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More "Hum" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... after the guardsman had returned to his duties. Eight o'clock had struck on the great clock of Versailles, and it was almost time for the monarch to rise. Through all the long corridors and frescoed passages of the monster palace there was a subdued hum and rustle, with a low muffled stir of preparation, for the rising of the king was a great state function in which many had a part to play. A servant with a steaming silver saucer hurried past, bearing it to Monsieur de St. Quentin, the state barber. Others, with clothes thrown ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... ye a piece: ye'll aiblins un'erstan' that!" said Donal, as he turned to leave the corn for the grass, where Hornie was eating with the rest like the most innocent of hum'le (hornless) animals. Gibbie obeyed, and followed, as, with slow step and downbent face, Donal led the way. For he had tucked his club under his arm, and already his greedy eyes were fixed on the book he had carried ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... exercise of leaping water-falls and forging up boiling rapids had developed these sturdy mountaineer trout into prodigies of strength and endurance. Even now my nerves tingle to the tips of my toes as in fancy I hear my reel hum or see the tip of my five ounce split bamboo bend so as to ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... veranda the clink of glass and china, the low hum of merry chat, the sound of half-smothered laughter, fell upon the ear and vexed her with its careless jollity. Impatiently she threw herself upon the other—the left—side, and ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... A hum of voices told us my two anglers were approaching, and with Rebecca's quieting hand on the pusillanimous Robelia we drew into hiding and saw them cross the corner of a clearing and vanish again downstream. Then, hearing the coach, we went to ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... went over for the oxen, Mrs. Perkins came out bareheaded to make kind inquiries for his wife and family. From within came the mellow hum of the cream-separator, as Martha, the steady member of the family, ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... about the house. He would have found that the hamlet was composed of extensive stables and barns, with shops and houses, within which mechanics were plying their trades with the ring of hammers, the clack of looms, and the hum of spinning-wheels-all for the plantation; whilst on a lower hill farther to the rear were the servants' quarters laid out ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... capsules. They lifted the helmet of clear, darkened plastic over his head, and dogged it to the gasket with the automatic turnbuckles. By then, Gimp Hines' own quick fingers, in the gloves, were busy snapping this and adjusting that. There was a sleepy hum of ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... Dust maverick paces uneasily about in the circular corral and the Quarter Circle KT has settled into the hum-drum routine of ranch life. ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... in you, my Soul ... Loaf with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat;... Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice. I mind how once we lay, such a transparent summer morning. Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument of the earth, And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own, And I know that the spirit of ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... were gone, when she emerged into the porch, and locked the door. As she passed the school-house she could hear the busy hum of voices. Her friend had begun his labours only on that day. The noise grew louder, and, looking back, she saw the boys come trooping out and disperse themselves with merry shouts and play. 'It's a good thing,' thought the child, 'I am very glad they pass ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... "Hum! that depends. The lady you so flatter can't abide dullness and inaction, and too much stupidity might overcome her natural timidity, in which case even my ardent old pursuer could not scare me into submission and banishment. If I could only find an ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... reality everything was in due order, from the men's tents to the ranging of the elephants, who, relieved of their loads, were quietly lifting up great bunches of grass and tucking them into their capacious jaws. Over all rose a loud hum of many voices, and soon to this was added the click of knives and forks from the English mess and the rattle of plates. Amongst the Malays great leaves did duty for the latter, and all ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... about the same moment that Mrs. Oswald Carey received the bank-notes from Mr. Bugbee—the hum of conversation ceased in this meeting of the Royalists, and all eyes were turned toward a table in the centre of the long drawing-room, where stood John Dacre, who had just entered the room, his hands ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... sea gave light to the interior, that would have been dull and mean but for the brilliant delf upon the dresser rack and the cleanliness of all things and the smiling faces of Jean Clerk and her sister. The hum of Jean's wheel had filled the chamber as he entered; now it was stilled and the spinner sat with the wool pinched in her fingers, as she welcomed her little relative. Her sister—Aliset Dhu they called ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... Buz. Hum, it will not be safe to dreame of a knave shortly. Are you so good at a gun? if you use this too often your birding piece will scarce carry ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... present at its debut, being at the time in General Sanford's stationary observing helicopter which, through the agency of the power supplied by a Mernickian transformer, hung motionless as a bee fifteen thousand feet in the air. Only the treble hum of the air turbine could be heard faintly through the transparent walls of the observatory constructed of the annealed clersite, which has taken the place of the unsatisfactory glass used by our forefathers. The toughness ...
— The Sword and the Atopen • Taylor H. Greenfield
... not sufficient to rouse the sleeper, easily incorporate themselves into his dreams. The ticking of a watch, the stroke of a clock, the hum of an insect, the song of a bird, the patter of rain, are common stimuli to the dream-phantasy. M. Alf. Maury tells us, in his interesting account of the series of experiments to which he submitted ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... Murderers' Row in Folsom, the drowsy hum of flies in my ears as I ponder that thought of Pascal. It is true. Just as the human embryo, in its brief ten lunar months, with bewildering swiftness, in myriad forms and semblances a myriad times multiplied, ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... rode into the market, conscious of a buzz which rose to a loud hum. The bellowing of beasts, the cries of vendors, the scuffling of many feet, all blended into one great sound—the voice of ...
— Millennium • Everett B. Cole
... wanders through the streets of this populous city, can scarcely form an idea of the different appearance they presented in the primitive days of the doubter. The busy hum of multitudes, the shouts of revelry, the rumbling equipages of fashion, the rattling of accursed carts, and all the spirit-grieving sounds of brawling commerce, were unknown in the settlement of New Amsterdam. The grass grew quietly in the highways—the bleating sheep and frolicksome calves sported ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... by distance into tawny velvet, seeming only the more spacious because of the straight, thin lines of barbed-wire fences lined with goldenrod, and solitary houses in willow groves. The dips and curves of the rolling plain drew him on; the distances satisfied his eyes. A pleasant hum of insects filled the land's wide ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... Dr. Shalt stood up and looked at his watch. "It's time," he said. "Turn up the resonator." He moved closer to the receiving set as the others gathered around him. The low hum of the monitor signal became louder as the technician switched on a new lever. The static emerging from the speaker thickened, obliterating all other noises. Another ...
— The Second Voice • Mann Rubin
... to some cattle, which were so fat that their hides glistened a long way off, and when he had got past them he came to a fine, big palace. He walked through many rooms without meeting anybody. At last he heard the hum of a spinning wheel, and when he entered the room he found the eldest Princess sitting there spinning copper yarn; the room and everything in it was ...
— East of the Sun and West of the Moon - Old Tales from the North • Peter Christen Asbjornsen
... writing for them," said Mr. Montfort, calmly. "He is, you may remember, a relation of theirs, a father in point of fact. He has found an excellent opening in California, and means to stay there. He says—I'll read you his letter, or the part of it that relates to the children. Hum—'grateful to you'—ha! yes, here it is. 'Of course I must make some arrangement about the children. One of the boys can come to me, but I cannot take care of both, so Basil will have to go to boarding-school, and Susan D., too. If you would be so good as to look up a good school ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards
... song somewhere. As the wine waggon creaks down the hill, the waggoner will chant to the corn that grows upon either side of him. As the miller's mules cross the bridge, the lad as he cracks his whip will hum to the blowing alders. In the red clover, the labourers will whet their scythes to a trick of melody. In the quiet evenings a Kyrie Eleison will rise from the thick leaves that hide a village chapel. On the hills the goatherd, high in air amongst the arbutus branches, will scatter on ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... He began to hum under his breath a sweet wandering melody. And suddenly he sprang up, and ran to the piano. He played the air with his left hand, embroidering it with delicate arabesques and variations, catching a bass here and there with a flying touch, suggesting ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and set them on fire. The chief then made a sign to Philip, to ask him if he was hungry; Philip replied in the affirmative, when his new acquaintance put his hand into a bag made of goat-skin, and pulled out a handful of very large beetles, and presented them to hum. Philip refused them with marks of disgust, upon which, the chief very sedately cracked and ate them; and having finished the whole handful, rose, and made a sign to Philip to follow him. As Philip rose, he perceived floating on the surf, his ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... said the Idiot, "but with me it's a question of can and can't. I'm willing to attack you personally, but while I live no other shall do so. Wherefore I tell Mr. Brief plainly, and to his face, that if he says you ever sang a comic song he says what is not so. You might hum one, but sing it—never!" ...
— The Idiot • John Kendrick Bangs
... cattle and poultry had been housed, and the herdsmen, standing at the gates of the village cattle-pens, amid the trailing dust lately raised by their charges, were awaiting the milk-pails and a summons to partake of the eel-broth. Through the dusk came the hum of humankind, and the barking of dogs in other and more distant villages; while, over all, the moon was rising, and the darkened countryside was beginning to glimmer to light again under her beams. What a glorious picture! Yet no one thought of admiring it. ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... Vitus, but a sort of double-shuffle, with a stamp of the right foot at the end—in which he was prone to indulge, consciously and unconsciously, at all times, and the tendency to which he sometimes found it difficult to resist. He was beginning to hum the sharply-defined air to which he was in the habit of performing this dance, when little Diana said, in a silvery voice quite ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... no windows, and the roar of the New York street outside was gone, or faint as the hum of a hive. The walls were hung with fabrics of wool or silk, in dull greens and reds, and the floor was spread with rugs. With mouth redly ravening at him, and eyes emitting opalescent gleams, lay a great tiger-skin rug, upon which, on ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... ending in a settled and heavy rain. This change of weather had an odd effect upon the crowd, the whole of which was at once put into new commotion, and overshadowed by a world of umbrellas. The waver, the jostle, and the hum increased in a tenfold degree. For my own part I did not much regard the rain—the lurking of an old fever in my system rendering the moisture somewhat too dangerously pleasant. Tying a handkerchief ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... "Oh, hum," sighed Marjorie, as she stood looking out of the playroom window, "I do believe I'll ...
— Marjorie's Busy Days • Carolyn Wells
... and other troops, amounting in the whole to 60,000 men. On the 30th of November this great force assembled in the forest of Rangoon, fronting the great Shoedagon pagoda. On the following night the low hum of voices proceeding from the encampment suddenly ceased, and it was succeeded by the distant but gradually increasing sounds of a multitude moving stealthily through the woods. The British commander soon became aware that the enemy's masses had approached ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... I heard cannon—so far away that the hum of the cannonade was no louder than the panting of our horses on the white hill-road, and I could hear it only when the carriage ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... (1613), describing the smaller vessels of Malacca which he calls balos in ch. 13, De Embarcacoes, says: "At the poop they have two rudders, one on each side to steer with." E por poupa dos ballos, tem 2 lemes, hum en cada lado pera o governo. (Malacca, l'Inde merid. et le Cathay, Bruxelles, 1882, 4to, f. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... keep me on this preposterous charge. A single wire to Berlin would settle the matter, but then there would be a delay. I would not reach Paris until six o'clock at night. Wedel had insisted that I be there at noon. Hum! ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... but what a motion you gave her when you made her ride the waves—a motion as rhythmic as the dance of a goddess! Wayworth took long London walks and thought of these things—London poured into his ears the mighty hum of its suggestion. His imagination glowed and melted down material, his intentions multiplied and made the air a golden haze. He saw not only the thing he should do, but the next and the next and the next; the future opened before him and he seemed ...
— Nona Vincent • Henry James
... as he paid the man and led Mr. Cupples into a long paneled room set with many tables and filled with a hum of talk. "This is the house of fulfilment of craving, this is the bower with the roses around it. I see there are three bookmakers eating pork at my favorite table. We will have that one ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... and how are you?" he began in a deep, sonorous voice, of which he was evidently rather proud. "How are you, Valentine? So this is Basil's son?—hum! What's ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... to hum a soft tune. Someone else brought forth a harmonica that had been smuggled aboard, and suddenly Paul Chernov burst into song, his deep baritone, perhaps inspired by the captain's speech earlier in the day, lending the wailing "The Spaceman's Lament," ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... Martingdon-ford, on the north side of the Nith. This latter place was secluded, commanded a view of the distant hills, and the romantic towers of Lincluden, and afforded soft greensward banks to rest upon, within sight and (p. 160) sound of the stream. As soon as he was heard to hum to himself, his wife saw that he had something in his mind, and was prepared to see him snatch up his hat, and set silently off for his musing-ground. When by himself, and in the open air, his ideas arranged themselves in their natural order—words came at will, and he seldom ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... her walls were in ruins, her haughty flag was humbled to the dust; her gates lay open to a hostile power, and terms were dictated in the palace of her princes. A year passed, the hostile squadron had left her ports, the clang of the workman's hammer, the hum of busy men resounded through her streets, fresh walls had risen, new and more formidable batteries had been added; again she resumed her attitude as of yore, bid defiance to her foes, and declared war on civilization:—again ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... creepers, and innumerable quantities of the Angustifolia in splendid flower, many of the clusters occupying a space of three feet in diameter, with a proportionate stem of about five feet from the earth. The hum of insects, and sudden disturbance of rich-coloured parrots, screaming and fluttering through the branches, and the strong, short, rapid flight of the dove, with its melancholy cooing, transported us in imagination a long way inland, whereas we were not three ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... of a moving host, Blackening the clear green earth, Vainly 'gainst that thin wall The trumpets call, Or with loud hum The smoke-bemuffled drum: From that high ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... going yearly with gold to purchase cotton goods and other merchandise. In ancient times the country was so rich in this metal that several hundredweight (seis, sete, e mais candiz, de que trez fazem hum moyo) were exported in one season. Volume 3 page 178. LINSCHOTEN, 1601. "At Menancabo excellent poniards made, called creeses; best weapons of all the orient. Islands along the coast of Sumatra, called ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... upstairs, hurry or to "catch the car." He must not get angry or excited. Games of all kinds that have a tendency to make him nervous must be avoided. The same caution applies to exciting literature. In short, a patient with organic heart disease must be a drone in the hum of this busy, fast-rushing life, if he would hope to keep the spark of life for many years. Sleep, rest and quiet is a better motto for ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... wounded were brought in for a while. The bearers were obeying the surgeon's order and were taking a rest. The officers and sisters in the theatre were in high spirits. They were trying to speak French and ridiculing each other's efforts. Captain Wycherley began to hum a tune and wave his amputation knife like the conductor of an orchestra, whereupon the others locked arms and danced up and down the theatre, talking and joking. Then Captain Calthrop broke away and danced by himself, kicking ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... not heard of Mount Olympus,—that high abode of all the powers of type, that favoured seat of the great goddess Pica, that wondrous habitation of gods and devils, from whence, with ceaseless hum of steam and never-ending flow of Castalian ink, issue forth fifty thousand nightly edicts for the governance of ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... here he was, not only in his seat, but on his legs! The favourable grace, the air of courteous attention, which is always shown to a new member when he first speaks, was extended also to Melmotte. There was an excitement in the thing which made gentlemen willing to listen, and a consequent hum, ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... care, so that men passing by in ships should rejoice at his good works and call him brother lighthouse-keeper, and glorify God their Father when they walked again upon the grass, harking to the pleasant song of birds and the hum ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... over books of exceptionally large type; but his ear became at last so accustomed to these slight noises from the other part of the house that he almost could witness the scenes they signified. A faint beat of half-seconds conjured up Thomasin rocking the cradle, a wavering hum meant that she was singing the baby to sleep, a crunching of sand as between millstones raised the picture of Humphrey's, Fairway's, or Sam's heavy feet crossing the stone floor of the kitchen; a light boyish step, and a ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... the isle is full of noises Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices, That, if I then had waked after long sleep Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming, The clouds, methought, would open and shew riches Ready to drop on me: that when I wak'd I ...
— Dark Lady of the Sonnets • George Bernard Shaw
... suggestions; she had books which took diametrically the opposite point of view in some matters. There were some warm discussions between the ladies, and a spirit of rebellion took possession of the wife. This was emphasized by the fact that she found herself very lonely and longed secretly for the hum and stir of the office; for the deference and the courtesy she had received there. Further, the distracted husband, in his roles of husband and son, found himself displeasing both his wife and his mother. He tried to get the girl to subordinate herself, since he knew ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... wretch is there about? We are all Grenadiers and May-poles in this house except him. Well, let him go. I dare say somebody else—hum—and Uncle Clifford has told me more than once I ought to look higher. I couldn't well look lower than five feet nothing. Ha! ha! ha! I ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... white-topped wagons,—and a thousand fires gleam through the faint moonlight. Our band is playing near the General's quarters, its strains are echoed by a score of regimental bands, and their music is mingled with the numberless noises of camp, the hum of voices, the laughter from the groups around the fires, the clatter of hoofs as some rider hurries to the General, the distant challenges of the sentries, the neighing of horses, the hoarse bellowing of the mules, and the clinking of the cavalry anvils. This, at last, is the romance of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... strange mystery of the island, only another element in the atmosphere of fear and wonder that surrounded him. Then it rose a little, and he became suddenly sharply conscious of it as an additional menace. The sound was not loud, but deep and vibrant. A whir or hum, like that of a powerful, muffled motor, but deeper than the sound of any motor man has ever made. It came down the gorge, from the direction of ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... have been very strong, to induce Johnson to pass so much of his time away from "the busy hum of men" in Fleet Street, and "the full tide of human existence" at Charing Cross. He often found fault with Mrs. Thrale for living so much in the country, "feeding the chickens till she starved her understanding." Walking in a wood when it rained, she tells ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... tell the people there the whole truth, and beg them to write to Mrs. MacDougall. Perhaps she would come to Edinburgh and fetch them home. That would be the end of all their troubles. How glad she would be to come to the end of them, even though it meant going back to the old quiet hum-drum life. After all, Duncan had been really the wiser when he wanted her to write to their father instead of going to find him. She wished now she ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... by no crime and urged by no desire For more than true and honest hearts require, They feel the calm delight, and thus proceed Through the green lane,—then linger in the mead,— Stray o'er the heath in all its purple bloom,— And pluck the blossom where the wild bees hum; Then through the broomy bound with ease they pass, And press the sandy sheep-walk's slender grass, Whore dwarfish flowers among the grass are spread, And the lamb browses by the linnet's bed; Then 'cross the bounding brook ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... Sol looked very grave. "Issy, I can see your finish. You'll have to pay for somethin' that's priceless, and how are you goin' to do that? 'Old family glass,' hey? Hum! And I thought I saw the label of a Boston store ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... back, and began to walk back and forth. Just then Rieke came in and began to clear off the table. She went about her business in a slow but noisy fashion. She made things rattle, even if she could not make them hum. When she was through, Jason Philip, his hands pressed to his hips, his elbows protruding, planted himself ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... at once these eyes became fixed and dismayed; the joyful hum, which hitherto had filled the air as though it were a vast multitude of gnats playing in the sun, ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... slopes of the valley on either side in their little stone cottages; right up from the river to the Val d'Erraha— that sunny valley of repose which lies far above the capital of Majorca, far above the hum of life and sound ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... the excitement of a race about it. Chirp, chirp, chirp! cricket a mile ahead. Hum, hum, hum—m—m! kettle making play in the distance, like a great top. Chirp, chirp, chirp! cricket round the corner. Hum, hum, hum-m-m! kettle sticking to him in his own way; no idea of giving in. Chirp, chirp, chirp, cricket fresher than ever. Hum, hum, hum-m-m! kettle slow ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... quietness of the solemn hills, far removed alike from the ambitious strife of cities and the bloody spectacles of war. Lying amid the solitudes of the mountains, where no sounds fall on the ear but the bleating of flocks, the lowing of cattle, the hum of bees, the baying of a watch-dog from the lonely homestead, the murmur of hidden rills, the everlasting rush of the waterfall as it plunges flashing into its dark, foaming pool, pastoral are eminently peaceful scenes. Indeed, the best emblem of peace which a great painter has been able to present ...
— The Angels' Song • Thomas Guthrie
... said Mary Leonard, after she had dismissed the driver with orders to call for them later in the day. They walked on over the crisp dry grass, and seated themselves on a bit of the fallen masonry. The reaches of the placid river lay before them, and the hum of the alert cricket was in their ears. Now and then a bird flew surreptitiously from one bush to another, with the stealthy, swift motion of flight in autumn, so different from the heedless, fluttering, hither-and-yon vagaries of the spring ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... months; and in that truest of fictions, 'The History of the Plague Year', Defoe shows death, with every accompaniment of pain and terror, stalking through the narrow streets of old London, and changing their busy hum into a silence broken only by the wailing of the mourners of fifty thousand dead; by the woful denunciations and mad prayers of fanatics; and by the ...
— On the Advisableness of Improving Natural Knowledge • Thomas H. Huxley
... themselves); but, at any rate, it was clear that she was going to make a struggle for her life, and to do vicious damage, it might be, before she yielded it up. The watchers behind the arrow-slits recognized this. Their wagers, and the hum of their appreciation, swept loudly round the ring ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... lay between the two clumps of woods. It was not worth while for either side to try to get possession of the intervening space. At the first movement by either French or Germans the woods opposite would hum with rifle fire and echo with cannonading. So, like rival parties of Arctic explorers waiting out the Arctic winter, they watched each other. But if one force or the other napped and the other caught him at it, then winter would not stay a brigade ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... lov'd the noise when storms were blowing, And billows with billows fought furiously, Of Magh Maom's kine the ceaseless lowing, And deep from the glen the calves' feeble cry; The noise of the chase from Slieve Crott pealing, The hum from the bushes Slieve Cua below, The voice of the gull o'er the breakers wheeling, The vulture's scream, over the sea flying slow; The mariners' song from the distant haven, The strain from the hill ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... intoxicating. There is such a curious sight of a crowd of men carrying huge blocks of stone up out of a boat. One sees exactly how the stones were carried in ancient times; they sway their bodies all together like one great lithe animal with many legs, and hum a low chant to keep time. It is quite unlike any carrying heavy ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... imperative sign of silence, for there was a faint stir and subdued hum of expectation in the crowd. Another moment,—and Lotys stepped quietly and alone on the bare platform. As she confronted her audience, a low passionate sound, like the murmur of a rising storm, greeted her,—a sound that was not anything like the customary ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... side a fate-charged, tiny tot, dabbling in the water, mocking the songs of the birds, and ever turning her face, with its great brown wistful eyes, to catch the breath of destiny and to hear the sad dread hum of the future. But my old chum Billy Little ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... of champagne, a kind of hum makes itself heard, which, when divested of casual accessories and resolved into its primal element, is found to be James telling a story, and this goes on for a long time, encroaching sometimes even upon what must universally be recognised as the crowning point of a Forsyte feast—'the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... first breakfast under the great oak-tree. The air, the sunlight, the rippling waters of the lake, the white clouds in the blue sky, the great trunks of the trees, the rustling of the leaves, the songs of the birds, the hum of insects, the brightness of everything, their wonderful appetites—the sense of all these things more ...
— The Associate Hermits • Frank R. Stockton
... trellis," said Anne softly. She spoke in a rapt way, as if she had said, "There are angels choiring under the trees. We can hum their songs." ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... his memory? For the robin cherups his mate to please, The blue bird pipes in the poplar trees, The meadow lark warbles his jubilees, Shrilling his song in the azure seas, Till the welkin throbs to his melodies; And low is the hum of the humble bees, And the Feast of the Virgins is ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... have been more sudden and complete if, from a gaily lighted modern street, full of hum and bustle, they had fallen down an oubliette into a dark, deserted fairyland. Just outside was the imported life of Paris, but this old town was Turkish, Arab, Moorish, Jewish and Spanish; and in Algeria old ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... a-journeyin' through foreign countries, a-carryin' the thought with us that we took our breakfast in our own hum, and that we should sleep there that night, but for all that we wuz in Turkey, and Japan, and Dahomey, ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... nine o'clock. The roll of vehicles and hum of voices filled the air, a mighty morning-choir mingled with the footsteps of the pedestrians, and the crack of the hack-drivers' whips. The clamorous traffic everywhere exhilarated me at once, and I began to feel more and more contented. Nothing was farther ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... lines or streets of floating mills anchored securely in the river. Each mill—a small house with sloping roof, and with so few windows that one wonders how the millers ever manage to see their grist—is built upon two boats. The musical hum of its great wheel is heard for a long distance, and warns one of the approach toward these pacific industries. The miller is usually on the lookout, and sometimes, when a large steamer is coming up, and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... castellated poops. Their great guns gleamed; mast and spar and rigging made network against the blue; high in air floated bright pennants and the red cross in the white field. To and fro plied small boats, while over the water to them in the wherry came a pleasant hum of preparation for the morrow's sailing. Upon the Cygnet, lying next to the Mere Honour, and a very noble ship, ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... by several yards from one another, so that while the guests were all partaking of dinner at the same time, the hum of voices, the clatter of knives and forks, the braying of the brass instruments which were performing in the space between the two parties, and the necessary attention to the wants of the visitors, quite prevented those presiding in the principal ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... text "Lam yanub al-Whidu min-hum nisf haffn." [I cannot explain this sentence satisfactory to myself, but by inserting "ill" after "min-hum." Further I would read "nassaf"libavit, delibavit degustavit (Dozy, Suppl. s. v.) and "Hifn," pl. of "Hafna"handful, mouthful, small quantity, translating ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... I fished out my watch, regarding it in silence, listening to the hum of the approaching train, which ought presently to bear her away into the North, where nothing could menace her except the brilliant pitfalls of a Christian civilization. But I stood there, temporizing, unable to utter a word as her train shot ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... one o'clock in the afternoon. Shopping is at its height at the "Nouveaute's de Paris," a drapery establishment in one of the Arcades. There is a monotonous hum of shopmen's voices, the hum one hears at school when the teacher sets the boys to learn something by heart. This regular sound is not interrupted by the laughter of lady customers nor the slam of the glass door, nor the scurrying of ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the entrance to the palace. Two came, but no governor. At 2:30 several gentlemen were waiting near the office door. At three no governor had arrived. At five minutes past three, we noticed that hum of excitement and expectation which usually heralds some great event, and looking down the street, saw the governor pompously approaching. As he passed, hats were removed and profound salutations given. Waiting until he had entered the office, we walked up to the reception room, where ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... sorrow, invited her to divide her time among them, and make their homes her own. One of her eccentricities (and she had more than one,) was a passion for spinning on a little wheel. Its monotonous hum had long been the music of her lonely life; the distaff, with its swaddling bands of flax, the petted child of her affections, and the thread which she manufactured the means of her daily support. Wherever she went, her wheel preceded her, as an avant ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... clear weather. But in reality there was not much less folding of the hands with her in September than there was in July. She was apt, on the coolest and clearest September day, to drop into a chair with a deep drawn "Oh, hum!" after the fatigue of bringing in an apronful of apples, or driving the hens away from her chrysanthemums, and she spent a good deal of time wondering how, with all she had to do, she was ever going to get those flowers in ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... publishes them from time to time for the pleasure of other children. The secret of his success is partly that he knows that even small children like a story to be an adventure; partly that he understands how their own romances, the things they picture or hum to themselves when well-meaning adults are not worrying them, or rather, trying to amuse them, begin—wherever they may end!—with a perfectly tangible object, such as a pillar-box, a rag-doll or a toy locomotive. One of "The ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... from the transport, only the continuing hum of a contact still open between the dome and the control cabin miles above Warlock. The Terran breathed slowly, deeply, felt the claws of the Throg bite his flesh as his chest expanded. Then, as if a knife slashed, the hum of ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... if you'd have me repeat; Plague of this Rogue, he will betray the Cheat. [He speaks louder, it answers indirectly. —Hum—There 'tis again, Pox of your Eccho with a Northern Strain. Well—This will be but a nine days Wonder too; There's nothing lasting but the Puppets Show. What Ladies Heart's so hard, but it would move, To hear Philander and ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... the skill of Mr. Green I ascended with him from the Jamaica, Tea-gardens, Rotherhithe, amidst the acclamations of the multitude, whose forms and voices soon passed away; the busy hum of men (with us) ceased in a few seconds, and a solemn stillness reigned over the metropolis. The serenity of the evening threw a degree of solemnity over the scene, which had the effect of enchantment. We never lost sight of the earth, for ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XIII, No. 376, Saturday, June 20, 1829. • Various
... snapped short off with a loud crack, the ticklish canoe careened suddenly to one side, then righted again with a sullen splash. At the sound the silent point quickly stirred with life. There was the hum of excited voices and a blinding flash of flame lit up the darkness, followed by the sharp crack of rifles and the hum ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... hope that in five years' time you will be supporting me and my family. Your sister-in-law will be speechless with jealousy. I congratulate you. Hum—The Blank and Dash Avenues Company? Well, you won't have to send John very far with your copies of the pleadings. Pope was appointed attorney for the company last week, in place of old ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... and senses prey upon and test each other. The typical English Sunday, with the huge midday dinner and the plethoric afternoon, leads perhaps to different results. About the very cradle of the Scot there goes a hum of metaphysical divinity; and the whole of two divergent systems is summed up, not merely speciously, in the two first questions of the rival catechisms, the English tritely inquiring, "What is your name?" ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... admission of one, creeping along somewhat tardily with satchel on back, and "shining morning face." What a sudden burst of sound was emitted—what harmonious discord—what a commixture of all the tones in the vocal gamut, from the shrill treble to the deep under-hum! A chord was touched which vibrated in unison; boyish days and school recollections crowded upon me; pleasures long vanished; feelings long stifled; and friendships—aye, everlasting friendships—cut asunder by the sharp ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... Indian corn, was Planchet, with both his arms under his chin, and his eyes fixed on D'Artagnan, who was either thinking, dreaming, or sleeping, with his eyes open. Planchet had been watching him for a tolerably long time, and, by way of interruption, he began by exclaiming, "Hum! hum!" But D'Artagnan did not stir. Planchet then saw that it was necessary to have recourse to a more effectual means still. After a prolonged reflection on the subject, the most ingenious means ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... been newly at work and these great spaces of emptiness lay gleaming in the mild sunlight, exhaling freshness like that of dewy lawns. When, under the glare of noon, they lay slumbrous, they were impressive by their prodigality of width and scope; in the bustle and hum of dusk, with the cafes filling, and spilling over on to the pavements, he could not tire of them; but at night, the mystery of their magic enthralled him. How could one sleep in such a city? The Puerto del Sol was then a sea of dark fringed with shores of bright light. ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... wealthy yeoman, as he wanders His fertile fields among, And on his thriving cattle ponders, 90 Counts his sure gains, and hums a song; Thus did the Devil, through earth walking, Hum low a hellish song. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... the same places till, toward three o'clock, they were lost in the mass which covered the floor. Even then there was no uproar, no rush or push, no sharp cries or frenzied shouting; but from the crowd, which was largely made up of elderly men, there rose a sort of surd, rich hum, deepening ever, and never breaking into a shriek of torment or derision. It was not histrionic, and yet for its commercial importance it was one of the most moving spectacles which could offer itself to the eye in the ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... field and town. Waving blooming country of the brightest green; dotted all over with handsome villas, handsome groves; crossed by roads and human traffic, here inaudible or heard only as a musical hum: and behind all swam, under olive-tinted haze, the illimitable limitary ocean of London, with its domes and steeples definite in the sun, big Paul's and the many memories attached to it hanging high over all. Nowhere, of its kind, could you see a grander prospect on a bright summer day, with ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... lengths; far from it; I hold duels in abhorrence, as unjustifiable acts of violence, and savage devices of revenge. I have offended against my own conviction,—but, transported with passion at his infamous charges, I was not master of my reason; I accused hum of his perfidy; he denied it; I told him I had it from my father,—he changed the subject to pour abuse upon him; I insisted on a recantation to clear you; he asked by what right? I fiercely answered; by a husband's! His countenance, then, ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... which the band was playing to the gay idlers who were wandering about the balconies or through the hotel grounds; while laughs and little shrieks, uttered by the children as their pursuing nurses caught them up for bed, mingled not unpleasantly with the silvery hum arising from the fashionable crowd and the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... same moment, a startled hum was heard from the crowd, and the press moved and swayed for an instant, as if a sort of spasm had ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... the Quartett began. The daylight had diminished so much that the yellow curtains had to be drawn back. Several other ladies left. A low hum of conversation was audible here and there. The fatigue and inattention which invariably marks the end of a concert began to make itself apparent in the audience. By one of those strange and abrupt manifestations ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... away, as if its office were now completed; and none of the dark sounds and sights of hideous Night yet dared to triumph over the death of Day. Unseen were the circling wings of the fell bat; unheard the screech of the waking owl; silent the drowsy hum of the shade-born beetle! What heart has not acknowledged the influence of this hour, the sweet and soothing hour of twilight! the hour of love, the hour of adoration, the hour of rest! when we think of those we love, only to regret ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... the forests retire to the thickets; the birds hide themselves beneath the foliage of the trees, or in the crevices of the rocks. Yet, amidst this apparent silence, when we lend an attentive ear to the most feeble sounds transmitted through the air, we hear a dull vibration, a continual murmur, a hum of insects, filling, if we may use the expression, all the lower strata of the air. Nothing is better fitted to make man feel the extent and power of organic life. Myriads of insects creep upon the soil, and flutter round the plants parched ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... received only the fragment of one. Here and there, in the bas-relief representing the "Passage of the Bridge of Areole," and the "Taking of Alexandra," some traces of balls are visible. On the whole, no irremediable hum is done here. Rude's masterpiece, ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... on him in the midst, his mouth closed in dejection, his brow drew together in an anguish of impatience, his eyelids drooped in weariness, and he would ride on in deep reflection, till roused perhaps by the flight of a moor-fowl, or the rush of a startled roe, he would hum some gay French hunting-song ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a little at this definition. "Hum! multum in parvo; it may be so," he said; and casting down his eyes, he was soon lost in a profound reverie, while the canoe continued to progress forward by little impulsive bounds, under the rapid stroke of the paddles. ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... fellow is an out-and-out savage," Capper was saying. "P'r'aps he'd be more tolerable if he were. But the fatal streak is there. Never noticed it? I thought you women noticed everything. Oh, I can tell you he's made things hum on our side more times than I've troubled to count. Talk of the devil in New York and you very soon find the conversation drifting round to Nap Errol. Now and then he has a lapse into sheer savagery, and then there is no controlling him. It's just as the ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... had really come At once the place began to hum, And Mariana's, bless her heart! She threw herself into the part Of cooking for the V.A.D. And wholly lost her lethargy. She sent her gardeners off pell-mell (They hadn't kept the gardens well), And got a lady-gardener in Who didn't cost her half the tin, And who, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 24, 1917 • Various
... the watch-dog's honest bark Bay deep-mouthed welcome as we draw near home; 'T is sweet to know there is an eye will mark Our coming, and look brighter when we come;[u] 'T is sweet to be awakened by the lark, Or lulled by falling waters; sweet the hum Of bees, the voice of girls, the song of birds, The lisp of children, and ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... streaks of dawn found us still waiting, our ears strained for the hum of an airplane motor. But hardly had the golden rim of the sun appeared over the horizon when it came. It came from the east—straight out of the golden glory of the sun. Nearer and nearer it ...
— The Floating Island of Madness • Jason Kirby
... best to push through with Lady Maxwell on his arm. But there was an angry hum of voices in front of him, an angry pressure round ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... all the way of Nature! There's no use to sob or sigh, 'Cause the chin takes on a wobble And the wrinkles wrap the eye; If we heap our hearts with gladness Life with music still shall hum, Though we reach the Land of Forty And the crow's ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... in existence, and the silent forests are enlivened only by the stirring of the breeze among the trees or the occasional hum of monstrous insects. But upon the margin of yonder stream a huge four-footed creature creeps slowly along. He looks much like a gigantic salamander, and his broad, soft feet make deep ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... surprising after this, if I deliver a maxim, which is condemned by several metaphysicians, and is esteemed contrary to the most certain principles of hum reason. This maxim is that an object may exist, and yet be no where: and I assert, that this is not only possible, but that the greatest part of beings do and must exist after this manner. An object may be said to be no where, when its parts are not so situated with respect to each other, ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... glance! It was all too good to be true. He was blind to the presence of Ramsey. He was alone with her; Ramsey did not exist; the restaurant did not exist. The hum of voices, the clatter of plates, the movements of the waiters, were distant sounds: all he knew was that he ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... There was the loud hum of voices right away through the camp, from which the fragrant smoke of many fires arose through the grey dawn, and an unwonted stir indicating great excitement prevailed and rapidly increased with the coming light, for the orange and ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... the speeches were remarkably good; the Bishop of Chester's perhaps the best, though he is but a little man in aspect, not at all filling up one's idea of a bishop, and the rest were on an indistinguishable level, though, being all practised speakers, they were less hum-y and ha-y than English orators ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... many, I remember, because they stung me once," and Adah gazed dreamily into the fire, as if listening again to the musical hum heard in that New England home, wherever ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... is resonant with the continual hum of the whirling spinning-wheels, for the maidens are all working diligently under the direction of Maria, the housekeeper, and soon begin their usual spinning chorus. Their hands and feet work busily while two verses of the song are sung, and all are remarkably diligent except Senta, who ...
— Stories of the Wagner Opera • H. A. Guerber
... same—though we tried to differentiate in imagination, as we used to call it venison, beef, veal, or salmon, for variety's sake! "Well, old chap, what shall we have for tea—Calf's head? Grouse? Pheasant?" "Hum! what about a little er—MINCED MUTTON—we've not had any for some time, I think." In this way we added ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... the pilgrims lies between the "Gate" and the cove-head. Around the wells sat at squat a small gathering of the filthy "Moghrebin" (Allah yakharrib-hum!). About 260 of these rufffians were being carried gratis, by some charitable merchant, in a Sambk that lay at the harbour-mouth. A party had lately slaughtered a camel, of course not their own property; ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... cousine. What I have done, was done for you; I desire neither thanks nor any other thing from La Calibana. That she remain out of my sight when possible, that she hold her tongue when we must be together,—that is all I demand. Reasonable, I hope? If not—" She shrugged her shoulders and began to hum ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... appalling, gay scene. The dazzling white flesh of the women's necks and shoulders stood out in magnificent contrast against the men's almost invariably sombre costumes. The murmur of voices, the hum of the crowd, could be heard even in the middle of the garden as a sort of droning bass, interspersed with fioriture of shrill laughter or clamor of some rare dispute. You saw gentlemen and celebrities cheek by jowl with gallows-birds. ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... and pointing at the bees. "Little do they think, as they undermine that comb, how near they are to the undermining of their own hive! But so it is with us all! When we think we are in the highest prosperity we may be nearest to a fall, and when we are poorest and hum-blest, we may be about to be exalted. I often think of these things, out here in the wilderness, when I'm alone, and ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... hope, but everywhere silence: and what a silence! It is not the stillness of a summer night in the country, nor of a church, nor of a sickroom: it is the silence of death! As you gaze on the scene before you, you are oppressed—almost overwhelmed by its dreary sadness. No insect hum is heard; not even a bird is seen in the still air; the earth, and the atmosphere above it, is one vast region of death. The only link which connects the traveller with humanity, is a long row of the skeletons of mules and horses, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... the sense of such solitude and immensity; realizing to the full what indeed these words may mean, he may wander for hours without encountering a soul, very few birds are heard by the way, but the hum of the insect world, that dreamy go-between, hardly silence, hardly to be called noise, keeps us perpetual company, and our eyes must ever be open for beautiful little living things. Now a green and gold lizard flashes across a bit of grey rock, now a dragon-fly disports its sapphire wings amid ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... himself lucky. The reader need not draw a sigh of relief when I tell him that I mean merely the "white grub," the larva of the May-beetle or June-bug, that so disturbs our slumbers in early summer by its sonorous hum and aimless bumping against the wall. This white grub, which the farmers often call the "potato worm," is, in this region, the strawberry's most formidable foe, and, by devouring the roots, will often destroy acres of plants. ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... almost dark now, though a line of snow still glimmered white and cold high up beyond the trees until the trail plunged into the blackness of the forest. Then the lights of the settlement were blotted out behind them, the hum of voices ceased, and they were alone in the primeval silence of the bush. The thud and splash of tired hoofs only served to emphasize it, the thin jingle of steel or creak of pack-rope was swallowed up and lost, for the ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... no adventure worthy of record, on a certain hot and steamy afternoon, when the boat, under sail, was doing little more than barely stem the current, they gradually became aware of a low, faint roar, at first scarcely distinguishable above the rustle of the wind in the trees aloft and the buzzing hum of the innumerable insects which swarmed in the forest and hovered in clouds over the surface of the water. But as the boat continued to creep upstream the roar gradually increased in intensity, ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... more intelligence—at least, I am sure they had more vivacity in their countenances than I had seen during my northern tour: their senses seemed awake to business and pleasure. I was therefore gratified by hearing once more the busy hum of industrious men in the day, and the exhilarating sounds of joy in the evening; for, as the weather was still fine, the women and children were amusing themselves at their doors, or walking under the trees, which in many places were planted ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... the afternoon, and was carried up the banks of a broad river by the side of which hero and there the road wound pleasantly along. In the course of a few hours night fell, and then all nature seemed to come into active life with the hum of insects, the croaking of frogs, and various other indications of an abounding animal life. Presently I was lulled to sleep by the monotonous chant of the bearers—sleep only partially broken when changes of the whole set of bearers had to be made—and ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... breakfast under the great oak-tree. The air, the sunlight, the rippling waters of the lake, the white clouds in the blue sky, the great trunks of the trees, the rustling of the leaves, the songs of the birds, the hum of insects, the brightness of everything, their wonderful appetites—the sense of all these things more than filled ...
— The Associate Hermits • Frank R. Stockton
... undoing the straps with benumbed and aching fingers. He did not remember the befogged and stumbling "walk" into the Control Room. Dimly, as if viewing himself and the room from a distant world, he switched on the dying hum of the radio and tried futilely to ...
— Rescue Squad • Thomas J. O'Hara
... so," assented Mabel, mechanically, and unconscious as himself that meaning glances were stolen at them from the fireside circle, while the hum and conversation was continuous and louder, for the good-natured intent on the speakers' part to afford the supposed lovers the chance of carrying ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... sail the deep, When winds have sunk to sleep, The dreamy murmurs of the night steal on; Say, does their mystic hum, So vague and varied, come From distant ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... picturesque stream, making its way under verdant banks, sheltered by trees that dipped their boughs into the murmuring waters. By day, multitudes of Ephemera darted to and fro on the surface; at night, the fireflies came out among the shrubs on the banks; the cicale at noon-day kept up their hum; the aziola cooed in the quiet evening. It was a pleasant summer, bright in all but Shelley's health and inconstant spirits; yet he enjoyed himself greatly, and became more and more attached to the part of the country were chance appeared to cast us. Sometimes he projected taking a farm situated ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley
... sailor lads, who frequently brought friends with them, was a great joy to the Burnsides, and also to those of the villagers with whom they associated. Both lads were very sailorly, and it was well known that they never failed to make things hum with mirth and mischief, as soon as they had taken their bearings and found the coast clear of "squires" and "parsons." It was a pretty sight to see their two sisters rush out of the house as soon as their brothers were seen in the distance crossing the long stretch of ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... well she knew that to-day this temple of worship was but a den of jackals, ready to rend her if she so much as hesitated, so much as faltered in look or speech! Never should they feed themselves upon her sorrow. She went on, smiling here and there. The low hum, the pallid lights, the murmur from the organ, all seemed cruelly accented. Her pew was third from the chancel; she was but half-way through the gantlet ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... "Ah, Glyndon!—hum!—welcome! What! thou art twice my rival! But Jean Nicot bears no malice. Virtue is my dream,—my country, my mistress. Serve my country, citizen; and I forgive thee the preference of beauty. Ca ira! ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the blue fly, Hum, quoth the bee, Buz and hum they cry, And so do we: In his ear, in his nose, Thus, do you see? He ate the dormouse, Else ...
— The Little Mother Goose • Anonymous
... a-shooting next time," remarked Denver. "Just as soon as he comes back from bye-low land you'll see things hum." ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... at one of the tables covered with gaudy oil-cloth. Traffic was dull at the moment. A few half-grown boys noisily fared at another table; the Mexicans hung listless and phlegmatic about their wares. And it was still. The night hum of the city crowded to the wall of dark buildings surrounding the Plaza, and subsided to an indefinite buzz through which sharply perforated the crackle of the languid fires and the rattle of fork and spoon. A sedative wind blew from the southeast. ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... evaporated. A pair of silk socks, purple with gold spots. Will come in useful as a rifle rag. A long, wide woolly article resembling a cross between a scarf and a blanket ... do as a pillow. A large cake, two packets of chocolate and fifty fags. Hum, won't go far among ten. A pot of jam—go fine on the cake or may tackle it with a spoon. And a brief note hidden away ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... on him a moment steadily, and a look of bewilderment came into his face. But he turned away again to the simmering pots. The boy went to the window and, leaning upon the sill, began to hum softly a sort of chant, while he watched a lizard running hither and thither in the sun. As he hummed, the old man listened, and presently, with his medicines in his hands and a half- startled look, he came over ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... cold winter darkness and gloom, from altar after altar in the great church. Christopher remembered pleasantly a morning soon after the beginning of his novitiate when he had been in the church as a set of priests came in and began mass simultaneously; the mystical fancy suggested itself as the hum of voices began that he was in a garden, warm and bright with grace, and that bees were about him making honey—that fragrant sweetness of which it had been said long ago that God should eat—and as the tinkle of the Elevation ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... stuck it in a crust of bread. Jason Philip got up, clasped his hands behind his back, and began to walk back and forth. Just then Rieke came in and began to clear off the table. She went about her business in a slow but noisy fashion. She made things rattle, even if she could not make them hum. When she was through, Jason Philip, his hands pressed to his hips, his elbows ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... into English at the end of the seventeenth century from the French word bombarder, which came from the Latin word bombarda, an engine for throwing stones, and which in its turn came from the Latin word bombus, meaning "hum." Even a stone hurled with great force through the air makes a humming noise, and the "singing" of the bombs and shells hurled through the air became a very familiar sound to the soldiers who fought in the Great War. The word bomb, too, comes ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... petty abuses, and is a very useful man by so doing. He has had the kindness to say that I am interested in keeping up the taxes; I wish I had anything else to do with them than to pay them. But he lies, and is an ass, and not worth a man's thinking about. Joseph Hume, indeed!—I say Joseph Hum,—and could add ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... the mechanical impulse alone keeping the thoughts in motion, as the mere act of carrying certain watches in the pocket keeps them wound up,—many times, I say, just as my brain was beginning to creep and hum with this delicious locomotive intoxication, some dear detestable friend, cordial, intelligent, social, radiant, has come up and sat down by me and opened a conversation which has broken my day-dream, unharnessed the flying horses that were whirling along my ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... over. "I know it is the young who chum together, but still I am a student. And you shall see how lively and cheerful I will be." He forced a smile that hovered on tears. "We shall be two rackety young students, every night raising a thousand devils. Gaudeamus igitur." He began to hum in his cracked hoarse voice the Burschen-lied of his early days at ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... sunshine, now fading away like a dream into the violet vapor bands that mantled the horizon. The weather would have been oppressively sultry but for the gentle breeze which constantly drifted landward with coolness in its wings. The hum of the old town came to her ear softened by distance and mingled with the patter of the fountain and the music of birds singing in the trees overhead. Agnes tried to busy herself with her spinning; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... that Margit remained sitting there till Nils Skraedder, the fiddler, suddenly laid aside his instrument, as was his wont when he had had more than enough to drink, left the dancers to hum their own tune, took hold of the prettiest girl he could find, and, letting his feet keep as good time to the dance as music to a song, jerked off with the heel of his boot the hat of the tallest man in the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... walked in Indian file, and as they were practically beyond supervision except when they came abreast of one of the three or four officers in charge, a great deal of conversation went on, and I wondered why the chief warder below did not hear the loud hum of so many voices. I afterwards discovered the reason. When you stand under the procession you can hear nothing but the trampling of dozens of feet, which reverberates through the wing, and ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... them so thick they kind of clogged up the air, and altogether he shed seventeen suits. And, then, there he was, slim and handsome, and dressed the gaudiest and prettiest you ever saw, and he lit into that horse with his whip and made him fairly hum—and finally skipped off, and made his bow and danced off to the dressing-room, and everybody just a-howling with pleasure ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... gravely, "is retiring behind the forest of cedars that bounds the horizon; when the palms, the mangoes, and gum trees, mass their verdure in distinct and isolated groups; when nature is making herself heard in a thousand melodious voices; when the hum of the insect is ringing in my ears, and the breeze is gently murmuring through the foliage; when thousands of birds are fluttering from grove to grove, sometimes breaking with their wings the smooth surface of the river; ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... I pace this broad Baden walk as the sunset is gilding the hills round about, as the orchestra blows its merry tunes, as the happy children laugh and sport in the alleys, as the lamps of the gambling-palace are lighted up, as the throngs of pleasure-hunters stroll, and smoke, and flirt, and hum: and wonder sometimes, is it the sinners who are the most sinful? Is it poor Prodigal yonder amongst the bad company, calling black and red and tossing the champagne; or brother Straitlace that grudges his repentance? Is it downcast Hagar that ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... hills, and rushing downward in a torrent of ecstatic life, the river had paused in the valley to rest, dreaming, perchance, of the long cool shadows in the uplands, the far altar-fires of daybreak. There were pleasant things to do in the valley, to lie at full length, basking in the sun, to hum a bit of the old music, to touch gently the harp-strings of the marsh grass and rushes, dimpling with pleasure at the faint answer, to reflect every passing mood of cloud and sky, even to hold the little clouds as a mother might, ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... the East, mystic and hidden. (p. 63.) On the right is the Buddhist lama from Tibet, representative of that third of the human race which finds hope of Nirvana in countless repetitions of the sacred formula, "Om Mani Padme Hum." Next is the Mohammedan, with the crescent of Islam; then a negro slave, and then a Mongolian warrior, the ancient inhabitant of the sandy waste, a type of those Tartar hordes which swept Asia under ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... with only the hum of voices from the reception- room as company, she fell silent, and I could ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... opinion, which I can afford. But I'll lay you anything to nothing, if she knew the weight of my four quarters, she would have me herself after all! I don't quite think myself a lady-killer: by George, my—hum!—entourage is against that, but where money is money can! Only I don't want her, and my money is for her betters! What damned jolly fun it will be to send her out of the house in a rage!—and a good deed done too!—By George, I'll do it! See if ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... hum, beating time with tipsy solemnity, and even then the wretched song brought something riotous and headlong ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... yourself; tides cannot always fit in with dinner-hours, you know. And as for poor Renny, I believe after all you are as fond of him, at the bottom of your heart, as I am. Now what good fare have you got for me to-day?" bending from his great height to inspect the refection, "Ah—hum, excellent." ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... clumps of lavender daisies and great mounds of yellow violets. The brook was lined by blossoming buck-brush; the rocky corners showed the crimson and magenta of cactus; and there were ledges of green with shining moss that sparkled with little white flowers. The hum of bees filled ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... the wind that heralds the sunrise came fitfully up. The soft wet grass under their feet was flecked with little grayish-silver cobwebs, and here and there they heard the morning chirp of ground-nesting birds. As they went farther up the hill a hum of voices came from above; the voices of people, men and women, mingled and consonant like the voices of the birds, but with a certain tone of trouble and expectancy. Every now and then one individual voice or another would dominate the general ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... rose from the floor and took their places at the table, and lit cigarettes again. But they were listening. We listened to the loud hum of airplanes, the well known "zooz-zooz" of the Gothas' double fuselage. More bombs were dropped farther into the town, with the same sound of explosives and falling masonry. The anti—aircraft guns got to work and there was ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... white shirts and broadcloth, jostled blue-shirted cattle men, while here and there a petty politician consulted with the representative of a Western paper. The smoke of cigars drifted everywhere, and the listless heat was stirred by the hum of voices eager and strident. It was evident that the assembly was in an expectant mood, and there was a murmur of approbation when one newspaper man laid hold ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... The hum of the streets was hushed. Few sounds came from without; but the silence that had so long reigned in the mansion, was broken by the gentle tones of loving and ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... painted on the pines and oaks. Their attics were in the tops of the trees. They are of no politics. There was no noise of labor. I did not perceive that they were weaving or spinning. Yet I did detect, when the wind lulled and hearing was done away, the finest imaginable sweet musical hum,—as of a distant hive in May, which perchance was the sound of their thinking. They had no idle thoughts, and no one without could see their work, for their industry was not as ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... highly colored medieval word pictures so much in vogue. "My book should smell of pines, and resound with the hum of insects," might have been its motto, so sweet and wholesome was it with a springlike sort of freshness which plainly betrayed that the author had learned some of Nature's deepest secrets and possessed ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... delirium, that he should have chosen this for his song? With moist eyes his friends looked back through the darkness, for well they knew that home was very near to this wanderer. Gradually the voice died away into a hum, and was absorbed once more into the masterful silence of ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... dockyard and arsenal suddenly revealed themselves—rising like an exhalation—where ship-builders, armourers, blacksmiths, joiners, carpenters, caulkers, gravers, were hard at work all day long. The din and hum of what seemed a peaceful industry were unceasing. From Kalloo, Parma dug a canal twelve miles long to a place called Steeken, hundreds of pioneers being kept constantly at work with pick and spade till it was completed. Through this artificial channel—so soon as Ghent and Dendermonde ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... with egotistic woes, far too many for the brief moment in which he would be closeted with the great one, who held the invisible keys of relief, who penetrated this mystery of human maladjustment. It was a busy, toiling, active, subdued place, where the tinkle of the telephone bell, the hum of electric annunciators, as one member of the staff signalled to another, vibrated in the tense atmosphere. Into this hive poured the suffering, mounting from the street, load after load, in the swiftly flying cages; their visit made, their joss-sticks ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... sad stuff; and when he paused for my approbation, I ventured to suggest an alteration in one of the speeches. "There, Sir," said Davie, in the vein of Cambyses, "take the pen; let me see, Sir, how you would turn it." I accordingly took the pen, and re-wrote the speech. "Hum," said Davie, as he ran his eye along the lines, "that, Sir, is mere poetry. What, think you, could the great Kean make of feeble stuff like that? Let me tell you, Sir, you have no notion whatever of stage effect." I, of course, at once acquiesced; and Davie, mollified by my submission, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... of bird or hum of bee, there's no sign of spring for me Like the jolly little dancers and the frolic melody; And my heart shall catch the rhythm of the happy little feet Dancing round the organ-grinder at ...
— A Jolly Jingle-Book • Various
... that not for poets' high-flown rhapsodies but rather for the more welcome hum of bees and flies intent on breakfasting, do these flowers open in the ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... a box in the third tier. It was like being suspended halfway between the top and the bottom of a gigantic well. The depth of that well affected the boy unpleasantly, while the strong light and the hum of talk confused him. He clung closely to his mother with averted face. Suddenly the light went out, and he ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... but few towns either in the old or the new world, and is hardly more common in Germany than elsewhere. Leipsic is decidedly busy, but does not look to be social. Vienna is sufficiently gregarious, but its streets are melancholy. Munich is social, but lacks the hum of business. Frankfort is both practical and picturesque, but it is dirty, and apparently averse to mirth. Dresden has much to recommend it, and had Lord Brentford with his daughter come abroad in quest of comfortable easy social life, his choice would have ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... still but the buzz and hum of distant voices that I determined to venture, and undoing my hot hand I unfolded the little scrap of paper, upon which, written closely but ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... threw her head back: the shoulders straightened, and the lashes lifted over sparkling eyes; vivacity came to her whole body in a flash; and she tripped down the steps, with her pretty hands rising in time to the lilting little tune she had begun to hum. ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... COM. SEN. Hum, here's good stuff; Master Register, read them. Appetitus, you may depart, and bid your mistress ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... "Well—er! Hum! No, not exactly," said the doctor, pursing up his lips. "Listen here, my dear. The very thing! just as if fate had come to ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... and love, and the world shall again belong to me. Oh, I feel as if I would go mad with joy. I have had strength to endure misfortunes, but perhaps the rapture of freedom may be fatal. My God! my God! if I should lose my senses! if the light of the sun should scorch my brain! if the hum of the busy world ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... and round he went, meltin' the snow with his hot feet," mused Matty, sniffing the air. "And in the house Betty Woggles set beside the old man, holdin' his hand, askin' him to promise he wouldn't die.... Hum! As if a human bein' could keep from the stalkin' whiteness beckonin' from the graveyard. 'Tain't in ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... cities please us then, And the busy hum of men; Where throngs of Knights and Barons bold, In weeds of peace, high triumphs hold: With store of Ladies, whose bright eyes Rain influence, and judge the Prize Of Wit or Arms; while both contend To win her grace, whom ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... calamity, were prognosticated by the untimely intrusion among the living, of one whose presence had always been associated with death and woe. What a comet is to the earth, was that sad woman to the town. Still she moved on, while the hum of surprise was hushed at her approach, and the proud and the humble stood aside, that her white garment might not wave against them. It was a long, loose robe, of spotless purity. Its wearer appeared very old, pale, emaciated, ...
— The White Old Maid (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... in the evening calm, No more they circle in sportive glee, Hearing the hum of the vesper psalm, And the swell of the organ so far below; But far, far away, over land and sea, In the still mid-air ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... nearer, Doth the red whirlwind come; And louder still, and still more loud, From underneath that rolling cloud, Is heard the trumpet's war-note proud, The trampling and the hum. And plainly and more plainly Now through the gloom appears, Far to left and far to right, In broken gleams of dark-blue light, The long array of helmets bright, The long array ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... confines of civilization, and my career as a savage, was about to be abruptly terminated. As I pushed forward, along the road that skirted the grain fields, and the familiar sounds of former days fell upon my ears—the tinkle of the cow bells, the busy hum, that filled the air like the whisper of early recollections, wafted down through the airy halls of time—made the scenes, trials and sufferings, appear but as a horrid dream, and I seemed to be just waking to reality. A glance at my tattooed and painted form, however, ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... us to see a menagerie. Why did the monks never think of applying to such places the figure by which they protested against the introduction of coffee, "the fumes of hell"? The smoke of five hundred cigars or pipes rising to a ceiling which had been thus smoked for centuries,—the hoarse hum of five hundred voices uttering the German gutturals from tongues thickened by the use of beer, and floating heavily through an atmosphere of densest smoke, dimming the lights and turning all into an indefinite ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... just beginning as Kitty and her mother walked up the great staircase, flooded with light, and lined with flowers and footmen in powder and red coats. From the rooms came a constant, steady hum, as from a hive, and the rustle of movement; and while on the landing between trees they gave last touches to their hair and dresses before the mirror, they heard from the ballroom the careful, distinct notes of the fiddles of the orchestra beginning the first waltz. A little ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... than was generally indicated by these brethren and sisters when the words of benediction dismissed them from their period of irksome restraint. Every man, and every woman, too, found a tongue. We broke up into little knots. A busy hum of many voices replaced the dead silence. The "social meeting" commenced when the "prayer-meeting" ended. This, I think, is a fair portraiture of our prayer-meetings at Wheathedge as they were during our ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... brought in the gay sound of bells, the high clear bells of Hanseatic days, rejoicing at Napoleon's new success—by order of Napoleon. A bee sailed harmoniously into the room, made the circuit of it, and sought the open again with a hum that ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... length the spinning-wheel ceased with its hum, the silence was to Cosmo like the silence after a song, and his thoughts refused to do their humming alone. The same moment he fell—from a wondrous region where he dwelt with sylphs in a great ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... this waste; no sign of life was visible; no flutter of wing, no hum of insect, no flash of lizard or reptile; even the shrill song of the cricket, that lover of burning solitudes, was unheard. The soil was formed of a micaceous, brilliant dust like ground sandstone, and here and there rose hummocks formed ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... leader of the orchestra, newly imported from Sicily to New York, tossed his conductor's wand excitedly through the air, drowning with musical thunders the hum of conversation and ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... sharing my depression—trotting subduedly, with tail half-mast high, at my heels, and at length sit down on a bench under a mulberry-tree. The scentless flame of the geraniums and calceolarias fills, without satisfying my eyes; the gnats' officious hum offends my ears; and thoughts in comparison of which the calceolarias are sweet and the gnats ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... rose from the assembly, for like distant thunder or the far-off murmuring of agitated waters was the continuous hum of their blended conversation and laughter, while, ever and anon, cleaving the many-tongued confusion, uprose friendly voices, clearer and stronger than battle-trumpets, when one hero challenged another to drink, wishing him victory and success, and his words rang round the hollow dome. Innumerable ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... up on the floor and leaning against his arm. Slowly he realised that he was in his senses, and that the dream of long years had come true. Not a sound broke the stillness, so perfect was the machinery, except a kind of very soft hum made by the heavy fly-wheel revolving ...
— The Little City Of Hope - A Christmas Story • F. Marion Crawford
... necessary memoranda, and papers on one's writing-table—became black with the specks and spots left by these creatures. Plates of fly-paper poison disfigured, to but small purpose, every room; and at evening, by candlelight, while one was reading or writing, the universal hum and buzz was amazing, and put one ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... nothing like a good song—and I've lots of good songs; but as you suggest a bad song—in fact, the worst of all my songs—why, I dare say it wouldn't be a bad idea to sing it. By-the-bye, Talbot, you ought to learn to sing—at least, to hum tunes. I'll teach you how to whistle, if you like. I wonder if this Spanish cur likes music. I'll sing you a song, if you like, and I'll bet ten cents you never ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... is full of noises, Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments Will hum about mine ears, and sometimes voices, That, if I then had waked after long sleep, Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming, The clouds methought would open and show riches Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked I ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... hall, with a marble fountain in the middle of it, the Greek captains awaited the coming of Pausanias. A low and muttered conversation was carried on amongst them, in small knots and groups, amidst which the voice of Uliades was heard the loudest. Suddenly the hum was hushed, for footsteps were heard without. The thick curtains that at one extreme screened the door-way were drawn aside, and, attended by three of the Spartan knights, amongst whom was Lysander, and by two soothsayers, who were seldom absent, in war or warlike council, from the side of the ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... boys arter all, Si," remarked the one they supposed was Ed Harkness, as he swayed slightly to and fro, while coming to a halt. "I guessed as haow yuh must a be'n mistook w'en yuh said it mout be ther hull outfit. Les sit down, Si, an' make us tuh hum." ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... chapel of the monastery there floated forth into the fair evening stillness, from the bars, of a window, while yet not really stirring that stillness, a hum of gruff, lazy, peevish ejaculations. Apparently they were uttered by two persons who were engaged in a dispute, since one of ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... the score for Eva's inspection, and began to hum passages and to point out others, and Eva also began to hum, and they hummed in concert, at intervals exclaiming against the wantonness with which Havergal Brian had invented difficulties. Eva glanced at ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... the music of childish voices was the only sound to break the stillness. The hum of buzzing insects seemed to intensify the summer heat. For minutes no movement came from the bedroom. It was like the dread ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... tunic shimmered as she began to pace the floor. She stopped short as a hum splashed through the room. She went quickly to the door and pressed a red ...
— Spies Die Hard! • Arnold Marmor
... figure: If he armed it for this train, and ran, she'd go off while we were on location and we'd be drenched in searchlights and spray guns. Already, through his fingers, I felt the hum in the rails that every tank-town-reared kid knows. I turned up my ICEG. "All right, Clyde, get back. Arm it when she's gone ...
— A Matter of Proportion • Anne Walker
... shut up for the night, in this prison, it distressed me too much to close my eyes. Its closeness and smell were, in a degree, disagreeable, but this was trifling to what I experienced afterwards, in another place. The general hum and confused noise from almost every hammock, was at first, very distressing. Some would be lamenting their hard fate at being shut up like negro slaves in a Guinea ship, or like fowls in a hen coop, for no crime, but for fighting the battles ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... and princesses, however greedy, do not mine for gold. Chairs tell no tales. Wells work no wonders; and there are no such doings on hills and forests, for the fairies dance no more. Some say it was the hum of schools—some think it was the din of factories that frightened them. But nobody has seen them for many a year, except, it is said, one Hans Christian Andersen, in Denmark, whose tales of the fairies are so good that they must ...
— Granny's Wonderful Chair • Frances Browne
... peaceful vine, He heard the low of his gathered kine, And felt their breath with incense sweet; Or I might say, when the sunset burned The old farm gable, he thought it turned The milk that fell like a babbling flood Into the milk-pail red as blood! Or how he fancied the hum of bees Were bullets buzzing among the trees. But all such fanciful thoughts as these Were strange to a practical man like Burns, Who minded only his own concerns, Troubled no more by fancies fine Than one of his calm-eyed, long-tailed kine,— Quite old-fashioned and matter-of-fact, Slow ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... and mental powers decay in this utter monotony, it is his mission to be bored every day and all day long from his eighth year. Moreover, he must not take a moment's rest; the engine moves unceasingly; the wheels, the straps, the spindles hum and rattle in his ears without a pause, and if he tries to snatch one instant, there is the overlooker at his back with the book of fines. This condemnation to be buried alive in the mill, to give constant attention to the tireless machine is felt as the keenest torture by the operatives, and ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... noisy celebration of their good luck, they must have heard the clatter of this door when it fell. But good eating, good drink, and the prospect of an immediate fortune far beyond their wildest dreams, made all ears deaf; and no pause occurred in the shouts of laughter and the hum of good-fellowship which sifted down between the beams supporting the house above my head. Consequently little or no courage was required for the completion of my adventure; and before long I came upon the staircase and the door leading from its top into the pantry. The next ...
— The House in the Mist • Anna Katharine Green
... saya, or veil, which she wore. Drawing it aside for the purpose, the words "Vive la Patria!" embroidered in letters of gold, were discovered on the basquina. As the signal for execution was given, a distant hum, as of the clamors of an approaching army, was heard fitfully to rise upon ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... expression on his face. This was a new side of the young fellow's character, a side the captain had not seen before. And yet—well, he was young, very young. Sears was troubled about the affair. Had he been to blame? He had not meant to be. Ah-hum! the world was full of misunderstandings and foolishness. And was there, in all that world, any being more ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... thoughtful. "Hum," he said, "I'd planned to give you girls of '81 a choice evergreen, and as for a place for it: what do you say to the plot on the north side, just ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... boats. Scows had been hauled high and dry on the gravel, and there the owners were living. A thousand stoves were eloquent of beans and bacon. I met a man taking home a prize, a porterhouse steak. He was carrying it over his arm like a towel, paper was so scarce. The camp was a hive of energy, a hum ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... mysteriously through the gloom, and the mystery of the night was in the air. The Jenny Jones stole quietly toward the broad sheet of water where the vessels of the Fleet heaved up their shadowy bulk above the lapping flood. All the English sailors were stripped to the shirt, and a low hum of excited talk came from amidships. Suddenly the raking yard of a felucca started out from amid the haze; then came another, and another. A sailor slipped a cork fender over the side, and there was a muffled bump and a slight scrape. Jack, the mate, whispered, "Now, you cripples!" and a ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various
... two high up in a dark sky; one seemed to be falling in a great half-circle—it was only an airplane keeping watch over the sleeping city. Clerambault followed its sweep with his eyes, and seemed, to fly with it, the distant hum of the human planet coming faintly to his ear, like a strange music of the spheres not foreseen ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... the last to join the sea of fires, huts, and human faces that filled the great furrow in the land between Studzianka and the fatal river, a restless living sea of almost imperceptibly moving figures, that sent up a smothered hum of sound blended with frightful shrieks. It seemed that hunger and despair had driven these forlorn creatures to take forcible possession of the carriage, for the old General and his young wife, whom they had found warmly wrapped in pelisses and traveling ...
— Farewell • Honore de Balzac
... corral the several noises were beginning to be blended in one note. The barbecue fires were burning down; the evening meal had been served, with reserved supplies for late comers. Mezcal and cheap whiskey were being dispensed. A low hum of voices arose, with the occasional uplifting of a drunken song or a ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... she began to grow uneasily curious to know in what manner Charlie and Jack Fyfe were lending countenance to this minor riot, if they were even participating in it. Eleven o'clock passed, and still there rose in the bunkhouse that unabated hum of voices. ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... himself shut up in the dark, mourning his son, Demonax represented himself to him as a magician: he would call up the son's ghost, the only condition being that he should be given the names of three people who had never had to mourn. The father hum'd and ha'd, unable, doubtless, to produce any such person, till Demonax broke in: 'And have you, then, a monopoly of the unendurable, when you cannot name a man who has not ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... words recall to your memory old amber-coloured engravings of sturdy men, with waving locks, grasping the arm of the printing-press, by the side of Faust, Schoeffer, and Gottenberg? Or, perhaps, the words of Schiller's "Song of the Bell" may not be unknown to you, and hum in your ears: ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... down over the solemn waste And the two gazing hosts and that sole pair And darkened all and a cold fog with night Crept from the Oxus soon a hum arose As of a great assembly loosed and fires Began to twinkle through the fog for now Both armies moved to camp and took their meal The Persians took it on the open sands Southward the Tartars by the river merge And Rustum and ...
— Teachers' Outlines for Studies in English - Based on the Requirements for Admission to College • Gilbert Sykes Blakely
... guests began to flock around them from all the four quarters of the mansion, deserting even the neighbourhood of the guitars and the inviting seclusion of the various refreshment-rooms. From all sides rose the hum of comment and the murmur of speculation. Pince-nez were adjusted, eyeglasses screwed into eyes, fingers pointed, feet elevated upon uneasy toes. Pretty girls boldly trod upon the gowns of elderly matrons in the endeavour to draw ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... feelings and properties than those which have accompanied her in the state which she has quitted. Sounds are ringing in her ears which never rang there till now; visions are before her eyes which are now awakened for the first time. The music of birds, and the hum of bees, and the rattling of the distant rill, and the sighing of the wind, greet her ear, and her eyes are made happy by all the bright things which the Great Being has placed in this glorious world. And, most of all the objects ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... a hum and a stir and a buzz of whispering in the room. Two gray old men and two pretty young women passed up the aisle to the platform. One old man was stalwart and ruddy, with a cordial eye and a handsome, ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... rolled inland; through it after dawn came miles of horsemen and wagons, guns, limbers, lorries, ambulances. Every human unit in that column was covered in white dust, and every horse was weary. And except for the staccato "click-click" of bits and an occasional deep hum from a passing motor the army moved in perfect silence ...
— With Botha in the Field • Eric Moore Ritchie
... wing and motioned to Rick to put on the helmet and plug in his phones. There was a spare helmet-and-phone set in the rear seat for the Air Force officer. Rick switched the radio on and heard the soft hum of dynamotors. He cleared his throat and asked, "Do ...
— The Scarlet Lake Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... and Kenyon Adams missed the large leisure and joyous comraderie that Grant had seen; indeed the only leisurely person whom Kenyon saw in his life until he was—Heaven knows how old—was Rhoda Kollander. The hum and bustle of Harvey did not ruffle the calm waters of her soul. She of all the women in Harvey held to the early custom of the town of going out ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... that, pouring music clear, Makes all the sphere for many miles around With his gay song re-echo and resound; Or, pausing, marks the sweet, melodious lay The nightingale at stilly night doth lay; Or listens to the morn or evening praise, As the wild warblers blended chorus raise, The hum of bee, as duty it fulfils, The rippling stream that sports among the hills, The constant murmur of the mighty seas, Or pensive sighing of the Summer breeze, Which, rambling, rustles through the leafy trees, The choice of favor it may ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... two girls worked together at the mill; a week which was to Helen one long nightmare, filled, as it was, with the hum and roar of machinery, the hot breath of the mill, and worst of all, the seared and deadening thought that she ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... shines warmly without, and through the open casement beats warmly upon the floor within. The birds sing in the joyousness of full-robed summer; the drowsy hum of the bees, stealing sweets from the honeysuckle that bowers the window, lulls the air to a gentle quiet. Her breathing scarce breaks the summer stillness. Yet, she knows it is nearly over. Madge, too,—with features saddened, yet struggling ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... gone perhaps twenty feet when a grating noise attracted me. Glancing back across my shoulder, I saw that the old majordomo was unlocking and setting wide the gate. The hum of a self-starter reached me faintly, and a moment later there rolled slowly forth a dark-blue touring-car of luxurious aspect, driven by a chauffeur whose coat and cap and goggles gave him rather the appearance of a leather brownie, and bearing in the tonneau Miss Falconer, ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... Blackbird, Cuckoo, Thrush, Or any bird in song; And common leaves that hum all day, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... in for a while. The bearers were obeying the surgeon's order and were taking a rest. The officers and sisters in the theatre were in high spirits. They were trying to speak French and ridiculing each other's efforts. Captain Wycherley began to hum a tune and wave his amputation knife like the conductor of an orchestra, whereupon the others locked arms and danced up and down the theatre, talking and joking. Then Captain Calthrop broke away and danced by himself, kicking his legs up in the air. ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... marble and granite disappear beneath hangings of silk and festoons of flowers; the wealthy display their dazzling luxury, the poor drape themselves proudly in their rags. Everything is light, harmony, and perfume; the sound is like the hum of an immense hive, interrupted by a thousandfold outcry of joy impossible to describe. The bells repeat their sonorous sequences in every key; the arcades echo afar with the triumphal marches of military bands; the sellers of sherbet and water-melons sing out their ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... was not for him to mix with these outsiders, these curiosity seekers. He crossed the lawn to the house, and mounted the steps. In the doorway was big Steve, while groups of men stood about in the hall, the hum of busy purposeless talk pervading the place. The judge ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... Tom saw with pleasure that some more boats had been obtained, and that strong reinforcements would soon be across. The whistling of the bullets and the hum of the round shot were incessant, and Tom acknowledged to himself that he felt horribly uncomfortable—much more uncomfortable than he had any idea that he should feel under fire. Had he been actively engaged, he would have hardly experienced this ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... No'th Ca'lina nigger frown; De mahkets says ouh tehapin am secon'-rate, An' Mistuh Daniels, he call Raleigh his hum town. —I wondah what kin be de mattuh ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... for men of this type. Gorki turns himself here into a sentimentalist. The baron should have answered this proposal that he should "bark" somewhat as follows: "What will you pay me? Hum! What can you offer me—a good place?" Or suggested him knocking him over the head. Then we should have had a drastic representation of the depraved derelicts. Description is wanted, not sophistry. Philosophising and quibbling over personality is a ...
— Maxim Gorki • Hans Ostwald
... sink, I seem the higher. In Pope I cannot read a line, But with a sigh I wish it mine; When he can in one couplet fix More sense than I can do in six; It gives me such a jealous fit, I cry, "Pox take him and his wit!" [4]I grieve to be outdone by Gay In my own hum'rous biting way. Arbuthnot is no more my friend, Who dares to irony pretend, Which I was born to introduce, Refin'd it first, and shew'd its use. St. John, as well as Pultney, knows That I had some repute for ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... Hotel de Mussidan is as elegant as it is commodious. The exterior was extremely plain, and not disfigured by florid ornamentation. White marble steps, with a light and elegant railing at the sides, lead to the wide doors which open into the hall. The busy hum of the servants at work at an early hour in the yard tells that an ample establishment is kept up. There can be seen luxurious carriages, for occasions of ceremony, and the park phaeton, and the simple brougham which ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... by the European species is a sort of drumming or whizzing note, like the hum of a spinning-wheel. The male commences this performance about dusk, and continues it at intervals during a great part of the night. It is effected while the breast is inflated with air, like that of a cooing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... gleamed; mast and spar and rigging made network against the blue; high in air floated bright pennants and the red cross in the white field. To and fro plied small boats, while over the water to them in the wherry came a pleasant hum of preparation for the morrow's sailing. Upon the Cygnet, lying next to the Mere Honour, and a very noble ship, the mariners began ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... as any down quilt in chambers of the rich. I remember so well how a single ray of sunlight fell on the floor from the little window in the roof, just on the foot that kept turning the spinning-wheel. Its hum sounded sleepy in my ears. I gazed at the sloping ray of light, in which the ceaseless rotation of the swift wheel kept the motes dancing most busily, until at length to my half-closed eyes it became a huge Jacob's ladder, crowded with an innumerable company of ascending and descending ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... open but not venturing into it, long lines of troops, halted. The wood is alive with them, and full of confused noises—the occasional rattle of wheels as a battery of artillery goes into position to cover the advance; the hum and murmur of the soldiers talking; a sound of innumerable feet in the dry leaves that strew the interspaces among the trees; hoarse commands of officers. Detached groups of horsemen are well in front—not altogether exposed—many of them intently regarding the ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... the quiet sea, rolling lazily under the stars. Overhead the big lanterns in the towers thrust their parallel lances of light afar into the darkness. The only sounds were the low wash of the surf and the hum of the eager mosquitoes. Brown was silent, alternately puffing at the pipe and slapping at the insects, which latter, apparently finding his skin easier to puncture than that of the tanned and leathery Atkins, were making the most ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... young Count lounged on the terrace, as he had the evening before, and smoked his cigar. Though it was near midday, it was doubtful to him whether the solitude and silence appeared less complete and oppressive than on the preceding night. A hushed cackling of fowls, the drowsy hum of bees, and the muffled chime of a distant bell—these were all the sounds ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... wheel, or poising gracefully on the right foot, the left hand extended with the roll or bat, while with a wheel finger in the other, she gives the wheel a few swift turns for a final twist to the long-drawn thread of wool or tow. The continuous buzz of the flax wheels, harmonizing with the spasmodic hum of the big wheel, shows that the girls are preparing a stock of linen against their wedding day. Less active and more fitful rattled the quill wheel, where the younger children are filling quills for ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... car." He must not get angry or excited. Games of all kinds that have a tendency to make him nervous must be avoided. The same caution applies to exciting literature. In short, a patient with organic heart disease must be a drone in the hum of this busy, fast-rushing life, if he would hope to keep the spark of life for many years. Sleep, rest and quiet is a better motto for ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... years—bon Dieu! Can't you see the ghosts of little faces peering over it? I wonder whether they get up in the night as the moonlight shines into the blank vacant old room, and play there solemnly with little ghostly horses, and the spirits of dolls, and tops that turn and turn but don't hum. ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Hearing her hum very softly to herself, he asked what she sang. She said, her mother's favorite hymn, and gave ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... father paces to and fro Through the chambers of the old chateau, Waiting, waiting to hear the hum Of wheels on the road that runs below, Of servants hurrying here and there, The voice in the courtyard, the step on the stair, Waiting for some one who doth not come! But letters there are, which ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... Macloud. "Let me see where we are, and where Annapolis is.... Hum! we're almost opposite! Can't we get a boat in the morning to take us across direct—charter it, I mean? The Chesapeake isn't wide at this point—a sailing vessel ought to make it ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... 'Hum! It is clear that we cannot be starved here. They must come to us if they are to kill us. Behind a barricade of barrels we could hold our own against the five rascals whom we have seen. That is, probably, why they have sent that ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Front. It was the warmest and stillest of May days, and in the clearing where we stopped for luncheon the familiar boom broke with a magnified loudness on the noonday hush. In the intervals between the crashes there was not a sound but the gnats' hum in the moist sunshine and the dryad-call of the cuckoo from greener depths. At the end of the lane a few cavalrymen rode by in shabby blue, their horses' flanks glinting like ripe chestnuts. They stopped ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... out of the express elevator, there was no one in sight that I remember but the boy who was with me. I pressed the button of the local, which was just beside the express—there was a buzz and whirring hum as if the elevator had ascended, and the door opened. As I stepped over its threshold, I felt a violent blow and terrific pain on the back of my head, and seemed to fall into limitless space. That was all I knew until I woke up in the hospital where Mr. Blaine had taken me after discovering and ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... in lone Dalgonar glen, That, with its bosom basking in the sun, Lies like a bird; the hum of working men Joins with the sound of streams that southward run, With fragrant holms atween: then mix in one Beside a church, and round two ancient towers Form a deep fosse. Here sire is heired by son, And war comes never; ancle deep ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 549 (Supplementary issue) • Various
... a clear lane of gliding water Whose banks seem lonely as the path of light Crossing mid ocean south of Capricorn. Her son steals warily after a butterfly And is as hushed with hope to capture it As are the birds with heat. An insect hum Circles the spot as round a cymbal's rim, Long after it has clanged, tingles a throb Which in a dream forgets the parent sound, Oppressed by this protracted and awe-filled pause, She hardly dares to wade the stream and moves As though in ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... the European species is a sort of drumming or whizzing note, like the hum of a spinning-wheel. The male commences this performance about dusk, and continues it at intervals during a great part of the night. It is effected while the breast is inflated with air, like that of a cooing Dove. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... started out again on fresh roamings - "Lord, thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations"! - I remember, - it seems to me now as if it had been some time before I was born, - how the muslin curtains floated in on the evening wind, and the hum and stir of the street came up to my ear; the bustle and activity, though it was evening; and how the distant battlefields of Virginia looked in forlorn contrast in the far distance. Yet this was really the desert and that the populous place; for there, somewhere, my world was. I grew very ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Irresponsibility had weakened him. He had forgotten how to shift for himself. The night yawned about him. His senses, accustomed to the hum and bustle of the camp, used to the continuous impact of sights and sounds, were now left idle. There was nothing to do, nothing to see nor hear. They strained to catch some interruption of the silence and immobility of nature. They were appalled by inaction and by the feel ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... door opened to admit the men, and somebody claiming Kitty's attention at the moment she turned away without reply. For a few minutes the conversation became more general until, after a brief hum and stir, congenial spirits sought and found each other and settled down into little groups of twos and threes. Somewhat to Nan's surprise—and, although she would not have acknowledged it, to her annoyance—Peter Mallory ensconced himself next to Penelope, and Ralph Fenton, ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... my side a fate-charged, tiny tot, dabbling in the water, mocking the songs of the birds, and ever turning her face, with its great brown wistful eyes, to catch the breath of destiny and to hear the sad dread hum of the future. But my old chum Billy Little was the ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... compelling in the tones of these cries. They rang as bugle calls to battle. In their hum and murmur there was more than curiosity—more than the tribute of a people to their leader. There was in the very sound the electric rush of the first crash of the approaching storm. The man inside who had led soldiers to death on ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... cries of the cicada, the grasshopper, and tree frog make an incessant hum, and produce by their monotony a pleasing melancholy.... Every half-hour different balsamic odours fill the air, and other flowers alternately unfold their leaves to the night.... While the silent vegetable world, illuminated by scores of fireflies ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... territories of our respective beings ever become one. But even now, and on mere everyday grounds, we are finding reason to think otherwise. You are about to make an observation at table and some member of your family makes it before you; you are thinking of a certain tune and someone begins to hum it; you have a certain purpose in mind and, lo, the same thought finds expression in someone else, despite all probabilities. Oh, you may remark, This is only thought transference. Precisely, but what are you except your thought? All being, remember, is conscious ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... fresh grass is loaded with dew, every bead of which sparkles in the light of the brilliant sun. A big, yellow-shouldered bee comes booming through the open window, and buzzes up and down my room, and threatens my shrinking ears, and then dives through the window again; and his form recedes and his hum dies away, as if it were the note of a reed-stop in the "swell" of a church organ. There is such confusion in the songs of the birds, that I can hardly select the different notes, so as to name their owners. There is a great deal of bird-singing that ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... had much results as yet," said the tramp. "But now things is goin' to hum. The Bishop and his whole gang's coming over ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... Abraham, which the pagan Arabs had polluted with idolatry, the Jews in corrupting their holy books. At the same time he heard a Voice, and sometimes he felt a noise in his ears like the tinkling of bells or a low deep hum, as if bees were swarming ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... auspicious start—barring the little delay caused by the twins—could not have been provided. The day was one of those balmy ones in June, when it is neither too hot nor too blowy, when the breeze seems fairly laden with the sweet scent of flowers, and the lazy hum of bees mingles with ...
— The Outdoor Girls of Deepdale • Laura Lee Hope
... riband across the fields until it vanished among the trees at Ashness. Presently, however, she heard the throb of a car coming up the valley and a cloud of dust rolled up behind a hedge. It was Thorn's car; she knew its hum and as she watched the dust get nearer her face went white. Then, as the hum became loud and menacing, she clenched her hand and ran in nervous panic up the drive. She was breathless when she reached the house, but pulled herself ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... the palace; and at one side of it was the workshop, built of strong pines and oaks; and the giant heard the hum of wheels, and the noise of the fairy looms, where the fairies ...
— Mother Stories • Maud Lindsay
... metalliferous hills; and, at this time, in consequence of the Dutch-Spanish War, and the multitude of Protestant refugees, it was getting filled with ingenious industries; and rising to be, what it still is, the busiest quarter of Germany. A Country lowing with kine; the hum of the flax-spindle heard in its cottages, in those old days,—"much of the linen called Hollands is made in Julich, and only bleached, stamped and sold, by the Dutch," says Busching. A Country, in our days, which is shrouded at short intervals ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... be surprising after this, if I deliver a maxim, which is condemned by several metaphysicians, and is esteemed contrary to the most certain principles of hum reason. This maxim is that an object may exist, and yet be no where: and I assert, that this is not only possible, but that the greatest part of beings do and must exist after this manner. An object may be said to be no where, when ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... temperaments, which contrive to be buoyant on the glistening bubble of Dignity, she had likewise a modest estimate of her dues. Alack, my poor heroine had no pride! Mrs. Ford's silent censure awakened no resentment. It sounded in her ears like a dull, soporific hum. Lizzie was deeply enamored of what a French book terms her aises intellectuelles. Her mental comfort lay in the ignoring of problems. She possessed a certain native insight which revealed many of the horrent inequalities of her pathway; but she found ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... thought of lots of things As in my bed I lay; The whole long list of English kings From Alfred till to-day. I thought of bats and bicycles, Of stilts, and tops that hum, Then turning to the window-pane, I thought of you, and sighed again: "Whenever ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... higher faith. When he suddenly stopped and quickly seized a hymn-book, the audience drew a long sigh. At once people moved about again and looked at each other and smiled. The whole congregation were at one with the preacher. There was a low hum of whispering voices. But all was attention again when the hymn was read. Then the glorious song. One of the finest organists in the country, a blind gentleman by the name of Wood, was the power behind the throne. The organ did praise God. Every one ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... next day, and went directly to an upper room, at some distance from those usually occupied by the family, from whence came the busy hum ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... amid a low hum of conversation. Dreamy music is heard, which might be a continuation of the music ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips
... Eredia (1613), describing the smaller vessels of Malacca which he calls balos in ch. 13, De Embarcacoes, says: "At the poop they have two rudders, one on each side to steer with." E por poupa dos ballos, tem 2 lemes, hum en cada lado pera o governo. (Malacca, l'Inde merid. et le Cathay, Bruxelles, 1882, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... jerked out of their element and vanish forever, and though you broke a quartern loaf into crumbs, he would snap his tail at you with enlightened contempt. If," said my father, soliloquizing, "I had been as syllogistic as those scaly logicians, I should never have swallowed that hook which—Hum! there—least said soonest mended. But, Mr. Bolt, to return to ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... delightful. The fresh air, redolent of new-mown hay, fanned her pale cheek and feverish brow, and allayed her agitation and excitement. The perfect stillness, broken only by the lowing of the cattle in the adjoining pastures, by the drowsy hum of the dor-fly, or the rippling of the beck in the valley, further calmed her; and the soothing influence was completed by a contemplation of the serene heavens, wherein were seen the starry host, with the thin bright crescent of the new moon in ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... any music, except that of the doleful and droning church choir. We sang simple songs about nature, conduct, duties to the Heavenly Father, to parents and teacher. Their notes lingered in my ears for a great many years, and I can still hum some of them. We drew plain figures, blocks, cones, the sides and roofs of buildings and outlines of trees. In penmanship I made no progress, and it was always unformed and illiterate until I was a man, and took it in hand without a teacher. My two years' detention from school did not seem ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... gethered all the weapins up, an' then he come an' grinned, He showed his ivory some, I guess, an' sez, "You 're fairly pinned; Jest buckle on your leg agin, an' git right up an' come, 'T wun't du fer fammerly men like me to be so long from hum." At fust I put my foot right down an' swore I would n't budge. "Jest ez you choose," sez he, quite cool, "either be shot or trudge." So this black-hearted monster took an' act'lly druv me back Along the very feetmarks o' my happy mornin' track, ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... bees are examined through a glass hive, all appears at first like confusion: but, on a more careful inspection, every animal is found regularly employed. It is very delightful, when the maple and other trees are in bloom, or the clover in the meadows, to be abroad and hear their busy hum. ...
— The History of Insects • Unknown
... in its result. In a deep, careless stroke, his paddle struck a submerged log and the slender blade snapped short off with a loud crack, the ticklish canoe careened suddenly to one side, then righted again with a sullen splash. At the sound the silent point quickly stirred with life. There was the hum of excited voices and a blinding flash of flame lit up the darkness, followed by the sharp crack of rifles and the ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... was; we were driving down full tilt with a five-knot tide under us. If we struck there was one consolation; the end would come soon. As 'John Peel' ended we could hear the tide race take up the tune and hum it on the wind of our passage; and above it I heard the third officer call out that he ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... followed the under cook, the scullery boy went back to cleaning the knives, Susan, the parlor maid who was going through the kitchen with her dustpan and broom, hurried off with a backward glance or two, and Phronsie was left quite alone to hum her way along ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney
... the hotel; but Miss Marigold, she's to hum," said the black girl, grinning. "Won't you step in? Miss will be dreffle sorry ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... musketry and the thunder of heavy cannon shook the island. The regiments in line in front of the cleared space before the battery, returned the fire with energy, and the marine howitzers also responded. Soon a shell from the enemy's work came flying through the woods with a hum, which increased to a howl, and burst with a startling explosion within a few rods of the hospital. Nobody was hurt; but the incident had a very marked effect on Jack Winch. He got better at once, and moved to the rear with ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... scorned'—Nation, you hear, Pickles—nation, not woman. There is just one thing to save this crumbling Republic; give us more paper money—greenbacks on greenbacks, mountain high. Let the Government rent by the month or lease by the year every printing-press in the country—let the machinery sweetly hum as the sheets of treasury-notes fall in cascades to the floor, to be cut apart, packed in bundles, and sent to any citizen who wants them on his own unendorsed note—unendorsed, Pickles, and at two per cent.! Ever study logic, ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... who had for some time been plunged in a silent revery,—"'Sdeath! why can you not stifle your love for the fine arts at a moment like this? That hum of thine grows louder every moment; at last I expect it will burst out into a full roar. Recollect we are ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... happening. The great guns weren't so bad," he continued—"but the rifle-bullets that came singing along in clouds like mosquitoes! Yah!" he used to snap, each time he told me the tale, slapping his ears right and left, as one does at the hum of those intrusive insects. He did not like the carpenter, either, for reasons of another kind. They were both humorists, but of a different order. Indeed, I don't think that the boatswain, though slightly ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... and waited and squirmed for a solid hour and a quarter. The steady hum of her mother's voice was interrupted occasionally by brief replies from Ernest. At last, Chicken Little heard a movement and roused herself joyously. But her mother began to speak again—this time with reverent solemnity. Chicken Little forgot herself and listened ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... SPIEGEL. Hum! hum! Brother, what I told you just now remains between ourselves; there is no occasion for his knowing it. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... got to the first hoop the rats ceased to run up the wall, his hand became less shaky, he began to play a very good knife and fork at the bacon and Iden's splendid potatoes; by-and-by he began to hum ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... was short; she was taken to a place a little beyond the head of the lake, and there, though she had liberty to breathe the air, fast fixed within the walls of a daily sameness that became gradually the hum of voices accusing Alvan of one in excess of the many sins laid against him by his enemies. Was he not possibly an empty pretender to power—a mere ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... is helped out by the pigeons that flock everywhere undisturbed about the approaches to the building, fluttering to be fed from the hand of some recognized friend, and scarcely evading the feet of the casual wayfarer. With this scene before him, if one will close his ears to the hum of the great city at his back he can readily imagine himself on classical soil, and, dreaming of Greece and Italy, he will enter the door quite prepared to find himself in the midst of antique marbles and the atmosphere of ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... tooken in a schooner that was gwine to run the blockade," answered Christy. "We was comin' out'n Pass Christian, and was picked up off Chand'leer [Chandeleur] Island, and fotched over hyer. We didn't feel too much to hum after we lost our wages, and we done took a whaleboat and came ashore here, with only one bottle of whiskey atween us. That's all there is on't. Now, ...
— A Victorious Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... would press up the hill after them to see what was to be seen. The high houses full on every story of eager heads thrust forth, relieving with unintentional yet lively decoration the many-windowed fronts, the shopkeepers crowding at their doors or seizing cap and halberd to follow, the hum and excitement of the roused town, surround the envoys like the background of a picture. Most probably they went on foot, the distance being so short, preceded by a glittering herald and pursuivant—perhaps David Lindsay, who can tell? still too young to ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... frequent mutinies only Craven seemed able to quell. He had sat far into the night, staring gloomily into the blazing fire, smoking pipe after pipe, listening to the multifarious noises of the forest—the sudden distant crash of falling trees, the incessant hum of insect life, the long-drawn howl of beasts of prey hovering on the outskirts of the camp, the soft whoo-whoo of an owl whose cry brought vividly to his mind the cool fragrance of the garden at Craven Towers and the nearer more ominous sounds ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... Thy making, though Thy handiwork is not very clear in our outer man as yet. We bless Thee that we feel Thy hand making us. What if it be in pain! Evermore we hear the voice of the potter above the hum and grind of his wheel. Father, Thou only knowest how we love Thee. Fashion the clay to Thy beautiful will. To the eyes of men we are vessels of dishonor, but we know Thou dost not despise us, for Thou hast made us, and Thou dwellest ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... when the hum of voices had ceased "I never thought as how I'd have to get up here and make a speech to-night or I might have taken to the woods. Howsomever, mother and Susan says as it's gettin' late it's about time we had ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... permanent steel horseshoe magnet, which would hardly be possible at all. One who has watched the installation of a dynamo, knowing that there is nowhere near any ordinary source of electricity, and has seen its armature begin to whirl and hum, and then in a few moments the violet sparklings of the brushes and the evident presence of a powerful current of electricity, is almost justified in the common opinion that the genius of man has ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... hands them to her. She pulls on one hastily and begins buttoning it with ostentatious unconcern]. Go further away from me, quick. [He walks doggedly away from her until the piano prevents his going farther]. If I button my glove, and you were to hum a tune, ...
— How He Lied to Her Husband • George Bernard Shaw
... row. Old discoloured walls divided them from each other and from the gardens of a parallel block of bigger houses, whose slates and chimneys towered above the intervening trees. The street in front of those houses was completely hidden, but the hum of its traffic travelled pleasantly to the ear, and there were other reassuring sights and sounds. In one of the contiguous gardens a very small boy was wheeling a doll's perambulator; on the other side, where the fine, ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... apices, which is spun, thrown, and caught by means of a cord strung to two sticks. The idea of the game appears originally to have come from China, where a top (Kouengen), made of two hollow pierced cylinders of metal or wood, joined by a rod—and often of immense size,—was made by rotation to hum with a loud noise, and was used by pedlars to attract customers. From China it was introduced by missionaries to Europe; and a form of the game, known as "the devil on two sticks," appears to have been known in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... green moss patch, under a big tree—and how she rambled all along shore gathering the tiniest little shells that ever a wave tossed up—and how she took off her shoes and stockings and dipped her feet in the cool water, and listened to the bees' drowsy hum from the old tree trunk close by, and watched the busy ant stagger home, under the weight of his well earned morsel—and how she made a bridge of stones over a little streamlet to pluck some crimson lobelias, ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... not afraid; the isle is full of noises, Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twanging instruments Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices, That, if I then had waked after long sleep, Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming, The clouds methought would open, and show riches Ready to drop upon me, that, when I waked, I ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... he said at length, hesitating with hum and with haw, "the thing is—well, to speak the truth, you take me a good deal by surprise! I do not know how the thing may appear to Mrs. Palmer. And then the girl herself, you will allow, ought, in a free country, to have a word ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... men again—it was needful to pick a path down the steep descent very carefully—and when she came, breathless, upon the clump of birches among which the tents were pitched it was evident from the hum of voices that the strangers had already arrived. Pushing in among the trees, she stopped, with her heart beating unpleasantly fast, face ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... of Craig Ronald drowsed in the quiet of noon. In the open court the sunshine triumphed, and only the purple-grey marsh mallows along the side of the house under the windows gave any sign of life. In them the bees had begun to hum at earliest dawn, an hour and a half before the sun looked over the crest of Ben Gairn. They were humming busily still. In all the chambers of the house there was the same reposeful stillness. Through them Winsome Charteris moved with free, light step. She glanced in to see that her grandfather ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... among whose reeds The wild fowl fed, but now no longer dwells. No more the bison feeds Upon the prairie, for the once drear plain Laughs in the sun and waves its golden grain. By a slender chain Ocean is linked to ocean, and the hum Of labor in the wilderness foretells The greatness of a nation yet to come. In Southern seas Another nation grows by slow degrees, In dreamy India, under tropic sun, Two hundred millions own an Empress' sway, And day by day. New territories won Shed lustre on our Queen's ...
— Fleurs de lys and other poems • Arthur Weir
... a dominion Whose spokesmen spake out strong Their purpose and opinion Through pulpit, press, and song. I scarce had means to note there A large-eyed few, and dumb, Who thought not as those thought there That stirred the heat and hum. ...
— Poems of the Past and the Present • Thomas Hardy
... the power lever back to zero. The power hum died. The liquids slid back to their natural level, the chair tipped over and lay still, ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... met by Olson, one of the squareheads, come to tell Newman that all was ready for the burial. So we joined the crowd, and Nils was put away, in the dead of night, by the light of one lantern and many stars. The hum of the wind aloft and the purr and slap of the waters against the bows ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... begun to hum a tune indifferently, smiled, looking first at the yard and then at my neck, and the hate in his eyes seemed to ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... There the beach was slashed by many black, saw-toothed reefs. The sea leaped up upon them on one side and the trees bore down upon them on the other. The air was filled with tumult, the hollow roar of the waves, the strident hum of the pines. For the first day, Pete entertained himself with exploration, clambering from one reef to another, pausing only to look listlessly off at the horizon, climbing a pine here and there, swinging on a bough while he stared absently back over the island. But although his look fixed ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... young shaver. There's better times to come. If the discovery of this galoot don't mean a gold boom in Timber Town, you may send the crier round and call me a flathead. Things is goin' to hum." ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... quite so bad, for then the hooting of a vagrant owl, or it may be the distant howl of a prowling timber wolf, that gray skulker of the pine lands, is apt to break the monotony; but even in the midst of summer there is lacking the hum of insects and the bustle of woods life—at best one hears the weird call of the whip-poor-will, called by the Indians, the "wish-a-wish," or if near a marsh the ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... cow-bell's ever-changing sound— The new-chopped tree's deep thundering on the ground; The patter of the rain on forest leaves, The tree-frog's pipe, which oft the ear deceives, The blazing log-heaps, and the rude rail fence— The wild-bee's hum of gratitude intense For hoards of honey, which our woods still yield; The plenteous crops contained in each small field; The Summer evening's song of "Whip-poor-will," Near, or remote, while all beside is still; The clamorous crow's most harsh discordant note; The blue jay, prone to ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... They dined at a little round table in the most desirable corner of the room—the professor and Edith, Mr. Bomford and himself. The music of one of the most famous orchestras in Europe alternately swelled and died away, always with the background of that steady hum of cheerful conversation. It was his first experience of a restaurant de luxe. He looked about him in amazed wonder. He had expected to find himself in a palace of gilt, to find the prevailing note of the place an unrestrained and inartistic gorgeousness. He found instead that the decorations everywhere ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... with voices—the voices of beasts and birds, reptiles, and insects—for the tree-frogs and ciendas were as noisy as the larger creatures. At other times a perfect stillness reigned, so that he could distinctly hear the tiny hum of the mosquito; and then, all at once, would fall upon his ear the melancholy wailing of the night-hawk—the "alma perdida," or "lost soul"—for such is the poetical and fanciful name given by the Spanish Americans ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... by the men. They knew their work was cut out for them, and each man was eager to play his part in the great drama of the morrow. There was no excited talk indulged in. None of the buzz of preparation nor the hum of anticipation which to the civilian mind should precede a desperate battle, but three or four members of the detachment took out their soldiers' hand-books and wrote in them their last will and testament, requesting their commander to witness the same and act as executor. ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... the bunk and put his eyes to the porthole, catching a view of blue water below and blue sky above, and the sea as it raced past showed that the vessel was moving swiftly. He heard, too, the hum of the strong wind in the rigging and the groaning timbers. It was enough to tell him that they were fast leaving New York behind, and that now the chances of his rescue upon a lone ocean were, in truth, very small. But once ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... coarse-fibred leaves in which they had been baked, were portions of beef, pork, veal, fish, chickens and other viands usual to a banquet in our own land. Bands of native boys with stringed instruments played continuously' during the feast, making music of a peculiar character, that rose and fell as the busy hum of conversation and mingled with the joyous laughter of the men and maidens that were gathered about ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... the ambrotype and held it close to her eyes, then her hand sank until the picture dropped back into its place, and the lonely desolate woman buried her face in her palms. The pretty guilt clock on the mantle ticked monotonously, and the hum of life, and the busy roll of vehicles in the vast city, was borne in through the window, like the faint roar of yet distant Niagara; and after awhile when the sharp stroke of the clock announced four the bowed ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... I'll bet that it will be six hundred Jovian years before any of them ever come within a hundred kilometers of it again. I'm glad of it, too, because they'll let our power plant alone now. Well, let's get going—we've got to make things hum ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... make their fellow creatures better. 'Untiring humor seemed the ruling passion of his soul. With a heart open to all innocent pleasures, purged from the leaven of malice and uncharitableness, it was as natural that he should be full of mirth as it is for the grasshopper to chirp or bee to hum, or the birds to warble in the spring ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... foreign women pass him by, their tarnished coins held tight, They toss their heads and will not hear his music's wistful hum— But through each alley way and street, like moths that seek the light, With eager eyes and laughing lips ...
— Cross Roads • Margaret E. Sangster
... dashed in their faces, the hum of the cordage overhead was in their ears, and their thoughts had gone back to that day, now nigh upon eight years back, when they, as unknown and untried boys, had started forth to see the ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... might have crawled up and shot me in the eye through this hole. I won't hold my eye here all the time!" said he, rising, and to his astonishment Sneak stood at his elbow, whither he had glided softly, his quick ear having caught the hum of Joe's soliloquy, and his curiosity leading him to find out the meaning of the mysterious jargon of ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... his part of the boat, as an old stage-driver is about the snugness of his box. When close to the whale, in the very death-lock of the fight, he handled his unpitying lance coolly and off-handedly, as a whistling tinker his hammer. He would hum over his old rigadig tunes while flank and flank with the most exasperated monster. Long usage had, for this Stubb, converted the jaws of death into an easy chair. What he thought of death itself, there is no telling. ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... had great honor. And I was just thinking that one glorious thing about this same queen was that she at least escaped from all the twentieth-century strain and dislocation in the relationship between city men and women, when the hum of that car brought me back to earth and reminded me that I might have a tableful of guests to feed. The car itself drew up, with a flutter of its engine, half-way between the shack and the corral, and at that sound I imagine we all rather felt like Robinson Crusoes listening to the ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... men are always at a disadvantage except on the stage. The hum-drum is the style for Englishmen. Bishop Burnet calls Marvell "a droll," Parker, who was to be a bishop, calls him "a buffoon." Marvell is occasionally humorous and not infrequently carries a jest beyond the limits of becoming mirth; but he is ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... a marble fountain in the middle of it, the Greek captains awaited the coming of Pausanias. A low and muttered conversation was carried on amongst them, in small knots and groups, amidst which the voice of Uliades was heard the loudest. Suddenly the hum was hushed, for footsteps were heard without. The thick curtains that at one extreme screened the door-way were drawn aside, and, attended by three of the Spartan knights, amongst whom was Lysander, and by two soothsayers, who were seldom absent, in war or warlike council, ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... orders to call for them later in the day. They walked on over the crisp dry grass, and seated themselves on a bit of the fallen masonry. The reaches of the placid river lay before them, and the hum of the alert cricket was in their ears. Now and then a bird flew surreptitiously from one bush to another, with the stealthy, swift motion of flight in autumn, so different from the heedless, fluttering, hither-and-yon vagaries of the spring and early summer. The time for frivolity is over; the ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... and hoped. The throb of the engine became a monotonous hum and whir, and the crash of the waves like the boom of some big drum. Rob, looking through one of the ...
— The Motor Boys on the Pacific • Clarence Young
... mother appeared at the side of the house, for she had been in the kitchen. She raised her eyes toward the cliff as she crossed the farm-yard with something for the hens, looked up again and began to hum. Oyvind sat down to wait. The underbrush was so dense that he could not see very far into the forest, but he listened to the slightest sound. For a long time he heard nothing but the birds that flew up and cheated him,—after a while ...
— A Happy Boy • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... hearts have heard the low whistle of the flying arrow and the sweet hum of the bowstring singing in the book, The Witchery of Archery by Maurice Thompson. To Will and Maurice Thompson we owe a debt of gratitude hard to pay. The tale of their sylvan exploits in the everglades of Florida has a charm that borders on the fay. We who shoot the bow today are children of ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... more had left the table, but the rest, lingering over their fresh filled coffee cups, sat around telling tales, and Tex Calder was among them. He was about to push back his chair when the hum of talk ceased as if at a command. The men on the opposite side of the table were staring with fascinated eyes at the door, and then a big voice boomed behind him: "Tex Calder, stan' up. You've come to the end of ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... promised to marry me, I was at one sort of fever-pitch, and when I got to work on that play I was at another. No writer while exercising an abnormal faculty is quite sane. His brain is several pitches above normal and his nerves are like hot taut wires—that hum like the devil. If this were not the case he would not be an imaginative writer at all. But he certainly is in no condition to reveal himself to a woman. I have made wild and sporadic love to you—sporadic is the word, for between ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... through his most important business deals, and its busiest hours were those which most men devote to rest. But John Burkett Ryder never rested. There could be no rest for any man who had a thousand millions of dollars to take care of. Like Macbeth, he could sleep no more. When the hum of business life had ceased down town and he returned home from the tall building in lower Broadway, then his real work began. The day had been given to mere business routine; in his own library at night, free from inquisitive ears and prying eyes, he could devise new schemes for strengthening ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... veranda after a day of keen activity in the burning sun. He felt slack and jaded, for he had had difficult work to do and his dusky laborers had flagged under the unusual heat. There was now no touch of coolness in the stagnant air, and although the camp down the valley was very quiet a confused hum of insects came out of the jungle. It rose and fell with a monotonous regularity that jarred upon Dick's nerves as ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... meal hour there was a continual round of merriment, and every one was enjoying himself to the fullest extent. But now the hum of voices ended. The ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Treasures of the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... walks threaded everywhere a large shrubbery, and in all sorts of corners and quiet places little dining tables had been placed. Scarcely any one was in sight of any other person, although they were so close together that all the time there was a hum of voices. In the distance, down by the river, a large gondola was passing slowly backwards and forwards, on which an orchestra played soft music. Julien and Madame Christophor crossed the narrow strip of lawn ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of sprouting grass! In a blur the violets pass. Whispering from the wildwood come Mayflower's breath and insect's hum. Roses carpeting the ground; Thrushes, orioles, warbling sound:— Swing me low, and swing me high, To the warm clouds ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... Now entertain conjecture of a time When creeping murmur and the poring dark Fills the wide vessel of the universe. From camp to camp, through the foul womb of night The hum of either army stilly sounds,[1] That the fix'd sentinels almost receive The secret whispers of each other's watch:[2] Fire answers fire;[3] and through their paly flames Each battle sees the other's umber'd face:[4] Steed threatens steed, in high and boastful neighs Piercing the night's dull ear; ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare
... the field mouse and the toad Have burrowed; where, beside the road, The grasshopper and katydid All winter have been safely hid; And when the bumblebee will come A-booming back with pleasant hum? April can tell you, for 'tis she Opens the ...
— Dew Drops Vol. 37. No. 17, April 26, 1914 • Various
... lighted his pipe and composed himself beside the camp-fire to smoke and rest awhile before going to bed. The silence of the wilderness enfolded lake and shore; yet presently it came to be a silence accentuated by near and distant sounds, faint, wild, lonely—the low hum of falling water, the splash of tiny waves on the shore, the song of insects, and the dismal hoot ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... her head as she had often felt it before. But she dared not let her mind go out to him in answer, for, if once she did so, she knew also that he would discover her. So she sat, and fed her eyes upon his face, taking her farewell of it, while round her, and beneath her, the hum of the House went on, as ever present and as unnoticed as the hum of ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... Verdi kept putting him off, till the evening before the orchestral rehearsal, when he brought forth the lines; but at the same time he demanded a promise that Mirate—nor indeed any of the singers—should not hum or whistle the air till it should be heard at the first performance. This signified Verdi's belief that the song would instantly become a universal favourite. The faith was justified. The whole country went ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... words were the refrain of a familiar old ballad, and he continued to hum this as he straightened up and set his hands on his hips, regarding the twins through wickedly narrowed eyes. He was flushed with drink and inclined, as always at such times, to swagger with a sort of ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... "Well—hum—ha! It might not come handy just now, seeing that Sir George is off with the King, and all the money and plate with him and most of the able-bodied servants, but I'm the more bound to look ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a pool. It was only the vehicles that sent high, unmistakable, the deep bass of their movement. And yet after listening one seemed to hear a singular murmurous note, a pulsation, as if the crowd made noise by its mere living, a mellow hum of the eternal strife. Then suddenly out of the deeps might ring a human voice, a newsboy shout perhaps, the cry of a faraway jackal ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... thine alder tree, And here thine aspen shiver; And here by thee will hum the bee, For ever and ...
