suspecting some needless injunction not to get overheated, I pretended not to hear and looked the other way. But she was insistent. When we had rounded the ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... the engine began to ring its warning bell, and the conductor to wave the people aboard, there was a loud clatter of hoofs, and the rickety old Lakerim carryall came dashing up, drawn by the lively horses Sawed-Off had once saved from destroying themselves and the Dozen in one fell swoop down a steep hill. The carryall lurched up to the station came ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... in great cities Thrums is only a small place, but what a clatter of life it has for me when I come to it from my school-house in the glen. Had my lot been cast in a town I would no doubt have sought country parts during my September holiday, but the school-house is quiet even when ...
— A Window in Thrums • J. M. Barrie
... out, with cheerful hearts, and accompanied by men and animals all of whom and which were equally cheerful. They filled the whole Earth with the loud clatter of their wheels. Their praises hymned by eulogists and Sutas and Magadhas and bards, and supported by their own army, they looked like so many Adityas adorned with their own rays. With the white umbrella held over his head, king Yudhishthira shone ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... on their hats, and left the room with considerable clatter, only first of all each small pair of legs made for Grannie's chair, each rosy pair of lips bestowed a vigorous kiss upon her apple-blossom cheeks. She patted them on their shoulders, smiled at them with happy eyes full of ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... 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 away to hunt bugs in the garden. A splendid cock stood on the wall, and crowed so loud ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... well. Glints of red snapped and sparkled in the east; a few late stars loitered along the broad, clean skies. A jerky clatter of iron on rock echoed from the cliffs. That was the four hobbled horses, browsing on the hillside: they snuffed and snorted cheerfully, rejoicing in the freshness of dawn. From a limestone bluff, ten feet behind the bed, came ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... 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 Jaeger undervest ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... of one's eyelids, one feels and perceives with a restless lucidity of the inner vision. Images chase through one's mind, a kaleidoscopic stream, shifting incessantly, going and coming, and finally reducing the soul to a state of torture. The sybaritic meal with its clatter of plates, its talking and music, was still whirling through Frederick's brain. He heard the vaudeville actor declaiming. The half-ape was holding Mara in his arms. Hahlstroem in all his height was looking on, smiling. The waves were rolling heavily against the tiny dining-room and pressing ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... glares of vivid light, and the spots of their falling were marked by gushes of smoke and upflung billowing clouds of thick dust. So far the noise was only and all of guns and shell fire, but now from far out on one of the flanks a new note began to weave itself into the uproar—the sharper crackle and clatter ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... feeling very nervous, hurried to the schoolroom, from whose open windows came the clatter ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... own complex discords, and pleased, like boys in the street, with the alarms it made, only cared for that part of Browning which represented the tangle and the clash, and ignored his final melody. But of late it has begun, tired of the restless clatter of intellectual atoms, to desire to hear, if possible, the majestic harmonies in which the discords are resolved. And at this point many at present and many more in the future will find their poetic and religious satisfaction in Browning. At the ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... warm handshakes, and sad "au revoirs" the horsemen set off at a trot on the road to Dives. Chauvel saw them disappear in the mist, but he waited at the deserted crossroads as long as he could hear the clatter of their horses' hoofs ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... with a final jerk that made the little craft tremble to her keel, the big single sail filled, and the felucca careened to her bearings, as her canvas caught the full pressure of the wind. At the same instant I heard an oar-blade clatter as it was hastily laid in, and an exultant cheer arise from immediately under ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... the sea; then you recognize it by its vibration; one moment smothered in a deep cutting, and the next sent echoing from some hillside. Sometimes it runs smoothly for many minutes, and then breaks suddenly into a rhythmic clatter, always changing in distance and intensity. When it comes near, you should get into a tunnel, and stand there while it passes. I did that once, and it was like the last page of an overture by Beethoven—thunderingly impetuous. ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... by the regular whistling sounds of his plane, while from the locksmith's quarters came a clatter ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... of a file of infantry or a troop of dismounted dragoons. We hobble as fast as possible to the window, and are sure to see some chappie of about five feet high stumping on the pavement with his most properly named cuddy-heels; and we stake our credit, we never yet heard a similar clatter from any of his majesty's subjects of a rational and gentlemanly height—We mean from five feet eleven (our own height) ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 326, August 9, 1828 • Various
... comparatively 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, ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... the Casino and people were standing on tables and chairs to watch. There wasn't a sound from that large crowd. The dice bounced back from the board with a clatter loud in the silence and tumbled over ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... tail end of the regiment was passing, the materiel of the batteries, prolonges, forges, forage-wagons, succeeded by the rag-tag, the spare men and horses, and then all vanished in a cloud of dust at another turn in the road amid the gradually decreasing clatter of hoofs and wheels. ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... just what happened! In another moment the barrel on which Russ sat fell apart, and with a clatter and clash of staves he toppled in on Laddie. Then the chairs, behind the barrel, where Rose, Vi and Margy and Mun were sitting, toppled over. In another instant the whole steamboat load of children was all upset in the middle of the playroom floor, having made ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Grandma Bell's • Laura Lee Hope
... at the river that flowed past the station. It was narrow and filled with ships, and the water looked gray and dirty. A pall of black smoke covered the sky. From all sides of him and even in the air above his head a great clatter and roar of ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... the girls continued their chatter, and their high-shrieking trebles arose triumphant above all the clatter. It was American girlhood rampant on the shield of their native land. Still there was something about the foolish young faces and the inane chatter and laughter which was sweet and even appealing. They became attractive from their audaciousness and their ignorance that ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... was arrested by several loud yelps, which sounded as if some creature were approaching them fast. Bunco signed to them to stoop and follow him. They did so, and had not advanced a hundred yards when the loud clatter of hoofs was heard. Bunco crouched instantly and held his gun in readiness, while his black eyes glittered and his expressive features seemed to blaze with eagerness. His followers also crouched among the ...
— Lost in the Forest - Wandering Will's Adventures in South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... the ground. It was a good height; but to an active lad like him the fall was nothing, and he would have made no noise had not a tin pan been set up against the wall. He kicked it over, and, as he was running off, he found himself collared by three stout fellows, drawn to the spot by the clatter it made. ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston |
