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More "Strident" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... How hateful its strident tones were to her ear! She dropped her eyes and caught sight of a dark stain on the snow-white plumage of the doves in the mosaic pavement at ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... four cheap fellows, sonorously garbed, were leaning over the counters, wrestling with the mediatorial hand-coverings, while giggling girls played vivacious seconds to their lead upon the strident string of coquetry. Carter would have retreated, but he had gone too far. Masie confronted him behind her counter with a questioning look in eyes as coldly, beautifully, warmly blue as the glint of summer sunshine on an iceberg drifting ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... whether it is true or not true. All they want is the privilege of howling out that their correspondent rescued you, and they would take that privilege without in any ways worrying if I refused my consent. You see, sir? I wouldn't like you to feel that I was such a strident idiot as I doubtless am appearing now before ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... strident as he repeated his old story. Some of the clients of The Fallen Angels stopped talking for a moment; it was only that crazy Pole again ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... it was with satisfaction that I heard the trampling of hoofs bite into the sod and the bright steel edges rip through the matted roots. Soft earth and tangled grasses filled the iron scoop behind, the air vibrated with the strident clang of rails, and the locomotive engineer performed an inspiriting solo upon his whistle, while the rest of our party followed to finish the wake we left with their shovels. Somewhat improved appliances ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... elle est charmante!" cried the actress, with an inflection of irony in her strident voice. "Miladi, il faut absolument que nous nous connaissions. Je connais votre chere mere depuis si longtemps! A Paris, l'hiver passe c'etait une amitie des ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Stream rivereto. Street strato. Strength forteco. Strengthen plifortigi. Strenuous energia. Stress forto, premo—eco. Stretch strecxi. Stretcher portilo. Strew disjxeti. Strict severa. Stride pasxegi. Strident sibla sono. Strife malpaco, disputo. Strike frapi. Strike (of workmen) striki. Strike (coins) presi, monopresi. Strike up singing ekkanti. Strike out (writing) surstreki. Striking surpriza, tusxanta, solena. String sxnureto. Stringent severa. Strip strio. Strip ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... want, and our Charities suffering from a heavy mortality. And of course it will be the best and most retiring Charities that will starve to death rather than beg of the first comer, while the brazen Charities will perambulate the streets with strident clamour, rattling full money-boxes. ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... voice without metallic ring is like teeth without enamel; they may be sound and healthy, but they are not brilliant.... In speech there are several colours—a bright, ringing quality; one soft and veiled. The bright, strident hues of purple and gold in a picture may produce a masterpiece of gorgeous colouring; so, in a different manner, may the harmonious juxtaposition of greys, lilacs and browns on a canvas by Veronese, ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... truculent, and was saying to him, intensely, "See here! We contracted with you to supply us with sonnets at five dollars per sonnet—" I passed up a side-street, one of those deserted ways that abound just off the big streets, resorts, apparently, for such people and things as are not quite strident or not quite energetic enough for the ordinary glare of life; dim places, fusty with hesternal excitements and the thrills of yesteryear. Against a flight of desolate steps leant a notice. I stopped to read ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... jaunty yellow and red forage-caps, showing up bravely in the clear morning light. Above them, on the top of the bank, was ranged the line of donkeys, and the air was full of the clamour of the boys. In shrill strident voices each was crying out the virtues of his own beast, and abusing that