— Beauties of Tennyson • Alfred Tennyson
... experienced eyes of the Cossack detected trees carried down by the current. Only very rarely sheet-lightning, mirrored in the water as in a black glass, disclosed the sloping bank opposite. The rhythmic sounds of night—the rustling of the reeds, the snoring of the Cossacks, the hum of mosquitoes, and the rushing water, were every now and then broken by a shot fired in the distance, or by the gurgling of water when a piece of bank slipped down, the splash of a big fish, or the crashing ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy
... freshened up the pale olive, till the olive forgot its monotony, and its cheek glowed like the arbutus or beech of the Umbrian hills. He would say nothing of the thyme and the thousand fragrant herbs which carpeted Hymettus; he would hear nothing of the hum of its bees; nor take account of the rare flavor of its honey, since Gaza and Minorca were sufficient for the English demand. He would look over the Aegean from the height he had ascended; he would ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... open window, seeking a breath of air that hot summer's night, though indeed there was none to be found; and if there had been, it could not have cooled the brow's inward fever. The Park lay before him, dark and misty; the lights of the few vehicles passing gleamed now and again; the hum of life was dying out in the streets, men's free steps, careless voices. He looked down, and wondered whether any one of those men knew what care meant as he knew it; whether the awful skeleton, that never quitted him night or day, could hold such place with another. He ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... with only a crack of the ruler! The men, I say, are looked after carefully enough. I wish the officers were. The Indians have just broken up their camp, and retired in dudgeon, because the young officers were for ever drinking with the squaws—and—and—hum—ha." Here Mr. Harry pauses, as not caring to proceed with the narrative, in the presence of little Fanny, very likely, who sits primly in her chair by her mother's side, working ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... period, all the outworkers were again busy: Great Titchfield Street found itself so fully occupied that the girls had no time to recall songs learned at the second house of their favourite music hall. Into the hum and activity of this busy hive came, one evening, Madame's husband, making his way to the office where Madame and Miss Higham faced each other at sloping desks. He began to shout; it was clear that on the way from King's Road he had been taking refreshment to encourage determination. ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... heard the low whistle of the flying arrow and the sweet hum of the bowstring singing in the book, The Witchery of Archery by Maurice Thompson. To Will and Maurice Thompson we owe a debt of gratitude hard to pay. The tale of their sylvan exploits in the ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... fetches him a blow in the stomach that doubles him up speechless. The doctor walks over to the window and reads the morning paper for a while. Presently he turns and begins to mutter more to himself than the patient. "Hum!" he says, "there's a slight anaesthesia of the tympanum." "Is that so?" says the patient, in an agony of fear. "What can I do about it, doctor?" "Well," says the doctor, "I want you to keep very quiet; you'll have to go to bed and stay there ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... pictured, as he sat alone in his great empty house, how Highacres would look after scores of young feet had trampled over its velvety stretches? Perhaps he had liked that picture; perhaps, to him, his halls were echoing even then to the hum of young voices; perhaps he had felt that these young lives that would pass over the threshold of the house he had built out into the world of men and women would belong, in some way, to him who had never had a boy ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... sisters, did you ever see a cage full of canary-birds flutter when a cat was looking through the wires? If you have, that can give you some idea of the buzz, hum, and rustle that was going on when we came up to the front of that round sofa, and gave Mrs. Grant and Mrs. Morton one of those sliding curtsies that set off a long-trailed dress ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... that the king's daughter was shut up in some distant hiding-place, Gunnar strained his wits in every nerve to track her out. Hence, while he was himself conducting the search with others, his doubtful ear caught the distant sound of a subterranean hum. Then he went on slowly, and recognized a human voice with greater certainty. He ordered the ground underfoot to be dug down to the solid rock; and when the cave was suddenly laid open, he saw the winding tunnels. The servants were ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... he demanded brusquely; and with another sardonic laugh the real motive came out,—"I wanted to see what you folks who go to the opery see—how you enjoy yourselves. Well, the opery ain't so bad—it ain't one bit bad," and he attempted to hum the Rheingold music. "I believe I'll go to the opery again when I'm on the loose and don't know any better way to blow my money. I like music," he added inconsequentially. "Mother ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... magnificent garden in the rear, the Hotel de Mussidan is as elegant as it is commodious. The exterior was extremely plain, and not disfigured by florid ornamentation. White marble steps, with a light and elegant railing at the sides, lead to the wide doors which open into the hall. The busy hum of the servants at work at an early hour in the yard tells that an ample establishment is kept up. There can be seen luxurious carriages, for occasions of ceremony, and the park phaeton, and the simple brougham which ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... the London season on Sunday afternoon, about a score of visitors were assembled in Mrs. Cosgrove's drawing-rooms—there were two of them, with a landing between. As usual, some one sat at the piano, but a hum of talk went on as undercurrent to the music. Downstairs, in the library, half a dozen people found the quietness they preferred, and among these was Mrs. Widdowson. She had an album of portraits on her lap; whilst turning them ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... unroofed the houses to read the history of human life or the passions of the human heart, for life and passion had gone forth that night from many a tranquil abode to revel in publicity. One so standing above the wild hum of tumultuous enjoyment would in silent thought have marveled at the strange drama performing as it were at his feet,—the sad and fearful mixture of the shadows and lights of life and death, the market-place, and close at hand the burial-ground. Talk of contemplation ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... two captives were greeted by a vague, indefinable hum, like and yet unlike that of a busy city. It was like many far-off sounds carefully muffled. Now and then they heard human voices, laughter, and singing in the distance, and the twanging of ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben
... the world over, spreads its rows of marble tables! A hubbub of cries, greetings, conversations, footsteps, echoing in the galleries as in an immense cloister, the lofty skylight quivering with the hum of busy human ants, forever, day and night, crawling, darting this ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... space between the wall and the front benches. There were Garrone's father, Derossi's mother, the blacksmith Precossi, Coretti, Signora Nelli, the vegetable-vender, the father of the little mason, Stardi's father, and many others whom I had never seen; and on all sides a whispering and a hum were audible, that seemed to ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... faster! The roar became a whining hum. Then for Madeline sound ceased to be anything—she could not hear. The wind was now heavy, imponderable, no longer a swift, plastic thing, but solid, like an on-rushing wall. It bore down upon Madeline with such resistless weight that she could not move. The green of desert plants along the ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... as he spoke, and the powerful little electric motors began to hum, forcing forward the piston attached to the tank connected to the hollow rods. Steadily the little motors hummed, and the tank emptied through the rods into the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... we had happened once more upon the handiwork of the Motor Pirate was correct. He had, it appeared, been driving quietly along, when his attention had been arrested by the curious high-toned hum which presaged the Pirate's approach. He was wondering what the curious noise could be, when he suddenly realized that a long low car was beside him. He did not anticipate any harm either to himself or to his charge, ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... German-American manufacturer of buggies, and was invited because of his readiness to play on any occasion. The old man looked about him at the company with a fatherly smile, and, sitting down to his instrument, waited pointedly until all the cheerful hum of conversation had died away. The room was profoundly silent as he brought his hands down on the keys in a startling, thrilling chord. Lydia's heart began to beat fast. She felt a chill run among ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... high wall and the strong gate, there came the usual night hum of the city, with now and then an indescribable ring in it, weird and unearthly, as if some unwonted sounds of a terrible nature were ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... but clear skies, green fields, and sweet-smelling flowers—when the recollection of snow, and ice, and bleak winds, has faded from our minds as completely as they have disappeared from the earth,—and yet what a pleasant time it is. Orchards and cornfields ring with the hum of labour; trees bend beneath the thick clusters of rich fruit which bow their branches to the ground; and the corn, piled in graceful sheaves, or waving in every light breath that sweeps above it, as if it wooed the sickle, tinges the landscape with a golden ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... drawings and formulae, and the sentry-path trodden in the matting of the verandah showed where he had walked alone. There is no eight-hour limit to an engineer's work, and the evening meal with Hitchcock was eaten booted and spurred: over their cigars they listened to the hum of the village as the gangs came up from the river-bed and the ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... back, her hands behind her head, her fingers outstretched among the long, cool grasses. A hum of insects surrounded her. The grasses towering above her eyes were a forest. She turned her head to watch a lady-bug industriously ascend one side of a blade of grass, and with equal enterprise immediately descend the other side. With ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... rushing downward in a torrent of ecstatic life, the river had paused in the valley to rest, dreaming, perchance, of the long cool shadows in the uplands, the far altar-fires of daybreak. There were pleasant things to do in the valley, to lie at full length, basking in the sun, to hum a bit of the old music, to touch gently the harp-strings of the marsh grass and rushes, dimpling with pleasure at the faint answer, to reflect every passing mood of cloud and sky, even to hold the little clouds as a mother might, ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... undertone to the clangor of the music-box and the human hum, for across the cavern's farther end for a space of two hundred yards the great river rushed, penned here into a deep trough of less than a tenth its normal width—plunging out of a great fanged gap and hurrying out of view down another one, licking ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... public road, with its coaches hurrying on to London, its market people halting to drink, its farmers, horsemen, and foot travellers. So, as one's humour is, one can have whichever phase of life one pleases: quietude or bustle; solitude or the busy hum of men: one can sit in the principal room with a tankard and a pipe and see both these phases at once through the windows that open upon either. But through all these delightful places they talk of leading railroads: a sad thing, I am sure: quite ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... Hum-a-bum buzz! As I went over Tipple-tine I met a flock of bonny swine; Some yellow-nacked, some yellow backed! They were the very bonniest swine That e'er ...
— The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin • Beatrix Potter
... yard and soon could see through the intervening trees and bushes the light of the great camp, from which came a monotonous hum. ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... a man named Hum, of the race of Feridun, dwelt hard by. He was remarkable for his strength and bravery, but had peacefully taken up his abode upon the neighboring mountain, and was passing a religious life without any communication with the busy world. ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... this he came down into a little valley, flower-floored and lazy with the hum of bees, that behaved quite as a reasonable valley should, in so far as it made legitimate entry on the lake. What was wrong with it was its length—scarcely a hundred yards; its head a straight up-and-down cliff of a thousand feet, over which a stream ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... "Ha-hum!" muttered the captain to himself reflectively. "I wish the wind would shift over more to the nor'ard, and we'd then be able to shape a better course; we're going far too much to the west to please me! I suppose," he added in a louder tone, addressing ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... it was more the smell of treacle, and the casks and sugar bags piled up under an open-sided shed all looked gummy and sticky; while the flies—there, it was just as if all the flies in the world, little and big, had been attracted to hum, buzz, and in some cases utter useless cries for help when they had managed to get their wings daubed with the sweet juice and strove vainly to ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... them, my imagination conjured up the scene when this hall was bright with the valor and beauty of the land, glittering with the splendor of jewelled rank and military array, alive with the tread of many feet and the hum of an admiring multitude. All had passed away; the silence of death had settled again upon the place, interrupted only by the casual chirping of birds, which had found their way into the chapel and built their nests among ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... and, still remoter, the melancholy note of a bird tolled its refrain, answered by an echoing voice from some yet inner depth of forest far away. Save for this, the silence was as intense as the vastness and color of the scene, till it opened and resolved itself into one broad insect hum. The children took a couple of steps forward, under their feet the elastic sod sank and rose with a spurt of silver jets; they sprang back to their seats, and the shading tree above shook down a shining shower in rillets of silver rain. They remained for a minute, then, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... head as a car pulled into the curving driveway. The warm hum of the turboelectric engine stopped, and a man climbed out of the vehicle. He walked with easy strides across the grass to where the elderly gentleman sat. He was lithe, of indeterminate age, but with a look of great ...
— Suite Mentale • Gordon Randall Garrett
... when she had finished them, she turned her attention to the peas. She did not look at the young workingman again; she had already a colored photograph of him in her head which she could bring to life whenever she wished. When she turned the corner of the cottage with her sprinkler, she began to hum. The gay lad gave her cause for amusement and put her in a merry mood. She read in his frown that attitude of unreasoning resignation without which a waiting heart cannot maintain its elasticity for any length ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... picture. But the fact that it had taken many patient hours of work "unto others," was not to be overlooked. If it had broken the rules of the Wicked Compact, and she went back to the B-Hive without letting the girls know of it—oh, hum! of course that would be another "wicked compact"! She would have to let them know—and she didn't want to let them ...
— Four Girls and a Compact • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... rather ho-hum to me; they are quick to respond to hygienic treatment and easy to resolve. I've fixed lots of them. But an inflamed gallbladder is in no way ho-hum to the person afflicted with it. I've been frequently told that ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... before us, at the consulting barrister waiting in her chambers and the lady advocate flourishing her maiden brief; our pulse throbs a little awkwardly at the thought of being tested by medical fingers and thumbs of such a delicate order, and we hum a few lines of the Princess as Miss Hominy poses herself for a Lady Professor. Still we cannot help a half conviction that even this would be better than the present style of thing, the pretty face that kindles over the news of a fresh opera and gives you the latest odds on the Derby, ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... eyes fixed on the arena, without seeing the soldiers, swordsmen, or athletes who were busy there; her mind wandered further and further from the place; and the chattering of the people resolved itself into a distant hum and was forgotten. ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... passing through several comparatively silent and deserted streets, then suddenly the horses slackened their pace, a bright light shone in at the carriage window and the hum of many voices and sound of many feet attracted ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley
... back through the long avenues of pavilions. The lights of innumerable camp-fires, the hum of thousands of voices, the snorting of horses, the grumbling of camels, the groans of men wounded—all these and all other sights and sounds from the countless host were lost to him. He walked on by a kind of animal instinct that ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... been there but a little while, when—snap! buzz! buzz! buzz! ziz! ziz! and electricity began to pull my hair and hum around my ears. The electricity passed off shortly, but in a little while it caught me again by the hair for a brief time, and this time my right arm momentarily cramped and my heart seemed to give several ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... pleasure began to hum in my head, my knees gradually gave way beneath me, until I was on my knees before the two women. My hands were unconsciously extended as if to fend them off, and each of them seized a hand, pulled me to the round bench at the back of the control cabin. They stroked my cheeks, ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... hall he could hear a low hum of conversation on the other side of the parlour doors. They were partly open, and he hurried past lest someone call for him to come in. He went upstairs, into the ell bedroom, and took off his coat. He looked at himself in the glass of the bureau. ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... after this, if I deliver a maxim, which is condemned by several metaphysicians, and is esteemed contrary to the most certain principles of hum reason. This maxim is that an object may exist, and yet be no where: and I assert, that this is not only possible, but that the greatest part of beings do and must exist after this manner. An object may be said to be no where, when its parts are not so situated ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... Many streams took their beginning in the glens of Grunewald, turning mills for the inhabitants. There was one town, Mittwalden, and many brown, wooden hamlets, climbing roof above roof, along the steep bottom of dells, and communicating by covered bridges over the larger of the torrents. The hum of watermills, the splash of running water, the clean odour of pine sawdust, the sound and smell of the pleasant wind among the innumerable army of the mountain pines, the dropping fire of huntsmen, ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the kettle, at any rate, seemed to repent of its laziness, for it began to hum softly, and then to hum loudly, and then to sing, but Mona was completely lost in the story she was reading, and had no mind for repentance or anything else. She did not hear the kettle's song, nor even the rattling of its cover when it boiled, ...
— The Making of Mona • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... are always your million-and-one favorite melodies which nobody but that all-around musical amateur, the Auto-Comrade, can so exquisitely whistle, hum, strum, fiddle, blat, or roar. There is also a universe full of new ones for him to improvise. And he is the jolliest sort of fellow musician, because, when you play or sing a duet with him, you can combine with the exciting give-and-take ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... the gate to the stables, and from the stables to the gate. Each time they turned they looked at Oscar curled up in his corner of the coucou. Oscar, persuaded that their jokes and laughter concerned himself, affected the utmost indifference. He began to hum the chorus of a song lately brought into vogue by the liberals, which ended with the words, "'Tis Voltaire's fault, 'tis ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... the smaller vessels of Malacca which he calls balos in ch. 13, De Embarcacoes, says: "At the poop they have two rudders, one on each side to steer with." E por poupa dos ballos, tem 2 lemes, hum en cada lado pera o governo. (Malacca, l'Inde merid. et le Cathay, Bruxelles, 1882, 4to, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... did the monks never think of applying to such places the figure by which they protested against the introduction of coffee, "the fumes of hell"? The smoke of five hundred cigars or pipes rising to a ceiling which had been thus smoked for centuries,—the hoarse hum of five hundred voices uttering the German gutturals from tongues thickened by the use of beer, and floating heavily through an atmosphere of densest smoke, dimming the lights and turning all into an indefinite and uniform brown color,—this may indeed be a picture of ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... rose a blurred hum of sound; rose and as it were remained stationary above it—like a smoke-cloud, which no wind comes to drive away. Gradually, though, the ear made out, in the conglomerate of noise, a host of separate noises infinitely multiplied: the sharp tick-tick of surface-picks, ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... skin, marvelling at its jewelled eyes, foretelling its lithe progress through Society. She heard the murmur of their voices until far into the night. And sometimes she thought that distant murmur sounded like the hum of evil, or like the furtive whisper ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... bridge ceases, the last files and the sergeant-major run after them to close up, in obedience to the sharp mandate of the major, and the invasion is begun. No man spoke a word; no sound was audible save the distant hum and cracking of the city, the cry of a thousand frogs, and the muffled tramp of 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. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... music of them over to himself when he was going to sleep—it was good music for that. One of the airs popped into his mind that very minute; it was a Jacobite song about "Charlie," and he started to hum it softly. Close on the humming came an idea—a braw one; it made him sit up in the corner of the throne and clap his hands, while his toes wriggled exultantly ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... and to take the shape of a star with curved rays, alone sent us its pale light. When we attained the very bottom of the cistern, we found a superb sight was to be had of all those steps, lighted from above and cutting off their shadows with marvelous precision. I then heard the hum of which I have already spoken: the immense granite conch had ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... distinguish a low moaning sound, like the hum of a wild bee; it seemed to come out of the earth. After a little it grew louder and sharper; then it ended in a yelp and ceased altogether. After a short interval it began afresh, this time still clearer; then came the yelp, loud, sharp, and ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... was to keep the completest possession of himself in all hum an emergencies, his own profound astonishment, when the course of his reading brought him to the mark on the linen of the missing young lady, betrayed him into an exclamation of surprise which even startled the ferryman. ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... of Thompson—named for J. Edgar Thompson, of Philadelphia—with its half dozen extemporized buildings, in the quiet of the woods, will ere long resound with the hum of many industries, and already has considerable importance as being the point of junction of the two great railways entering Duluth—the St. Paul and the Puget Sound (Northern Pacific) Roads; the latter traversing a vast territory abounding ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill
... save for the high hum let in through the open doorway. The members of the conference stared at the Honourable Hilary, who seemed to have forgotten their presence; for he had moved his chair to the window, and was gazing out over the roofs at the fast-fading ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... thunder-hum, Maryland! The old Line's bugle, fife, and drum, Maryland! She is not dead, nor deaf, nor dumb; Huzza! she spurns the Northern scum! She breathes! She burns! She'll come! She'll come! ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... dropped to the gravel and lay there. He uttered no sound. The wind had died down and save for the droning hum of a billion mosquitoes the silence was absolute. A thin column of smoke streamed from the bowl of the neglected pipe. In profound fascination Wentworth watched it flow smoothly upward. An imperceptible ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx
... about To say she is a goodly Lady, and The iustice of your hearts will thereto adde 'Tis pitty shee's not honest: Honorable; Prayse her but for this her without-dore-Forme, (Which on my faith deserues high speech) and straight The Shrug, the Hum, or Ha, (these Petty-brands That Calumnie doth vse; Oh, I am out, That Mercy do's, for Calumnie will seare Vertue it selfe) these Shrugs, these Hum's, and Ha's, When you haue said shee's goodly, come betweene, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... leave to examine your present dress? Hum! Two flannel waistcoats, a thick cloth coat, a Bath surtout! It is a vast weight to carry this warm weather. I only hope ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... various elements in the school, was not deemed satisfactory. He was too much like Socrates. At last they found a man after their own heart. He had traveled and studied long abroad; was a dashing, brilliant fellow; would surely make things hum; so at least said those who recommended him (and he did). But he was still a poor student in Scotland; his passage money must be raised by the school if he was to be secured. And raised it was. Four hundred and seventy-five dollars those one hundred and fifty poor boys and girls, ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... outlined harbour, where the white-chimneyed packet snoozes as it were, the smoke curling upwards, almost straight. The sea-air blows fresh and welcome, though it does not beat on a 'fevered brow.' There is a busy hum and clatter in the streets, filled with soldiers and sailors and chattering sojourners. Now do the lamps begin to twinkle lazily. There is hardly a breath stirring, and the great chalk-cliffs gleam out in a ghostly ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... end; they had been at their work for near three hours, the 5,040 changes were almost finished. Westray went down from the organ-loft, and as he walked through the church the very last change was rung. Before the hum and mutter had died out of the air, and while the red-faced ringers in the belfry were quaffing their tankards, the architect had made his way to the scaffolding, and stood face to face with the zigzag crack. He looked at it ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... many a year agane. One evening I was going through the City in my motor car—the old City, that echoes to the tread of the business man by day, and at nicht is sae lane and quiet, wi' all the folk awa'. The country is quiet at nicht, tae, but it's quiet in a different way. For there the hum o' insects fills the air, and there's the music o' a brook, and the wind rustling in the tops o' the trees, wi' maybe a hare starting in the heather. It's the quiet o' life that's i' the glen at nicht, but i' the auld, auld City the quiet is the ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... the open air with a number of other people round them. There was music and merriment, and the subdued hum of distant voices rose and fell in the twilight. When the lamps were lighted, they had on one side the glare of a large town, on the other the semi-darkness was only relieved by points of light; and this was made the subject of poetical allusions ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... consisted of his going up to the gilt hammered-out image (with black face and hands) supposed to represent the very God he had been eating, illuminated by a dozen wax candles, and proceeding, in a strange, discordant voice, to hum ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... drowsy cawing of a crow upon a distant larch came to our ears with strange distinctness, and we even imagined that we could hear the regular throbbing of the surf upon the far-away coast. A faint murmurous hum of bees was in the air, and a rich fruity fragrance came up from the purple clusters of blueberries which our horses crushed under foot at every step. All things seemed to unite in tempting the tired traveller to stretch himself out on the warm fragrant grass, and spend the day in luxurious ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... is one little dream of a big sugar plum, And lo! thick and fast the other dreams come Of popguns that bang, and tin tops that hum, And a ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... trickled from me like a slender spring That strings frail wood-growths on its crystal thread, Nor dreams of glassing cities, bearing ships. She sang, and bore me through the April world Matching the birds, doubling the insect-hum In the meadows, under the low-moving airs, And breathings of the scarce-articulate air When it makes mouths of grasses—but when the sky Burst into storm, and took great trees for pipes, She thrust me in her breast, and warm ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... and more populous. The harbor was full of ships and boats of all sorts, some lying at the stone quays, others leaving port, others entering. Galleys passed and repassed, and merchant ships with their clumsy sails, and small fishing-boats. From afar arose the deep hum of a vast multitude and the low roar that always ascends from ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... very cruel, dear Buzz," said little Hum; "let us take him to our Queen, and she will tell us how to show our anger for the wicked deeds he did. See how bitterly he weeps; be kind to him, he will not ...
— Flower Fables • Louisa May Alcott
... Alexandria. Busy day in office. Things beginning to hum. A marvellous case of "two great minds." K. has proffered his advice upon the tactical problem, and how it should be dealt with, and, as I have just cabled in answer, "No need to send you my plan as you have got it in one, even down ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... energy, and thoughtfulness of the women. Practically every article of clothing worn by the entire family, as well as all household supplies, were the work of their busy hands. All day in the frontier cabin could be heard the hum of the spinning wheel, the clack of the loom, or the click of knitting needles. In many localities the added work of teaching the children fell to the mothers, and the home lessons given around the fireplace, heaped with glowing logs, were the only ones possible for many ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... on; and when the silence fell between them, she gave a long sigh, as we do when sweet music stops. They heard between them the soft stir of summer leaves, the distant songs of birds, the breezy hum when the afternoon wind shivered through many branches, and the silver sea chimed in. Virginie rose at last, and kissed Mary on ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... o'clock the hum of conversation ceased at the sound of singing voices in the distance. A sort of processional effect had been Tommy's suggestion, and the quartette formed in the dressing-room and sang its ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... A stifled hum of unceasing activity arises from the mass of people, clad in their gray woolen robes, thus congregated from afar to buy and sell all sorts of queer small objects. There are sorcerers performing their incantations; bands of armed men dancing the war-dance, with firing of guns, to the sound ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... no clamorous shoutings here. These crowds of staid, well-dressed, respectable people fly no kites, deal in no flimsy paper-schemes and shares. Their commerce is in corn, flour, seeds—the sustenance of man, in short. There are sober traders in realities, and the busy hum of voices has a smack of healthy traffic in it. It would so appear at all events, if we care not to look beneath the surface; and, in sooth, since the abolition of the sliding-scale has rendered the corn-supply ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various
... great as any sea, stretching away to a horizon of low chalk hills. Suddenly the car slowed down at a signal from my companion and stopped. We got out. Not a sound was to be heard except the mournful hum of the distant threshing machine, but a peculiar clicking, like the halliard of a flagstaff in a breeze, suddenly caught my ear. The wind was rising, and as I looked around me I saw innumerable little tricolour flags fluttering against small ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... watch, they must have observed our conversation to die out unusually soon. Yet I doubt if any of us slept. Each lay in his place, tortured at once with the hope of liberty and the fear of a hateful death. The guard call sounded; the hum of the town declined by little and little. On all sides of us, in their different quarters, we could hear the watchman cry the hours along the street. Often enough, during my stay in England, have I listened to ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... shown themselves); but, at any rate, it was clear that she was going to make a struggle for her life, and to do vicious damage, it might be, before she yielded it up. The watchers behind the arrow-slits recognized this. Their wagers, and the hum of their appreciation, swept loudly round the ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... Cornelia; but I may at least pour the wine to the blue-eyed goddess, with the pearl necklace, and the golden hair;" and as he lifted the glass, a memory from some past mirthful hour came into his remembrance; and he began to hum a strain of the song it ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... bed, a deep, clear bronze where the sunlight strikes the shallows! Farther and farther into the solitudes these two idly wander—away from human ken—until the dogs in the kennels are no longer heard, nor is there even a black-cock crowing in the woods; nothing but the hum of the bees, and the whisper of the birch branches, and the hushed, low thunder of the Geinig falls. He could almost hear it now; or was not the continuous murmur that dazed and dinned his ears a sadly ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... stood for some time wiping his boots on the mat. The little house was ominously still, and a faint feeling, only partially due to the lapse of time since breakfast, manifested itself behind his waistcoat. He coughed—a matter- of-fact cough—and, with an attempt to hum a tune, hung his hat on the ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... entered into that mighty forest where no human sound was heard and which was inhabited by deer and bears and birds, and which was adorned with trees that were bright and green, and which echoed with the hum of the black-bee and the notes of winged warblers. As he was proceeding along, he beheld that beautiful lake which looked as if it had been made by the celestial artificer himself. And it was adorned ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... then made a sign to Philip, to ask him if he was hungry; Philip replied in the affirmative, when his new acquaintance put his hand into a bag made of goat-skin, and pulled out a handful of very large beetles, and presented them to hum. Philip refused them with marks of disgust, upon which, the chief very sedately cracked and ate them; and having finished the whole handful, rose, and made a sign to Philip to follow him. As Philip rose, he ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... power lever back to zero. The power hum died. The liquids slid back to their natural level, the chair tipped over and lay still, papers ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... gave a leap, then sank cold and almost pulseless in my breast. In the hum to which all sounds had sunk, I heard Sinclair's voice rise again in the question with which my ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... spacious because of the straight, thin lines of barbed-wire fences lined with goldenrod, and solitary houses in willow groves. The dips and curves of the rolling plain drew him on; the distances satisfied his eyes. A pleasant hum of insects filled the land's wide serenity with ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... varieties described by authors, he observes—"Rara vero haec omnia esse si dixero cum quadringenta nunc cadavera humana dissecuerim, fidem forte inveniam." (Iconum Anatom.) This variety is also stated by J. F. Meckel (Handbuch der Mensch Anat.), Soemmerring (De Corp. Hum Fabrica), Boyer (Tr. d'Anat.), and Mr. Harrison (Surg. Anal. of Art.), to be the most frequent. Tiedemann figures this variety amongst others (Tabulae Arteriarum). Mr. Quain regards as the most frequent ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... to figure: If he armed it for this train, and ran, she'd go off while we were on location and we'd be drenched in searchlights and spray guns. Already, through his fingers, I felt the hum in the rails that every tank-town-reared kid knows. I turned up my ICEG. "All right, Clyde, get back. Arm it when she's gone ...
— A Matter of Proportion • Anne Walker
... people, to do the work. It would have been polite to ask rather than to command; still, they did what was required of them, each oaf lugging a stone to the river for the dam, which may be seen to this day. The hum and bustle of the work were heard all night, and so pleased was the farmer, when morning came and the ditch was built, that he set a feast for the menehune on the next night, and it was gone at daybreak. There were no tramps in Hawaii, so the menehune must have eaten it. Conceiving that ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... she asked, looking at me strangely beneath the light of the street-lamp in that deserted thoroughfare, where all was silence save the distant hum of the traffic. The dark trees above stood out distinct against the dull red night-glare of London, as the mysterious woman stood before me uttering ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... revolves the credit of our country abroad. But the growing value of the West to the economic and national life of Canada is a mere shadow of its increasing importance in the religious world. Above the hum of the binders and loud clatter of the threshing machines, above the sharp voice of the shrieking steel rail, counting, as it were, one by one, the freighted cars on their way to the Eastern ports, ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... We hum the air over to ourself, and are stricken with the most perfect iridescent sorrow. We even ransack our memory to try to think of someone who has been ungrateful to us, so that we can throw a little ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... prison warden at Fort City could draw out of that crowd, George!" continued McCloud's companion. "If the right man should get busy with that bunch of horses Sinclair has got together, and organize those up-country fellows for mischief, wouldn't it make things hum on the ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... fill the valleys with the voices of love in its purity, the pledges of friendship in its faithfulness; and as the morning sun drinks the dewdrops from the flowers all the way from the dreary Atlantic to the Peaceful Ocean, meet him with the joyous hum of the early industry of freemen! Utter boldly and spread widely through the world the thoughts of the coming apostles of the people's liberty, till the sound that cheers the desert shall thrill through the heart of humanity, and the lips of the messenger of the people's ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... music had become serious. It was hard to make progress when the dancers had to hum their own tunes. Prue could not buy a phonograph, and the Prosser piano dated from a time when pianos did not play themselves. Prue could "tear off a few rags," as she put it, but she could not dance and teach and play her own music all at once. Mrs. Hippisley was afraid to lend her phonograph ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... a permanent steel horseshoe magnet, which would hardly be possible at all. One who has watched the installation of a dynamo, knowing that there is nowhere near any ordinary source of electricity, and has seen its armature begin to whirl and hum, and then in a few moments the violet sparklings of the brushes and the evident presence of a powerful current of electricity, is almost justified in the common opinion that the genius of man has devised a machine to create ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... fro with an easy swing; there rose the hum of the chains moving easily below, and the quickened churning of the ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... opened a little room where as a child he slept. His memories of that room were the terrors of a nervous boy, lying alone in the dark, creeping downstairs to sit—a tiny white-robed figure—as near as possible to the drawing-room door, to get comfort from the hum of talk or thunder of the four-handed piano pieces ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... Paradise now came up to me again, followed by a square man, middle-aged, and hum-drum, who, I found was Lord Say and Sele, afterwards from the Kirwans, for though they introduced him to me, I was so confounded by their vehemence and their manners, that I did not hear ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... could hear their brutal jests, directed not only against himself, but against those dear to him—his mother and sister. While this pained him, he began to wonder that they should be so much the subject of the conversation. He could not tell what was said of them, but in the hum of voices their names repeatedly reached his ear. He had lain about an hour on the banqueta, when the door opened, and the two officers, Vizcarra and Roblado, stepped within the cell. They ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... not afear'd; the isle is full of noises, Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments Will hum about mine ears, and sometimes voices That, if I then had waked after long sleep. ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... he'll hear me. Yet to bite his lip And hum at good Cominius much unhearts me. He was not taken well: he had not din'd; The veins unfill'd, our blood is cold, and then We pout upon the morning, are unapt To give or to forgive; but when we have stuff'd These pipes and these conveyances of our blood With wine and feeding, we have ...
— The Tragedy of Coriolanus • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... very prominent objects on the eye, unless by being audaciously oracular and peremptory as regarded the sentiment, or flashy in excess as regarded its expression. "Come now, my friend," was Lord Chesterfield's morning adjuration to his author;" come now, cut it short—don't prose—don't hum and haw. "The author had doubtless no ambition to enter his name on the honorable and ancient roll of gentlemen prosers; probably he conceived himself not at all tainted with the asthmatic infirmity of humming and ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... gleam of light above, and I could see only a bottomless darkness with spectral patches of crimson and purple floating therein. Yet if I could not see, I could hear. Out of this darkness came a sound, a sound like the angry hum one can hear if one puts one's ear outside a hive of bees, a sound out of that enormous hollow, it may be, four miles ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... I long to resign For my cherish'd retreat, 'neath the wide-spreading tree. Through the long, long hours of day I pine For the breath of the flowers and the hum ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth
... bisected longitudinally, had one of its halves open, and by it outflowed the gentle hum of the honeybees of learning. Malcolm walked in, and had the whole of the busy scene at once before him. The place was like a barn, open from wall to wall, and from floor to rafters and thatch, browned with the ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... of the trees. They are of no politics. There was no noise of labor. I did not perceive that they were weaving or spinning. Yet I did detect, when the wind lulled and hearing was done away, the finest imaginable sweet musical hum,—as of a distant hive in May, which perchance was the sound of their thinking. They had no idle thoughts, and no one without could see their work, for their industry was not as in knots ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... fainter and wearier with every answer, and now there was no answer at all. Again and again I asked Raffles if he was there; the only sound to reach me in reply was the low metallic hum of the live wire between his ear and mine. And then, as I sat gazing distractedly at my four safe walls, with the receiver still pressed to my head, there came a single groan, followed by the dull and dreadful crash of a human body falling in ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... himself, he found that he was in a room that was pitch-dark. From a distance came a hum of voices, and the steady blows of some blunt instruments, probably axes or ...
— For the Liberty of Texas • Edward Stratemeyer
... loves not the shady trees, The smell of flowers, the sound of brooks, The song of birds, and the hum of bees, Murmuring in green and fragrant nooks, The voice of children in the spring, Along the ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... when the midsummer hum of the myriads of insects in the air sheds a drowsy harmony over the tree-tops, the field-faring woman goes out to haymaking, and leaves her baby in the shade by the hedge-side. A wooden sheepcage, turned upside down and filled with new-made hay, forms not at all a despicable cradle; and here the ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... feature may be noted in connection with this time of trouble. While the Secession war lasted, "the cotton famine" had full sway in Lancashire; unwonted and unwelcome light and stillness replaced the dun clouds of smoke and the busy hum that used to tell of fruitful, well-paid industry; and the patient people, haggard and pale but sadly submissive, were kept, and just kept, from starving by the incessant charitable effort of their countrymen. ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... casualties were I never heard. Luckily a ward had just been evacuated that evening and the wounded and dying were brought in immediately. It was horrible to see little children, torn and maimed, being carried past our door into the ward. The hum of the Gotha's engines could still ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... already she was like a figment in some evanescent dream. What had wrought the change? Was it the sight of Delbridge and his mention of Mostyn's financial prowess? Was it the fellow's confident allusion to Mitchell and his daughter? Had the buzz and hum of business, the fever of conquest, already captured and killed the impulses which in the mountains had seemed so ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... house: and the hum of the wheel and the singing Suddenly ceased; for Priscilla, aroused by his step on the threshold, Rose as he entered, and gave him her hand, in signal of welcome, Saying, "I knew it was you, when I heard your step in ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... without providing them with the requisite reservoirs of reserves — His feat in organizing five regular divisions in addition to those in the Expeditionary Force — His immediate recognition of the magnitude of the contest — He makes things hum in the War Office — His differences of opinion with G.H.Q. — The inability of G.H.Q. to realize that a vast expansion of the military forces was the matter of primary importance — Lord K.'s relations with Sir J. ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... a whole week. He put everything in order, mended his kaftan, cleaned and polished his brass plate until it fairly shone. Vasily also worked hard. The Chief arrived on a trolley, four men working the handles and the levers making the six wheels hum. The trolley travelled at twenty versts an hour, but the wheels squeaked. It reached Semyon's hut, and he ran out and reported in soldierly fashion. All ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... of the club was entirely full when they went down, and the hum of talk and laughter roused Bambi's ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke
... steed's proud neigh, and lamb's meek plaint, The hum of bees, and vesper hymn of birds, The rural harmony of flocks and herds, The song of joy, or praise, and man's sweet words— Come to me fainter—yet more faint Was my poor soul to God's great works so dull. That they from her must hide forever? Earth too replete ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... of ravishment, Make thy sad grove in my dishevell'd hair: As the dank earth weeps at thy languishment, So I at each sad strain will strain a tear, And with deep groans the diapason bear: For burthen-wise I'll hum on Tarquin still, While thou ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... he now devoted all his energies to prevent himself from falling asleep against his father's leg. But the ginger-beer, the glazed and shining fields beyond the window, the little blobs of sunlight that danced upon the floor of the carriage, the scents of food and flowers, and the hot breeze, the hum of the train, and the dancing of the telegraph wires—all these things were against him. His head began to nod and then to jump back with a sudden terrible spring as though an evil demon pulled it with a rope from behind, the carriage swelled ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... of the room, Mike the Angel could see nothing, and he could hear nothing but the all-pervading hum of the ship's engines. But he could ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... came the hum of many voices, the shrill summons of many telephones, a continued knocking and shouting at the locked door. To all these sounds Harrison remained stoically indifferent. He was studying once more ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... are oaks and galingale: the hum of housing bees Makes the place pleasant, and the birds are piping in the trees. And here are two cold streamlets; here deeper shadows fall Than yon place owns, and look what cones ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... newspaper offices had been to place advertisements, but I was prepared to find the Daily Intelligencer a veritable hive of activity. Perhaps some part of the big building which housed the paper did hum, but not the floor devoted to the editorial staff. That simply dozed. Gootes led me from the elevator through an enormous room where men and an occasional woman sat indolently before typewriters, stared druggedly into space or flew paper airplanes ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... of these places, the "busy hum" is extremely tiresome; German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Danish, Russ, together with English and French, all spoken at the same time and in the same room, make a confusion of tongues as great almost as that which reigned at Babel. In addition to the French ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... labourers, scything the hay where no machine could go: sometimes a shepherd's cote gleamed far off above the pale wattlings of a fold: but as he wound on—and on into the Plain there was no sign of man in all the hot landscape, and no motion but the bicker of the stream over its stony bed, and the hum of insect life busy on its millions of dark and tiny vibrant wings. Not a breath of wind stirred among these grassy valleys, and Lawrence, feeling warm, had sat down by a pool under a sapling birchtree, when he heard a step on the path. It ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... we, like domestic, inelegant Fowls, As unpolish'd as Geese, and as stupid as Owls, Sit tamely at home, hum-drum with our Spouses, While Crickets and Butterflies open their houses? Shall such mean little Insects pretend to the fashion? Cousin Turkey-cock, well may you be in a passion! If I suffer such insolent ...
— The Peacock 'At Home' AND The Butterfly's Ball AND The Fancy Fair • Catherine Ann Dorset
... of the cicada, the grasshopper, and tree frog make an incessant hum, and produce by their monotony a pleasing melancholy.... Every half-hour different balsamic odours fill the air, and other flowers alternately unfold their leaves to the night.... While the silent vegetable world, illuminated by scores of fireflies as by a thousand ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... the diaphragm of his receiver—the signature of the ether waves that had travelled two thousand miles to his listening ear. As the hands of the clock, whose ticking alone broke the stillness of the room, reached thirty minutes past twelve, the receiver at the inventor's ear began to hum, br-br-br, as distinctly as the sharp rap of a pencil on a table—the unmistakable note of the ether vibrations sounded in the telephone receiver. The telephone receiver was used instead of the usual recorder on account of its ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... cherups his mate to please, The blue-bird pipes in the poplar-trees, The meadow lark warbles his jubilees, Shrilling his song in the azure seas Till the welkin throbs to his melodies, And low is the hum of the humble-bees, And the Feast of the Virgins ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... the most welcome and beautiful sounds of spring. Scarcely have the trees expanded their buds, when, in the still April mornings, or toward nightfall, you hear the hum of his devoted wings. He selects not, as you would predict, a dry and resinous log, but a decayed and crumbling one, seeming to give the preference to old oak-logs that are partly blended with the soil. If a log to his taste cannot be found, he sets up his altar on a rock, which becomes ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... bdellium and onyx stone! What fruits, with no curculio to sting the rind! What flowers, with no slug to gnaw the root! What atmosphere, with no frost to chill and with no heat to consume! Bright colors tangled in the grass. Perfume in the air. Music in the sky. Bird's warble and tree's hum, and waterfall's dash. Great scene of gladness ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... river behind, Tom saw with pleasure that some more boats had been obtained, and that strong reinforcements would soon be across. The whistling of the bullets and the hum of the round shot were incessant, and Tom acknowledged to himself that he felt horribly uncomfortable—much more uncomfortable than he had any idea that he should feel under fire. Had he been actively engaged, he would have hardly experienced this feeling; but to stand impassive under a heavy ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... on, and retracing his way up to the stile he rambled along the lane, now beginning to be streaked like a zebra with the shadows of some young trees that edged the road. But his attention was attracted to the other side of the way by a hum as of a night-bee, which arose from the play of the breezes over a single wire of telegraph running parallel with his track on tall poles that had appeared by the road, he hardly knew when, from a branch route, probably ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... in Beechenbrook Cottage; the day Has been bright with the earliest glory of May; The blue of the sky is as tender a blue As ever the sunshine came shimmering through: The songs of the birds and the hum of the bees, As they merrily dart in and out of the trees,— The blooms of the orchard, as sifting its snows, It mingles its odors with hawthorn and rose,— The voice of the brook, as it lapses unseen,— The laughter of children at ...
— Beechenbrook - A Rhyme of the War • Margaret J. Preston
... A fire burned in the little coffee-pot stove that occupied one corner, and the hum of boiling water stole out from a tea-kettle ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... stood just beyond the shadow of an oak tree, leisurely cropping the new pasture grass. Occasionally, she lifted her head toward the red roofs of the University buildings as though she expected somebody. The chimney sent up a stripe of black against patches of cloud and sky, and the even hum of the shops came across the pasture with a distinctness born of the motionless Spring air. Bonita, putting her pointed ears forward, could catch the upper notes of the chorus, rehearsing in ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... at this part very wide. Auctioneers were here busily engaged in the disposal of their merchandise, which comprised every variety of produce and manufacture, home and foreign, from a yard of linsey-woolsey, "hum spun" as they termed it, to a bale of Manchester long cloth, or their own Sea-Island cotton. The auctioneer in America is a curious specimen of the biped creation. He is usually a swaggering, consequential sort of fellow, and drives away at ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... musketeers, 700 Cassay cavalry, and other troops, amounting in the whole to 60,000 men. On the 30th of November this great force assembled in the forest of Rangoon, fronting the great Shoedagon pagoda. On the following night the low hum of voices proceeding from the encampment suddenly ceased, and it was succeeded by the distant but gradually increasing sounds of a multitude moving stealthily through the woods. The British commander soon became aware that the enemy's masses had approached ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... were mainly directed to the maintenance of friendly relations and the preservation of peace and quiet on the frontier. All this is now changed. There is no such thing as the Indian frontier. Civilization, with the busy hum of industry and the influences of Christianity, surrounds these people at every point. None of the tribes are outside of the bounds of organized government and society, except that the Territorial system has not been extended over that portion of the country known as the Indian Territory. As a ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... less than human beings, and what is more dynamic than human beings? It is, therefore, the last subject in the world to be approached academically. Yet most of the approach to the problems of labor is academic. Men in sanctuaries forever far removed from the endless hum and buzz and roar of machinery, with an intellectual background and individual ambitions forever far removed from the interests and desires of those who labor in factory and mill, theorize—and another volume is added ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... be accomplished with the "audible," which is indeed part of the same physical film, though this is not at first easy to recognise. As pointed out in View No. 1, there is little in common between our sense of sight and hearing; but the chirp of birds, the hum of bees, the rustle of wind in the leaves, the ripple of a stream, the distant sound of sheep bells, and lowing of cattle form a background of sound which may be coaxed to approach you; the only knowledge you have of such sounds is their impression or image ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... fished out my watch, regarding it in silence, listening to the hum of the approaching train, which ought presently to bear her away into the North, where nothing could menace her except the brilliant pitfalls of a Christian civilization. But I stood there, temporizing, ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... necessity be the lady who is in love with me. See, how she surveys my person! certainly one wit knows another by instinct. By that old gentleman, it should be the lady Laura too. Hum! Benito, thou art ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... an old brown frame with lichens crusting the roof. There were two front doors, a flight of wooden steps leading up to each, and three high windows along the visible side. All these stood open letting out a pleasant hum, through which the cracked voice of an old man occasionally broke. No hump of belfry stood upon its back. The afternoon sun was the bell which called that neighborhood together for Sunday-school. And this unconscious duty performed, the afternoon sun now brightened the graves ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... departure of the bullet one of these bodies moved, stretched out its arms, lifted up its head, and succeeded in getting upon its knees. It was Michel Ardan. He felt himself, uttered a sonorous "Hum," ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... haunted ever and everywhere by a certain gentle presence. There is nothing fearsome in this haunting ... the gentlest face ... the kindliest voice—oddly familiar and distinct, though feeble as the hum of a bee.... ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... in vanity; and so deeply, that at his public suppers—all the Court present, musicians also—he would hum these self-same praises between his teeth, when the music they were set ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... as she is to be which she spreads before us, at the consulting barrister waiting in her chambers and the lady advocate flourishing her maiden brief; our pulse throbs a little awkwardly at the thought of being tested by medical fingers and thumbs of such a delicate order, and we hum a few lines of the Princess as Miss Hominy poses herself for a Lady Professor. Still we cannot help a half conviction that even this would be better than the present style of thing, the pretty face that kindles ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... the Practical Men could meet, fraternise, and still not yearn to murder one another. It would be of immense benefit to you and me and the rest of us who make up the "hum-drum" world. For the Practical Man who is not something of a mystic is at best a commonplace nuisance, and at his worst a clog on the wheels of progress. And the mystic who is only mystical is even less good to anyone, since his Ideals and ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... stand before you tonight to report that the state of our union is strong. Now, America is working again. The promise of our future is limitless. But we cannot realize that promise if we allow the hum of our prosperity to lull us into complacency. How we fare as a nation far into the 21st century depends upon what we ...
— State of the Union Addresses of William J. Clinton • William J. Clinton
... the longest and with a most sustained attention. This attention originated in idleness for which I have a natural talent. One evening I wandered into a cafe, in a town not of the tropics but of the South of France. It was filled with tobacco smoke, the hum of voices, the rattling of dominoes and the sounds of strident music. The orchestra was rather smaller than the one that performed at Schomberg's hotel, had the air more of a family party than of an enlisted band, and, I ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... scrutiny. "Oh, yes, I remember now. I found it on the floor the day she was here, afore the waist was ready for her. I thought she had dropped it, and so I pinned it in the sleeve of her dress, and was goin to tell Gus to give it to her, but he didn't take the waist hum, and then so much happened, it went ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... said nothing more—she had placed him there with that question, and the silence lasted a minute, broken by the call of an appealing costermonger, which came in with the mild March air, with the shabby sunshine, fearfully unbecoming to the room, and with the small homely hum of Chirk Street. Presently he moved nearer, but as if her question had quite dropped. "I don't see what has so ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... drifting away to the west like some dark horde driven from the field by the shimmering spears of the sunlight which pierced them. A tender expanse of blue sky spoke a promise of fairer weather, a promise repeated by the satisfied hum of the bees who had once more ventured out to pursue their daily labours. The air was full of sweet scents—fragrant earth and fragrant blossom made all the sweeter by ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... satchel on back, and "shining morning face." What a sudden burst of sound was emitted—what harmonious discord—what a commixture of all the tones in the vocal gamut, from the shrill treble to the deep under-hum! A chord was touched which vibrated in unison; boyish days and school recollections crowded upon me; pleasures long vanished; feelings long stifled; and friendships—aye, everlasting friendships—cut asunder by the sharp stroke ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... Arthur, whose eyes were swelled up with sleepiness. "It's all misty and thick, and the window-sill's wet, and the roses outside look drenched. Heigh, ho, ha, hum!" he yawned. "I shall go to bed for half an hour longer—till the ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... all talking, to their partners, across the table, even to Aunt Ellen. The exhilarating sound of voices rose to a hum, then a concerted babble broken by laughter. It grew animated, it grew sparkling, it grew brilliant. Chrystie, with parted lips and glistening eyes, became as artlessly amusing as she was in the bosom of her family. She was delightful, her frank enjoyment a charming spectacle. Lorry, in that ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... her way amongst the sleepers, and left the barn. She went into her garden, and walked for a few moments amongst the flowers, as if for council. The bees were beginning to hum about the hives, and the butterflies to flit amongst the flowers. She stood and looked at the beautiful scene before her—the woods, hills, river, and above, the morning sun—and offered up a prayer and thanksgiving to ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... Refuses to Start. If there is a humming noise when you try to start the motor, and the outfit does not start, one of the fuses needs replacing. The outfit will hum only on two or three phase current. Never leave the power turned on with any ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte
... a moment at the hook. Then he looked up and caught my eye. His own turned quizzical. He shifted his quid and began to hum: ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... cost me nothing except her good opinion, which I can afford. But I'll lay you anything to nothing, if she knew the weight of my four quarters, she would have me herself after all! I don't quite think myself a lady-killer: by George, my—hum!—entourage is against that, but where money is money can! Only I don't want her, and my money is for her betters! What damned jolly fun it will be to send her out of the house in a rage!—and a good deed done too!—By George, I'll do it! See ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... the hum of trade was no longer heard; all Venice, in thousands of boats and gondolas, was gone out to meet the much-lauded Falieri. Hence it was that the unhappy youth was sighing away his pain in utter helplessness. ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... half-lighted room, where the mill stones creaked on their cumbersome shafts, the hum of discussion sank to silence. The place was brown with age and dirt, and powdered with a coarse dusting of meal. The girl nodded to the mountaineers gathered in conclave, then, turning to the ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... wakeful life. Every thing was still. Not a breath of air was stirring. The leaves of the trees hung motionless, as if they, too, were asleep. The great green banner on the tower's top clung around the flagstaff as if it had never fluttered to the breeze. No song of birds, nor hum of insects, came to their ears. There was neither sound ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... the straps with benumbed and aching fingers. He did not remember the befogged and stumbling "walk" into the Control Room. Dimly, as if viewing himself and the room from a distant world, he switched on the dying hum of the radio and tried futilely to transmit ...
— Rescue Squad • Thomas J. O'Hara
... duchess attempted to hum this familiar strain, her voice grew faint, and her eyes filled with tears. She dashed them ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... with a marble fountain in the middle of it, the Greek captains awaited the coming of Pausanias. A low and muttered conversation was carried on amongst them, in small knots and groups, amidst which the voice of Uliades was heard the loudest. Suddenly the hum was hushed, for footsteps were heard without. The thick curtains that at one extreme screened the door-way were drawn aside, and, attended by three of the Spartan knights, amongst whom was Lysander, and by two soothsayers, ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... four found him engaged in a violent discussion with one of the Rothschilds about the early Christians' belief in demons, as shown by Tertullian and others, while Lord Middlesex, who called at half-past five, found he had captured Faure, installed him at the piano, and was inducing him to hum snatches from "Don Juan." When his dinner hour arrived, having given orders to his valet to admit no one lest he should be discovered not fasting, he hastily swallowed a few mouthfuls, fortified himself with a couple of glasses of Chartreuse verte, and lighting an enormous ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... Home Rule, devote our attention to education, reform of the Poor Law, and questions of that kind which are purely domestic, which are, if you like, hum-drum Irish questions, and the only way in which we will attempt to interfere in any Imperial question will be by our representatives on the floor of the Imperial Parliament in Westminster doing everything in our power to increase the strength and the glory of what will ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... said the judge, looking relieved. "It's all right. I've got darters to hum ez big ez you be, an' I want to talk to yer ez ef yer was ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... hubbub, hum, and buzz of undertones was checked to a very unusual degree, the Amphitheatre became ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... following year. The hand of a master has pictured what happened in those dismal months; and in that truest of fictions, 'The History of the Plague Year', Defoe shows death, with every accompaniment of pain and terror, stalking through the narrow streets of old London, and changing their busy hum into a silence broken only by the wailing of the mourners of fifty thousand dead; by the woful denunciations and mad prayers of fanatics; and by the madder yells of ...
— On the Advisableness of Improving Natural Knowledge • Thomas H. Huxley
... "Ha—hum! It is signed 'Ozma of Oz,'" continued the rabbit, "and is sealed with the Great Seal of the Emerald City. Well, well, well! ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... the voice, now here, now there, and thought about angels and the Millennium. Solemnly and tenderly there floated in at his open study-window, through the breezy lilacs, mixed with low of kine and bleat of sheep and hum of early wakening life, the little silvery ripples of that singing, somewhat mournful in its cadence, as if a gentle soul were striving to hush itself to rest. The words were those of the rough old version of the Psalms then ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... catches your step and away you go, a gay, adventurous, half-predatory couple. How quickly he falls into the old ways of jest and anecdote and song! You may have known him for years without having heard him hum an air, or more than casually revert to the subject of his experience during the war. You have even questioned and cross-questioned him without firing the train you wished. But get him out on a vacation tramp, and you can walk it all out of him. By the camp-fire at night, or ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... sign of life or hope, but everywhere silence: and what a silence! It is not the stillness of a summer night in the country, nor of a church, nor of a sickroom: it is the silence of death! As you gaze on the scene before you, you are oppressed—almost overwhelmed by its dreary sadness. No insect hum is heard; not even a bird is seen in the still air; the earth, and the atmosphere above it, is one vast region of death. The only link which connects the traveller with humanity, is a long row of the skeletons ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... under the added burden to her cares and responsibilities. Of course I didn't expect to get through without committing some crimes and hearing of them afterwards, so I have taken the inevitable lashings and been able to hum a tune while the punishment went on. I "caught it" for letting Mrs. Howells bother and bother about her coffee when it was "a good deal better than we get at home." I "caught it" for interrupting Mrs. C. at the last moment and losing her the opportunity to urge you not to forget ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... she paused and listened, trying to catch, through the hum of her pulses, any noise that might come to her from within. But the silence was unbroken—it seemed as though the office must be empty. She pressed her ear to the door, straining for a sound. She knew he never sat long at his work, and it seemed unaccountable that she ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... "Ready t' stay hum now, I s'pose, ain't ye?" he asked with a note in his voice of cheery assurance that perhaps he did not feel, tilting back and forth in his old-fashioned rocking chair, as I had so often seen him do, with closed eyes and open mouth, his face steeled against expression. ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... was to be buried that day, and the sad funeral preparations were going on. People were moving about, making the bustle the more noticeable by their visible efforts to step softly, and by the low monotonous hum of ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... them laughing and casting scornful looks at him and his companions. They went on without stopping to rest or take any food; sometimes up hill, sometimes down, across valleys, and over rocky ground, until, as evening was approaching, the hum of human voices was heard. Some little distance ahead a kraal was seen on the side of a hill, while in the valley below were assembled a large concourse of men employed in various ways; some formed into regiments were marching here and there, ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston
... not prepared for what was soon to happen. There came a hum of wheels along the old roadway, and a carriage pulled up at the walk. There alighted quickly the figure of a young girl, tall, slender, round, full-chested, abounding in health and vigor. So much could be seen at a glance. As to the face of the new-comer, the eyes ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... to London, its market people halting to drink, its farmers, horsemen, and foot travellers. So, as one's humour is, one can have whichever phase of life one pleases: quietude or bustle; solitude or the busy hum of men: one can sit in the principal room with a tankard and a pipe and see both these phases at once through the windows that open upon either. But through all these delightful places they talk of leading railroads: a sad thing, I am sure: quite ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... one by each arm and dragged her to the car. Strangwise had the door open and between them they thrust her in. Bellward and the woman mounted after her while Strangwise, after starting the engine, sprang into the driving-seat outside. With a low hum the big car glided forth ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... and bards, the king proceeded towards the city called after the elephant. The progress, O mighty-armed one, of king Yudhishthira, became so beautiful that its like had never been on earth. Teeming with healthy and cheerful men, the busy hum of innumerable voices was heard there. During the progress of Pritha's son, the city and its streets were adorned with gay citizens (all of whom had come out for honouring the king). The spot through which the king passed had been decked with festoons of flowers and ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... buzz! buzz! Hum-a-bum buzz! As I went over Tipple-tine I met a flock of bonny swine; Some yellow-nacked, some yellow backed! They were the very bonniest swine That e'er ...
— The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin • Beatrix Potter
... glad to have rendered you a service, however trifling. You are a clear, prudent creature, but want spirit to live as you please. I leave this hum-drum place to-morrow. Perhaps some of these days we may meet again; if not, you may live to learn that you slighted the friendship of one of the greatest geniuses that has arisen in ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... come a-shooting next time," remarked Denver. "Just as soon as he comes back from bye-low land you'll see things hum." ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... Milka was always first, but every now and then she would halt with a shake of her head to await the whipper-in. The chatter of the peasants; the rumbling of horses and waggons; the joyous cries of quails; the hum of insects as they hung suspended in the motionless air; the smell of the soil and grain and steam from our horses; the thousand different lights and shadows which the burning sun cast upon the yellowish-white cornland; ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... have some special dislike to our waggon. They have just placed two shells, one fifty yards in front of it, and the other fifty yards behind; one of them burst on impact, the other didn't. The progress of a shell sounds far off like the hum of a mosquito, rising as it nears to a hoarse screech, and then "plump." We mind them very little now. There is great competition for the fragments, as "curios." It is cold, grey, and sunless today. Last night there ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... Frank, laughing. "Remarkably romantic! It is so sweet to hear the birds chirp, and the distant hum of human voices—but language fails! As for Lady Louisa, she is in the Elysium ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... dumb, No voice or hideous hum Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving. Apollo from his shrine Can no more divine, With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving. No nightly trance or breathed spell Inspires the pale-eyed ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... and picturesque stream, making its way under verdant banks, sheltered by trees that dipped their boughs into the murmuring waters. By day, multitudes of Ephemera darted to and fro on the surface; at night, the fireflies came out among the shrubs on the banks; the cicale at noon-day kept up their hum; the aziola cooed in the quiet evening. It was a pleasant summer, bright in all but Shelley's health and inconstant spirits; yet he enjoyed himself greatly, and became more and more attached to the part of the country ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley
... would think the house Covered the entrance of the Mammoth Cave, And they had lost themselves. Mary and Grace Still hold their chamber and their conference, And pour into each other's greedy ears Their stream of talk, whose low monotonous hum, Would lull to slumber any storm but this. The children are play-tired and gone to bed; And one may know by looking round the room Their place of sport was here. And we, plain folk, Who have no gift of speech, especially ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... many places of considerable depth. Trailing plants clasp the stones with arms of verdure; wild flowers bloom in their seasons; and long grass nods and waves on the airy battlements. Life has everywhere sprouted from the trunk of death. Insects hum and sport in the sunshine; the burnished lizard darts like a tongue of green flame along the walls; and birds make the hollow quarry overflow with their songs. There is something beautiful and impressive in the contrast between luxuriant life and the rigid ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... very busy scene. In some places it was hard work to get along at all. The booths were set up, not in the streets but in the churchyards, the market place, and on any waste space available. And what with the noise of business, the hum of gossip, the shouts of competing sellers, and the sound of hundreds of clogs on the round paving-stones, it may be readily supposed that quiet was ...
— Our Little Lady - Six Hundred Years Ago • Emily Sarah Holt
... the garden, in the old apple-tree," said Brother John. "I was walking there, and my wits were running around in the grass like a mouse. What heard I but a wonderful sound of singing, and it was like the hum of a great bee, only sweeter than honey. So I looked up into the tree, and there I saw two sparks. I thought at first that they were two stars that had fallen out of heaven; but what think you they ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... near quietly. The wood was filled with people, and a continuous hum of voices rose up under the tangled foliage of ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... every steamship will bring into grateful memory Fitch and Stevens, and Bell and Fulton; thousands of locomotives, crossing the continents, will perpetuate the thought of the Stephensons and their colleagues in the introduction of the railway; the hum of millions of spindles and the music of the electric wire will tell of the work of Corliss and his contemporaries and successors who made these things possible, and all kingdoms and races, all nations, will revere the name of James Watt, the genius to whom the world ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 803, May 23, 1891 • Various
... gazed,—but little thought what wealth the show to me had brought"? I wonder if any of you have ever had a similar experience. I remember the days when I used to go fishing, and there is a great joy even now in recalling the twitter of the birds and the hum of the bees as I lay on the bank and waited for the ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... mighty and far-reaching utterance. To arrive at it we must take the tremendous crash of the chords of the day's traffic, the laughter and music of the night, the solemn tones of Dr. Parkhurst, the rag-time, the weeping, the stealthy hum of cab-wheels, the shout of the press agent, the tinkle of fountains on the roof gardens, the hullabaloo of the strawberry vender and the covers of Everybody's Magazine, the whispers of the lovers in the parks—all these sounds must go into your Voice—not combined, but ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... see!" said Holmes. "Hum! Born in New Jersey in the year 1858. Contralto—hum! La Scala, hum! Prima donna Imperial Opera of Warsaw—yes! Retired from operatic stage—ha! Living in London—quite so! Your Majesty, as I understand, became entangled with this young person, wrote ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... comfortable and quiet that he closed his eyes for a moment. At least it seemed only a moment to him. All at once he heard a loud hum. He opened his eyes and there was Ah-mo the Honey Bee just before his face. When Ah-mo saw that little Luke was watching him, he flew down toward the spring and lit upon a ...
— The Magic Speech Flower - or Little Luke and His Animal Friends • Melvin Hix
... 'Untiring humor seemed the ruling passion of his soul. With a heart open to all innocent pleasures, purged from the leaven of malice and uncharitableness, it was as natural that he should be full of mirth as it is for the grasshopper to chirp or bee to hum, or the birds to warble in the spring breeze and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... work. The Spaniards applied themselves with vigor to the task, under the eye of their chief. The sword was exchanged for the tool of the artisan. The camp was converted into a hive of diligent laborers; and the sounds of war were succeeded by the peaceful hum of a busy population. The plaza, which was extensive, was to be surrounded by the cathedral, the palace of the viceroy, that of the municipality, and other public buildings; and their foundations were laid on a scale, and with ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... the shot and his cry, and though we made things hum about them, they took time to look into it and ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis
... it was warm again. There is no country in the world more charming than England for seven months of the year, and none so abominable for the remaining five. If it were not for my work I would always winter abroad, but I am obliged to be in the hum of things. How do you manage to amuse ...
— Sisters Three • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... harmful," she rejoined. "But I can't sing. Sometimes when I can't express what I am thinking about I hum it. How long are you and Alf ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... ceased, and we thought that most of the men slept. After that was no sound but the wash of the waves, and the hum of the sail, and the creak of the great steering oar as Asbiorn met the luff of the ship across the long, smooth ...
— A Sea Queen's Sailing • Charles Whistler
... pathetic;—then I wondered whether the time would ever come when society would be far enough advanced to open to even such as he a glimpse, if it were only once a year, of the fresh, clean face of God's earth;—and then I became aware of a soft mysterious hum, above and around me, and turned on my back to look whence it proceeded, and saw the leaves gold-green and transparent in the sunlight, quivering against the deep heights of the empyrean blue; and hanging in the sunbeams that pierced the foliage, a thousand insects, ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... a prejudice against that craft,' her ladyship acquiesced. 'Beranger—let me see—your favourite Frenchman, Franks, wasn't it his father?—no, his grandfather. "Mon pauvre et humble grand-pyre," I think, was a tailor. Hum! the degrees of the thing, I confess, don't affect me. One trade I imagine to be ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... supplies it to meet a need. When we attend to a clock ticking, the tick-tock, tick-tock, however even it may sound at first, soon resolves itself into a rhythm with the accent on either the tick or the tock. So does the beat of an engine, or the hum of a railway train, merge itself into some definite sound picture, with the accent for relief that the ear demands. Thus out of rhythm grows very naturally an accentuation which gives balance, structure, and form. We start with ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... he looked about him and saw how great was the calamity that had befallen his army. For now there were left alive to him two only, Turpin the Archbishop and Walter of Hum. Walter had but that moment come down from the hills where he had been fighting so fiercely with the heathen that all his men were dead; now he cried to Roland for help. "Noble Count, where are you? I am Walter of Hum, and am not unworthy to be your friend. Help me therefore. ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... feel the embrace of the earth. The grass stood high above me, and the shadows of the tree-branches danced on my face. I looked up at the sky, with halfclosed eyes to bear the dazzling light. Bees buzzed over me, sometimes a butterfly passed, there was a hum in the air, greenfinches sang in the hedge. Gradually entering into the intense life of the summer days—a life which burned around as if every grass blade and leaf were a torch—I came to feel the longdrawn life of the earth back into the dimmest ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... involuntarily where those of the dying man were gazing. There was no Christmas tree—no tree at all. But over the house-tops the morning star looked pure and pale in the dawn of Christmas Day. For the night was past, and above the distant hum of the streets the clear voices of some waits made the words of an old carol heard—words dearer for their association ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... heavenly Father's heart and home. Here a gate is opened by the Mediator's hand, and no man can shut it, until the angel shall proclaim that time shall be no more. Here resounds a voice clear, human, memorable—a voice that all the hum of the world cannot drown, proclaiming to the lowest, furthest outcasts, and to the latest generations, ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... around the field waved fruit boughs nearly past their bloom, with the green of new leaves overcoming the white and red, and the air was heavy with honey-sweet, and, as steady as a clock-tick through all the roaring of the merrymakers, came the hum of the bees and the calls of the birds. A great flag was streaming thirty feet high, and the gay dresses of the women who had congregated to see the sports were like a flower-garden, and the waistcoats of the men were as brilliant as the breasts of birds, and nearly everybody ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... the spinning-wheel ceased with its hum, the silence was to Cosmo like the silence after a song, and his thoughts refused to do their humming alone. The same moment he fell—from a wondrous region where he dwelt with sylphs in a great palace, built on ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... come sooner, we might have kep' him out o' trouble," she said. "He got away from me when things begun to hum." ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... idea, sir. But I must get away from this hum-drum existence. It is killing me by inches. I need adventure, life in the open, where a man can breathe freely ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... greets; And even the Lion all subdued appears,[236] And the harsh sound of the barbarian drum, 20 With dull and daily dissonance, repeats The echo of thy Tyrant's voice along The soft waves, once all musical to song, That heaved beneath the moonlight with the throng Of gondolas[237]—and to the busy hum Of cheerful creatures, whose most sinful deeds Were but the overbeating of the heart, And flow of too much happiness, which needs The aid of age to turn its course apart From the luxuriant and voluptuous flood 30 Of sweet sensations, battling with the blood. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... it were the spray of foam that broke into sight upon the nearer edge of viewless depths far, far away. The trees, indeed, were sentinels set visibly about the limits of a camp that itself remained invisible. The awful hum and murmur of the main body in the distance passed into that still room about her with the firelight and hissing kettle. Out yonder—in the Forest further out—the thing that was ever roaring at the center ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood
... forward and looked down, but I was dazzled by that gleam of light above, and I could see only a bottomless darkness with spectral patches of crimson and purple floating therein. Yet if I could not see, I could hear. Out of this darkness came a sound, a sound like the angry hum one can hear if one puts one's ear outside a hive of bees, a sound out of that enormous hollow, it may be, four ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... They all looked more friendly. And as he pushed through the second glass door into his offices he liked the clean shine of the glass and the rich blended colors and soft rugs and gray textured desks and the soft efficient hum of work in progress. ...
— The Man Who Staked the Stars • Charles Dye
... without a reprimand. The flies were just coming; I watched their sticky legs as they feebly crawled over my old unpainted notched desk, and crumbled my gingerbread for them; but they seemed to have no appetite. Some of the younger children were drowsy already, lulled by the hum of the whisperers. Feeling very dull, I asked permission to go to the water-pail for a drink; let the tin cup fall into the water so that the floor might be splashed; made faces at the good scholars, and did what I could to make the time pass agreeably. ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... approaching the end; they had been at their work for near three hours, the 5,040 changes were almost finished. Westray went down from the organ-loft, and as he walked through the church the very last change was rung. Before the hum and mutter had died out of the air, and while the red-faced ringers in the belfry were quaffing their tankards, the architect had made his way to the scaffolding, and stood face to face with the zigzag crack. He looked at it carefully, as a ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... thousands of pounds, is then the same as a permanent steel horseshoe magnet, which would hardly be possible at all. One who has watched the installation of a dynamo, knowing that there is nowhere near any ordinary source of electricity, and has seen its armature begin to whirl and hum, and then in a few moments the violet sparklings of the brushes and the evident presence of a powerful current of electricity, is almost justified in the common opinion that the genius of man has devised a machine to create something ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... depart from the Grand, a crowd that has stuck to the end, young fellows, joyful souls. They saunter down the street with coats wide open, canes held jauntily under the arms, and hats slightly askew. They talk loudly, hum the latest popular air, call jestingly to a lonely, forgotten girl in a ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... stretch of snow lay between the two clumps of woods. It was not worth while for either side to try to get possession of the intervening space. At the first movement by either French or Germans the woods opposite would hum with rifle fire and echo with cannonading. So, like rival parties of Arctic explorers waiting out the Arctic winter, they watched each other. But if one force or the other napped and the other caught him at it, then winter would not stay a brigade commander's ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... talk. Every moment the note of the buzz grew more hostile. More than a few ears were tingling; at every turn there were scowls and sullen eyes and ugly smiles. The matrons' cheeks were burning; their eyes flashed; every now and again one of their voices shrilled defiantly above the hoarse hum of the crowd. The young Irish girls were laughing, enjoying the excitement, and admiring the young men flaunting their banknotes with the swing of their father's shillalahs. The young German girls curled their lips and whispered together. There was a significant herding of the contending races ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... outlet to the room than the one by which I had entered, determined me to ignore for once the natural instincts of my ladyhood; and pale and trembling to a degree I would not have wished seen by either of these two mysterious men, I sat in a dream of suspense, hearing and not hearing the low hum of their voices as they reasoned with or consoled the mother, now fast drifting ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... Fandor followed a few minutes later and took up a strategic position at a table near the doorway. Fandor had a view of the room and Juve commanded the hall and stairway. From the room came a confused hum of laughter, cries and doubtful jokes. A negro, clad in red and armed with a gong, capered among ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain
... FORD. Hum! ha! Is this a vision? Is this a dream? Do I sleep? Master Ford, awake; awake, Master Ford. There's a hole made in your best coat, Master Ford. This 'tis to be married; this 'tis to have linen and buck-baskets! Well, I will proclaim myself what I am; I will now take the lecher; he ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... near them. The trees made a cave of black above them, and in front of them the grass swept like a grey beach into mist. There was no sound save a distant whirr like the hum of a top that died to a whisper and then was lashed by some ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... The sharp emerald leaves of the beeches drooped drowsily, as though lulled to sleep by the light, the warmth, and the silence. The twitter of birds sounded at rare intervals from the thickets, and only the cry of the water-fowls on the marshes and the somnolent hum of insects filled the air. Above the blue line of rails stretching in an endless chain of curves and zigzags, the warm air glowed with shifting hues of ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... was not far off, this was the darkest hour of the night, so that even the sounds of dockland were muted and the riverside slept as deeply as the great port of London ever sleeps. Vague murmurings there were and distant clankings, with the hum of machinery ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... pair o' black stockings," said the voice of a young matron. "I remember 'cause I wore 'em the very day that Johnny swallowed six buttons—and smut!—wal——" A picture too dark for the imagination was relieved by the hum of a discussion now bravely finding voice on the male ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... preserve me from a "smart" person. There is as much difference between smartness and brain as there is between a jewsharp and a flute, or between mustard and wine. A "smart" person may turn off a lot of work and make things hum, so does a buzz-saw! Who would not rather spend an afternoon with a lark than with a hornet? The lark may not be so active, but activity is not always the most desirable thing in the world. A smart person may ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... waste; no sign of life was visible; no flutter of wing, no hum of insect, no flash of lizard or reptile; even the shrill song of the cricket, that lover of burning solitudes, was unheard. The soil was formed of a micaceous, brilliant dust like ground sandstone, and here and there rose ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... o'clock. The roll of vehicles and hum of voices filled the air, a mighty morning-choir mingled with the footsteps of the pedestrians, and the crack of the hack-drivers' whips. The clamorous traffic everywhere exhilarated me at once, and I began ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... A Sunday repose prevailed the whole moribund town, peaceful, profound. A certain pleasing numbness, a sense of grateful enervation exhaled from the scorching plaster. There was no movement, no sound of human business. The faint hum of the insect, the intermittent murmur of the guitar, the mellow complainings of the pigeons, the prolonged purr of the white cat, the contented clucking of the hens—all these noises mingled together to form a faint, ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... figurative pat upon the head he gave me the week-end off. You should have seen the way my car went to Granville! Jean drove till we were clear of Paris and then I took the wheel and things began to hum. From the tail of my eye I could see Jean devoutly crossing himself whenever we hit the earth, but we made the boat and didn't so much as run down a hen. I did wonder that we weren't held up anywhere for exceeding ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... heart I hear, as in a shell, The murmur of a world beyond the grave, Distinct, distinct, though faint and far it be. Thou fool! this echo is a cheat as well,— The hum of earthly instincts,—and we crave A world unreal as the ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... of the trees swelling with its flow; the grass blades pushing upwards; the seeds completing their shape; the tinted petals uncurling. Dreamily listening, leaning on the gate, all these are audible to the inner senses, while the ear follows the midsummer hum, now sinking, now sonorously increasing over the oaks. An effulgence fills the southern boughs, which the eye cannot sustain, but ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... And I will sing the song I found Making a lonely rippling sound Under the boughs. The tinkle of the brook is there, And cow-bells wandering through the fern, And silver calls From waterfalls, And echoes floating through the air From happiness I know not where, And hum and drone where'er I turn Of little lives that buzz and die; And sudden lucent melodies, Like hidden strings among the trees ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... from the other side of the fence, almost as if rising from the ground at her feet, a careless voice began to hum—a cracked, tuneless, unmistakable voice, that sent the blood to her heart with a force that ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... in the warm sunshine, the drowsy cawing of a crow upon a distant larch came to our ears with strange distinctness, and we even imagined that we could hear the regular throbbing of the surf upon the far-away coast. A faint murmurous hum of bees was in the air, and a rich fruity fragrance came up from the purple clusters of blueberries which our horses crushed under foot at every step. All things seemed to unite in tempting the tired traveller ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... mislaid. Not that the hand is not better, as you see by the absence of the amanuensis hitherto. Mail came Friday, and a communication from yourself much more decent than usual, for which I thank you. Glad the WRECKER should so hum; but Lord, what fools ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... broke about 4:30. With the lifting of the dark, the sun spots which interfered with radio reception miraculously lifted also. Bill and Carol sat next to the ship-to-shore and turned it on. This time they heard the reassuring hum of the transmitter, not drowned out by the awful static of the night before. Bill switched to the Coast ...
— The Day of the Dog • Anderson Horne
... assisting an old man to carry in some geraniums and balsams out of the covered cart which had stopped the way. In the hall a crowd of children were gathered round a high stand, on which they were eagerly arranging their flower-pots; and the busy hum of voices was so loud, that when Miss Portman first went in, she could neither hear the servant, nor make him hear her name. Nothing was to be heard but "Oh, how beautiful! Oh, how sweet! That's mine! That's yours! The great rose geranium ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... rambled all along shore gathering the tiniest little shells that ever a wave tossed up—and how she took off her shoes and stockings and dipped her feet in the cool water, and listened to the bees' drowsy hum from the old tree trunk close by, and watched the busy ant stagger home, under the weight of his well earned morsel—and how she made a bridge of stones over a little streamlet to pluck some crimson lobelias, growing on the other side, and some ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... ideal state, and evidently felt that in his leisure hours he could compose, write for magazines, and the like; but the hard, unwonted though self- imposed labor, the peculiar surroundings, the buzz and hum of the large family in which he could not fail to take an interest, distracted him from his purpose. James T. Fields, the publisher, said of him, "He was a man who had, so to speak, a physical affinity with solitude." He could not put his ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... of the log-fire in the great open fireplace, and the solemn ticking of the gold clock that had stood there, in the same place of honour, for the last hundred years. He passed over to the windows and flung them open; the hum of the town came, with the cold night air, into the room. The stars were brilliant to-night and the golden haze of the lamplight hung over the streets like a magic curtain. Ah! how good it was! The peace of it, the comfort, ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... them even with his glasses on, they were so high and looked so small. He knocked on the trunk of the tree, and when I told him that I could see bees pouring out and distinctly hear the hum of those in the tree he was satisfied that I ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... actor give this word "so" its proper emphasis. Shakespeare's meaning is—"lov'd you? Hum!—so I do still," &c. There has been no change in my opinion:—I think as ill of you as I did. Else Hamlet tells an ignoble falsehood, and a useless one, as the last speech to ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... leisure; and, stepping into a boat, rowed along, at first, by the quivering osiers; then, launching out into the midst of the waters, I glided a few moments with the current, and resting on my oars, listened to the hum of voices afar off, while several little skiffs, like canoes, glanced before my sight, concerning which distance and the twilight allowed me to make a thousand fantastic conjectures. When I had sufficiently indulged ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... clear that she was going to make a struggle for her life, and to do vicious damage, it might be, before she yielded it up. The watchers behind the arrow-slits recognized this. Their wagers, and the hum of their appreciation, swept loudly round the ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... by rail, in an open carriage, is not the most interesting journey in the world. Whirr, whizz, burr! away we hum through the keen Spring air, between pleasant banks and dark fir-woods, not very rapidly indeed, for we travel under government regulations, but pleasantly enough if it were not for the sparks and the dust. There are few objects of interest on our route, till we perceive the towers ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... arranged around the seats. The men who were at work did not know me, and I was unnoticed, but I should soon take my place upon the softest of those cushions. I walked slowly backwards and forwards on the quay, listening to a hum of voices that came to me from a distance. There was clearly something stirring in the town, and I felt certain that all the movement and all those distant voices were connected in some way with my expedition to the Well of Moses. At last there came a lad upon the ...
— George Walker At Suez • Anthony Trollope
... wild beasts, but they had gone clean an' clear. Then I made up my mind the best to do war to get them babies to some shelter, or they'd freeze to deth. I didn't know ef other folks around here war to hum, so I made for this place. When I got to the split hickory I war so tuckered out I set up the ...
— On the Trail of Pontiac • Edward Stratemeyer
... champagne. Presently I knew myself descending, leaving, as I felt rather than saw, the stark horror of the gorge and its glimmering snow patches above me. Puffs of a warmer air purred past my face with little friendly sighs of welcome, and the hum of a far-off torrent struck like a wedge into the indurated fibre of the night. As I dropped, however, the mountain heads grew up against the moon, and withheld the comfort of her radiance; and it was not until the whimper of the torrent had quickened ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... ten miles away, and the poor beggars hadn't ten minutes to wait. They knew that, according to their religion, it meant eternal hell for them. Whittenden heard about it, and came running, book in one hand, surplice in the other. The way he made that service for the dying hum was a caution; but he got it done in time, before the first man died." Reed's face was growing scarlet with the excitement of the memory. "It was Protestant, of course; but they didn't know English enough to find it out, and they died ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... hopes were exchanged between the different groups in a sort of gay and formidable whisper which resembled the warlike hum of ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... and wound about with memories, like twilight, and the song of the thrush; even at its least, it had been the glow that lives behind the northern horizon in midsummer, witnessing to the hidden glory, during darkness, or the wistful glimmer of stars. Now, while the sun went higher, and all the hum of life rose, and the cries of the water-birds, the buzz of insects over the bright lake, became more insistent, and the blue and lovely morning spread and strengthened round her, criticism and ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... office seemed to be waiting for her, the pictures regarding her as though they were saying "Where have you been, young lady? We began to think you had gone." Through the window sounded the old symphony, the roar of the falls above the hum of the shops, the choruses and variations of well-nigh countless tools, each having its own particular note ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... smell of sprouting grass! In a blur the violets pass. Whispering from the wildwood come Mayflower's breath and insect's hum. Roses carpeting the ground; Thrushes, orioles, warbling sound: Swing me low, and swing me high, To ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Presently we heard the hum of distant voices shouting, and the fear that the scene of bloodshed had already begun induced us to quicken our pace to a smart run. I never saw a man so deeply affected as was our poor guide, and when I looked at ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... them up without deigning to look at the person who had accosted him, and turning them over in his hand, "One, two, three, hum; there is half-a-dozen. What ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... even of dislike and suspicion, by some fortuitous incident, which might have chanced to two who had every impulse towards each other, not such antagonisms as lay between Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and this Huguenot refugee. She had every cue to hate hum. Each moment of her life in England had been beset with peril because of him-peril to the man she loved, therefore peril to herself. And yet, so various is the nature of woman, that, while steering straitly by one star, she levies upon the light of other stars. Faithful and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... shoulders of his wife, and had no conception that in so doing he was guilty of an act of moral cowardice. Returning to the studio, he pulled out a clean canvas and began a vigorous drawing of two fauns chasing each other round a tree. Presently, as he drew, he began to hum. ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... is with hum of tiny things Held idly, struggling there, As if the golden mist entangled were About the viewless wings, That beat out music ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... up the circular incline in the peak of the tower! We heard the hum of it; and when we went up there, the first thing we saw was a mirror tuned in readiness for us to view the garden we had just left. This strange Tarrano, giving Georg the visible proof that he would keep his word and not harm Elza. We could see ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... woollen mittens, in order to restore some warmth to those almost frozen members. As he walked back and forth, he said several times, half aloud to himself, "I don't b'lieve she's comin' anyway. I s'pose she's goin' to stay ter hum and spend the evenin' with him." Finally he resumed his old position near the corner and ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... emperor; Who, busied in his majesty, surveys The singing masons, building roofs of gold; The civil citizens kneading up the honey; The poor mechanic porters crowding in Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate; The sad-eyed justice, with his surly hum, Delivering o'er to executors pale The lazy, ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... the City. But one night when I was visiting an Indian grove the barbarians from the North came down and destroyed our shrines and palaces and took our people up to Egypt. Oh, it was desolate, and I shed many tears, for I missed the busy hum of the market and the merry voices of ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... one to partake, though we only drank out of clear glass, not out of silver, as when the mourners are noble. Monsieur Verdon and some familiars of the house, whether friends or relations I do not know, were attending to this, and there was a hum of conversation around; but there was no acquaintance of ours present, and nobody ventured to speak to us, except that Clement said: 'She will be gratified, when she has time to understand.' And then he asked whether I had heard ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... grown fainter and wearier with every answer, and now there was no answer at all. Again and again I asked Raffles if he was there; the only sound to reach me in reply was the low metallic hum of the live wire between his ear and mine. And then, as I sat gazing distractedly at my four safe walls, with the receiver still pressed to my head, there came a single groan, followed by the dull and dreadful crash of a human ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... agreeable hum of chatter from these early comers when I found myself welcoming Mrs. Judge Ballard and half a dozen members of the Onwards and Upwards Club, all of them wearing what I made out to be a baffled look. From these I presently managed to gather ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... resounded to the hum of its varied labors. Mr. Jarvis, dictating letters to a typist, smiled occasionally as he pictured the arrival of this over-favored young man in the drawing-room of Mrs. Weatherley, attired in the nondescript fashion which his words had suggested. One or two of ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the river had paused in the valley to rest, dreaming, perchance, of the long cool shadows in the uplands, the far altar-fires of daybreak. There were pleasant things to do in the valley, to lie at full length, basking in the sun, to hum a bit of the old music, to touch gently the harp-strings of the marsh grass and rushes, dimpling with pleasure at the faint answer, to reflect every passing mood of cloud and sky, even to hold the little clouds as a mother might, upon its deep and ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... have heard the shot and his cry, and though we made things hum about them, they took time to look into it and bear the ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis
... boy, let's have a look at this precious little account—hum! ha! hunting-saddle, gag-bit for Lamplighter, head-piece and reins to ditto, 317"racing-saddle for chestnut mare,' etc., etc., etc.; a horrid affair as long as my arm—total L96 18s. 2d.; and the blackguard had charged everything ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... but he continued to hum quietly to himself. The crew around me began to doze off, and I think even I was almost asleep for a time. To tell the truth I wasn't very far from ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... an increasing hum to the powerful motor, the great propellers whirled around at twice their former number of revolutions, and the ...
— Tom Swift in the Caves of Ice • Victor Appleton
... small boys were gathered about him, and the tinker began to hum an Irish reel, fingers and forearm flying as he played an imaginary fiddle. But, even now, his dignity had not left him. The dance began. All were in the little house or at the two doors, peering in, save Darrel, who sat with his pipe, and ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... and Turks. But the first step to their being read is to make them intelligible to the reader. I long for the day when the husbandman shall sing portions of them to himself as he follows the plough, when the weaver shall hum them to the tune of his shuttle, when the traveller shall while away with their stories the weariness of his journey." From the moment of its publication in 1516 the New Testament of Erasmus became the topic of the day; ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... to slumber, Which Cuan Na Seilg with its roaring fills. He lov'd the noise when storms were blowing, And billows with billows fought furiously, Of Magh Maom's kine the ceaseless lowing, And deep from the glen the calves' feeble cry; The noise of the chase from Slieve Crott pealing, The hum from the bushes Slieve Cua below, The voice of the gull o'er the breakers wheeling, The vulture's scream, over the sea flying slow; The mariners' song from the distant haven, The strain from the hill of the ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... and shook her head. "My tongue cannot be held for that," she said, beginning to sway again and hum. ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... attributed to the fact that there had been a death in the family, and the funeral was to be held that morning; but I discovered afterwards that an eternal Sabbath stillness reigns in a Shaker family—there being no noise or confusion, or hum of busy industry at any time, although they are ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... timber, iron-studded door that let in at the foot of what seemed a donjon keep. The floor was cement, and doors let off in various directions. One, opening to a Chinese in the white apron and starched cap of a chef, emitted at the same time the low hum of a dynamo. It was this that deflected Forrest from his straight path. He paused, holding the door ajar, and peered into a cool, electric-lighted cement room where stood a long, glass-fronted, glass-shelved ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... cabin standing in the center of a small forested moraine four boys of about seventeen were grouped together. The one door and the two windows of the structure were covered with mosquito wire. The hum of insect life came into the room with the monotony of the murmur of the sea. Although it was after ten o'clock in the evening, the sun still ...
— The Call of the Beaver Patrol - or, A Break in the Glacier • V. T. Sherman
... I don't believe there is a mountain on the face of the globe lofty enough to lift its head above that flood. Hum, hum! It's no use thinking about mountains! The flood will be six miles deep—six miles from the present sea-level; my last calculation proves it beyond all question. And that's only a minimum—it may be miles deeper, for no mortal man can tell exactly what'll happen when the earth ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... the best pleased, but he was always a silent man, very pious, and not saying much as he sat at his bench, for he had been brought up to the shoemaking and was very respected among Pevensey folks. He would hum a hymn or two at his work sometimes, but he was never a man of words. When young Barber went back to London, Ellen, she began to lose her pretty looks. I had never thought much of young Barber. There was something common about him—not like the labouring ...
— In Homespun • Edith Nesbit
... note instantly, and, so delicate is the perceptiveness of the ear, he could almost follow the trend of the detective's unspoken thought by a hiss of breath or a muttered "Hum," as a name was mentioned or a reason given for ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... new-mown hay, fanned her pale cheek and feverish brow, and allayed her agitation and excitement. The perfect stillness, broken only by the lowing of the cattle in the adjoining pastures, by the drowsy hum of the dor-fly, or the rippling of the beck in the valley, further calmed her; and the soothing influence was completed by a contemplation of the serene heavens, wherein were seen the starry host, with the thin bright crescent of the new moon in the midst ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... self-imposed darkness, with nothing to do but listen, fancied she could hear the low hum of quiet voices in the room beneath, carrying on a more or ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... idlers who were wandering about the balconies or through the hotel grounds; while laughs and little shrieks, uttered by the children as their pursuing nurses caught them up for bed, mingled not unpleasantly with the silvery hum arising from the fashionable crowd and the festal clang of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... Cathelineau could see the crowds of hurrying royalists rushing along the road, wherever the thick foliage of trees was sufficiently broken to leave any portion of it visible, and he could hear the eager hum of their voices both near him and ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... have liked to possess them all, and to have walked gravely at the head of a procession, with his crush hat under his arm and his breast covered with decorations, radiant as a star, amid a buzz of admiring whispers and a hum of respect. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... the Beasts along, By sweet Rhetorick of his learned Tongue, 'Twas deafness made the Adder sin; and this Caus'd him, who should have hum'd the Poet, hiss. ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley
... passed, for in the blindness of her tears it was as if dark night had fallen. She turned about and in her ears his words rang, and again strong-set to be brave, the misty night was winked away. Hearing the hum of the old negro's tuneful spirit, she called him and he came to ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read
... his neck so as to command a sight of the doorway. He obstructed my view, and only by his tense attitude and some subtle wave of excitement which he communicated to me did I know that a new arrival was entering. The hum of conversation died away, and in the ensuing silence I heard the rustle of draperies. The newcomer was a woman, then. Fearful of making any noise I yet managed to get my eyes to the level ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... counsel for defense, the celebrated Fetyukovitch, entered, and a sort of subdued hum passed through the court. He was a tall, spare man, with long thin legs, with extremely long, thin, pale fingers, clean-shaven face, demurely brushed, rather short hair, and thin lips that were at times curved into something between a sneer and a smile. He looked about forty. His face would have ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... snow lay between the two clumps of woods. It was not worth while for either side to try to get possession of the intervening space. At the first movement by either French or Germans the woods opposite would hum with rifle fire and echo with cannonading. So, like rival parties of Arctic explorers waiting out the Arctic winter, they watched each other. But if one force or the other napped and the other caught him at it, then winter would not stay a brigade commander's ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... court. Richard Hare, the exile—the reported dead—the man whose life was in jeopardy! The spectators rose with one accord to get a better view; they stood on tiptoe; they pushed forth their necks; they strained their eyesight: and, amidst all the noisy hum, the groan bursting from the lips of Justice Hare was unnoticed. Whilst order was being called for, and the judge threatened to clear the court, two officers moved themselves quietly up and stood behind the witness. Richard Hare was in custody, though he might know it ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... from his memory? For the robin cherups his mate to please, The blue bird pipes in the poplar trees, The meadow lark warbles his jubilees, Shrilling his song in the azure seas, Till the welkin throbs to his melodies; And low is the hum of the humble bees, And the Feast of the Virgins ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... hundred and fifty nine, When Hawke came swooping from the West, The French King's Admiral with twenty of the line, Was sailing forth, to sack us, out of Brest. The ports of France were crowded, the quays of France a-hum With thirty thousand soldiers marching to the drum, For bragging time was over and fighting time was come When Hawke ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... angrily at safe distance, and the more innocent squirrel peeps down upon you from a bough of the canopy, and, hoisting his tail, glides into the obscurity of the loftiest umbrage. You still continue to see and hear; but the sight is a glimmer, and the sound a hum, as if the forest-glade were swarming with bees, from the ground-flowers to the herons' nests. Refreshed by your dream of Dryads, follow a lonesome din that issues from a pile of wooded cliffs, and you are led to a Waterfall. Five minutes are enough for taking an impression, if ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... Michael hum'd and ha'd a few times, but at last he overcame his scruples and said, "he didn't know but what it wor for th' best, and if it wornt, if it had to be done they might as weel have th' honor o' doin it as ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... narrow little bed; and was determined that, before they got her conveyed to their savage home in the North, she would make one more effort for her freedom. Then she heard the man at the helm begin to hum to himself "Fhir a bhata, na horo eile." The night darkened. And soon all the wild emotions of the day were forgotten; for she ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... merchandise we had for sale or would buy. But, more than all, my father and I alike sailed for the love of ship and sea, caring little for the gain that came, so long as the salt spray was over us, and we might hear the hum of the wind in the canvas, or the steady roll and click of the long oars in the ship's rowlocks, and take our chance of long fights with wind and wave on our ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... myself, as I overheard a person inquire of the servant at the door, in an unmistakeable voice and tone, "Is the Squire to hum?" that can be no one else than my old friend Sam Slick the Clockmaker. But it could admit of no doubt when he proceeded, "If he is, tell ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... through which to stroll in the gray morning while the early worm is getting his just desserts. There, in the midst of a great city, with the hum of industry and the low rumble of the throbbing Boston brain dimly heard in the distance, nature asserts herself, and the weary, sad-eyed stranger may ramble for hours and keep off the ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... she wept bitterly, silently, under the starry banner, beside the dead. I heard the hum of many voices, and now and then a cry of pain, and knew they were all helping the sufferers. Then I turned to her again. Her streaming hair swept the ground, golden in the light. Her fair face was hidden on the cold dead face. And I dared not speak to her. Oh, that picture! ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... eye of Dr. Silence, and stopped. He put his pipe back into his pocket and began to hum softly—that underbreath humming of a nondescript melody I knew so well and ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... for my brothers, of course. Godfather Gilpin says I should find far more bodies than I do if they were not burying all along. I often wish I could understand them when they hum, and ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... quiet that followed, broken only by the hum of the arithmetic-tape, Sam wondered at himself. As kids went, Mark had never been a nuisance. Certainly Rhoda had never had any trouble with him. But Rhoda had been altogether different. Sam was tough and he ...
— Dead Man's Planet • William Morrison
... em a alta costa onde se criam primores mais que rosas; 9 planta soes & caminheyra, que ainda que estais vos his donde viestes; vossa patria verdadeyra he ser herdeyra da gloria que conseguis, anday prestes. [p] Alma bemauenturada, dos anjos tanto querida, nam durmais, hum punto nam esteis parada, que a jornada muyto em breue he ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... laughing and casting scornful looks at him and his companions. They went on without stopping to rest or take any food; sometimes up hill, sometimes down, across valleys, and over rocky ground, until, as evening was approaching, the hum of human voices was heard. Some little distance ahead a kraal was seen on the side of a hill, while in the valley below were assembled a large concourse of men employed in various ways; some formed into regiments were marching ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston
... that he was a messenger of God sent on earth to restore the religion of Abraham, which the pagan Arabs had polluted with idolatry, the Jews in corrupting their holy books. At the same time he heard a Voice, and sometimes he felt a noise in his ears like the tinkling of bells or a low deep hum, as if bees were swarming round ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... 3rd. There was a touch of autumn in the air and the wind had changed slightly. Amid the shrieking of shells and the hum of bullets the bark of a distant farm dog could be heard distinctly. And so from day to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 14, 1914 • Various
... dressed in the robes of state, and pale as a statue of marble, leaned against a pillar, careworn and wretched. Folding his arms upon his breast, with his eyes fixed upon vacancy, he stood in gloomy silence. It was a funereal scene. The low hum of mournful voices alone disturbed the stillness of the room. A circular table was placed in the centre of the apartment. Upon it there was a writing apparatus of gold. A vacant arm-chair stood before the table. The company gazed silently ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... sauntered downwards through the lovely green woods, with the warm hum of insects and the soft summer, glancing sunshine. And all of you who know the beauties of Carlsbad, or indeed any other of those Bohemian spas, can just picture how agreeable was their walk, and how conducive to amiable discussion and the acceleration of friendship. Henry tried ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... motor type myself and having a fairly good untrained ear for music, I find that to memorise a melody, whether played by an instrument or by an orchestra, I must either try to sing or hum that melody in order to fix it in my memory. Every time I do this, association processes are being set up in the brain between the auditory centres and the centres of phonation; and when I try to revive in my silent thoughts the melody again, I do so best by humming aloud ...
— The Brain and the Voice in Speech and Song • F. W. Mott
... with the universal smiling. There are certain days when nature seems to laugh aloud; in this hour of noon the entire universe, all we could see of it, was on a broad grin. Everything moved, or danced, or sang; the leaves were each alive, trembling, quivering, shaking; the insect hum was like a Wagnerian chorus, deafening to the ear; there was a brisk, light breeze stirring—a breeze that moved the higher branches of the trees as if it had been an arm; that rippled the grass; that tossed the wavelets of the sea into such foam ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... I s'pose," said the old woman, with a sigh. She laid the letter down, but very reluctantly, beside the wash-tub, and plunged both hands among the suds again. "Quebec!" The word recalled a silly old song of the sailors; she had heard her boy hum it again ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... The terrible punishment inflicted on the rioters in 1863 seemed to have been forgotten by the mob, and it had evidently resolved to try once more its strength with the city authorities. Around the Orange head-quarters a still deeper excitement prevailed. The hum of the vast multitude seemed like the first murmurings of the coming storm, and many a face turned pale as the Orangemen, with their banners and badges, only ninety in all, passed out of the door into the street. John Johnston, their marshal, mounted on a spirited horse, placed himself at their ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... the warehouse-doors of their respective owners in the open thoroughfare, which is at this part very wide. Auctioneers were here busily engaged in the disposal of their merchandise, which comprised every variety of produce and manufacture, home and foreign, from a yard of linsey-woolsey, "hum spun" as they termed it, to a bale of Manchester long cloth, or their own Sea-Island cotton. The auctioneer in America is a curious specimen of the biped creation. He is usually a swaggering, consequential sort of fellow, and drives away at his calling with ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... temples bright, in shining white, fly open at thy nod! A lucky sun doth shine; nor voice, nor thought of ill, be stirr'd To tempt the time; the happy day demands the happy word. No brawls assail the ear; cease now the harsh-vex'd forum's hum, And calumny with eager tongue, for once thy spite be dumb! Lo! where the pure and fragrant flame from every altar round Upwreathes, while ears devout receive the saffron's crackling sound! The wandering flame, far darting, strikes the golden-fretted roof, And with the tremulous ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... along the streets of Benton, and presently Neale became aware of a low and mounting hum, like a first stir ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... branches looking in the distance like huge squirrels, were pleasant objects to the mountain ramblers. Huskers could be discerned in the nearer cornfields, and the great yellow ears glistened momentarily in the light, as they were tossed into golden heaps. There was no hum of industry as from a manufacturing village, or roar of turbulent life as from a city, but only the quiet evidence to the eye of a life kindred to that which nature so silently and ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... multiply itself, and to flit in various figures around me, bearing the same lineaments as she herself did. I remember also that the discordant noises and cries of those without the cottage seemed to die away in a hum like that with which a nurse hushes her babe. At length I fell into a deep sound sleep, or rather, a ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... placed in the hollow of a coil or bobbin of insulated wire, would emit an audible 'tick' at each interruption of a current, flowing in the coil, and that if these separate ticks followed each other fast enough, by a rapid interruption of the current, they would run together into a continuous hum, to which he gave the name of 'galvanic music.' The pitch of this note would correspond to the rate of interruption of the current. From these and other discoveries which had been made by Noad, Wertheim, Marrian, ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... gayest season of that fashionable watering-place. At this time the hotels are thronged with summer tourists returning homeward from the more northern resorts. Though the broad piazzas of Cozzens's great hotel were crowded by the elite of the city, there was a hum of admiration as Christine first made her round on her father's arm; and in the evening, when the spacious parlor was cleared for dancing, officers from the post and civilians alike eagerly sought her ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... twenty-five cents for our boat the lock-master told us would be collected at Chambly Basin. It was a pull of nearly six miles to St. Denis, where the same scene of comfort and plenty prevailed. Women were washing clothes in large iron pots at the river's edge, and the hum of the spinning-wheels issued from the doorways of the farm-houses. Beehives in the well-stocked gardens were filled with honey, and the strawthatched barns had their doors thrown wide open, as though waiting to receive the harvest. At intervals along the highway, ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... Saints, which was in no way prejudicial to our order. She lived in prayer alone, would remain in ecstasy before the altar of the virgin, which is on the side of the fields, and pretend so distinctly to hear the angels flying in Paradise, that she was able to hum the tunes they were singing. You all know that she took from them the chant Adoremus, of which no man could have invented a note. She remained for days with her eyes fixed like the star, fasting, and putting no more nourishment into her body that I could into my eye. She had made ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... that and evrybody else doesnt. he asted me if we become crasy to get back about the time we heard of the picknic and i sed no not exackly then, for we had always felt like that way but we was more crasier when we heard of that. all he sed was hum. that can meen most ennything you know. i am going to that picknic sumhow. i wish that old sheep was ded. if i see a bear climing the fense to kill that sheep and take off her skin and rap it up in a neet roll the way bears do and then eat it, i mean the ...
— Brite and Fair • Henry A. Shute
... blazing with lights, directing their steps toward the East River, Fremont turned about and glanced with varying emotions at the brilliant scene he was leaving. He was parting, under a cloud, from the Great White Way and all that the fanciful title implied. He loved the rush and hum of the big city, and experienced, standing there in the night, a dread of the silent places he was soon to visit under such ...
— Boy Scouts in Mexico; or On Guard with Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... little dream of a big sugar plum, And lo! thick and fast the other dreams come Of popguns that bang, and tin tops that hum, ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... there awakes in Nature, and the soul of man can see and comprehend it, an expectation and a longing for a future revelation of God's majesty. It awakens, also, when in the fulness of life, field and forest rest at noon, and through the stillness is heard only the song of the grasshopper and the hum of the bee; and when at evening the singing lark, up from the sweet-smelling vineyards rises, or in the later hours of night Orion puts on his shining armour, to walk forth in the fields of heaven. But in the soul of man alone is this longing ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... than I'll believe; and, to speak my mind plainly, I believe that you are an arrant, bamboozling hum-bug!" cried Tom. "No offence, though. You ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... woodbine climbing over the brown stone wall, the wicket-gate, and the cherry-tree with its fruit hanging red against the whitewashed cottage? Ah, if I could only paint it so truly that you could hear the drowsy hum of the bees among the thyme, and smell the scented hay-meadows in the distance, and feel that it is midsummer in England! That would indeed be truth, and that would be art. Shall I paint the Bobby baby as he stoops to pick the cowslips and the flax, his head as yellow and his ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... faintness &c adj.; faint sound, whisper, breath; undertone, underbreath^; murmur, hum, susurration; tinkle; still small voice. hoarseness &c adj.; raucity^. V. whisper, breathe, murmur, purl, hum, gurgle, ripple, babble, flow; tinkle; mutter &c (speak imperfectly) 583; susurrate^. steal on the ear; melt in the air, float on ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... necessary to take greatly lengthened the distance. And as they were never in a hurry, they would be very likely, when coming to one of the many lovely valleys on the banks of the Holstein, or the Clinch river, to be enticed to some days of delay. Where now there are thriving villages filled with the hum of the industries of a high civilization, there was then but the solitary landscape dotted with herds of ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... a bow, like a springle-riser; line on the hum, like the string of Paganini winch on the gallop, like a harpoon wheel, Pike, the head-centre of everything, dashing through thick and thin, and once taken overhead—for he jumped into the hole, when he must have lost him else, but the fish too ...
— Crocker's Hole - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... for your things upstairs," said the captain. "They'll be ready—either up there or on the sidewalk. Now, my—hum—thief," with deliberate and dangerous calmness, "I'm comin' out into that yard. If I was you I'd be somewhere else when I get there. That's ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... in a new direction, Unorna guiding her companion by a gesture. They were near to the Jewish quarter, and presently were threading their way through narrow and filthy streets thronged with eager Hebrew faces, and filled with the hum of low-pitched voices chattering together, not in the language of the country, but in a base dialect of German. They were in the heart of Prague, in that dim quarter which is one of the strongholds of the Israelite, whence he directs great enterprises and sets in motion huge financial ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... and then one would bend forward and whisper to his neighbour, who answered with a grunt or a motion of his head; but for the most part, and for mile after mile, we all sat silent, listening only to the horses' gallop, the chime of the swingle-bars, the hum of the night wind in our ears. The motion and the strong breeze together lulled me little by little into a doze. My neighbour on the right wore around his shoulders a woollen shawl, against which after a while I found my cheek ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... joke writing by a bad lantern with a groggy hand and your glasses mislaid. Not that the hand is not better, as you see by the absence of the amanuensis hitherto. Mail came Friday, and a communication from yourself much more decent than usual, for which I thank you. Glad the WRECKER should so hum; but Lord, what fools ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Store and hotel keeper, citizens in white shirts and broadcloth, jostled blue-shirted cattle men, while here and there a petty politician consulted with the representative of a Western paper. The smoke of cigars drifted everywhere, and the listless heat was stirred by the hum of voices eager and strident. It was evident that the assembly was in an expectant mood, and there was a murmur of approbation when one newspaper ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... returned, rather impudently. She continued to sing and hum until the last note was smothered in her little nose. Then she spoke: "However—it means a different thing to me from what it means ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... the plan of a very moral and aristocratical novel she was preparing for the press, and continued holding forth, with her eyes half shut, till a long-drawn nasal tone from the reverend divine compelled her suddenly to open them in all the indignation of surprise. The cessation of the hum of her voice awakened the reverend gentleman, who, lifting up first one eyelid, then the other, articulated, or rather murmured, ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... the distant hum, The mirth of feasts, the clang of burnish'd arms, The braying trumpet, and the hoarser drum, Unite in concert ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... now if ye'd kept yer hands to hum, Jake," he stated. "But I ain't holdin' up anythin' against ye for what ye done. Now I got money, Tess'll be all the gladder. I air goin' to take 'er over to Seneca Lake. I got a job on there. ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... direct falsehood: the old and new cap were both in his chamber, for he had been trying them on and asking me which looked the best. Hector winked his eye, lolled his tongue, and said to me—'That's the way, d——n me, to hum the old ones.' ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... all! It was enough! The tension of those last two days was broken. No matter what the news, it was a relief. And we drove away 'mid the rising hum of hundreds of tongues, loosened ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... me his different employments at school, and afterwards desiring me in my turn to relate to him all manner of things about Germany. He repeats his amo, amas, amavi, in the same singing tone as our common school-boys. As I happened once when he was by, to hum a lively tune, he stared at me with surprise, and then reminded me it was Sunday; and so, that I might not forfeit his good opinion by any appearance of levity, I gave him to understand that, in the hurry of my journey, I had forgotten the day. He has ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... linen-chest, which she would take with her when she married, and now she bestirred herself to replenish the stores of the house she would leave, for the comfort of her father and brothers. Long before dawn the gentle hum of her spinning-wheel began, although the days were lengthening, and many a time she sat plying it on her solitary hearth until after midnight. She spent days at the great loom in the north chamber, marching back and forth before it, a straight, resolute figure of industry filling human needs, ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... up a hostile hum, rocked, and advanced upon the police commissioner. He noticed it and jumped away, snatching his saber from ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... behind, Tom saw with pleasure that some more boats had been obtained, and that strong reinforcements would soon be across. The whistling of the bullets and the hum of the round shot were incessant, and Tom acknowledged to himself that he felt horribly uncomfortable—much more uncomfortable than he had any idea that he should feel under fire. Had he been actively engaged, he would have hardly experienced this feeling; but to stand impassive ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... was a Cadillac aircar coming over a ridge in the distance, its fans making an ever-louder throaty hum as it approached. It settled down to an altitude of three feet as it neared, and floated toward them on its cushion of air. On its side, Elshawe could see the words, UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT, and beneath that, in ...
— By Proxy • Gordon Randall Garrett
... street to the basement of the building used by the "Open Board," we find ourselves in a long, dimly lighted passage- way, which leads us into a small courtyard. As we emerge into this yard, we hear a confused hum above our heads, which grows louder as we ascend the steep stairway before us. Passing through a narrow, dirty entry, we open a side door, and our ears fairly ache with the yells and shrieks with which we are startled. For a moment we think ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
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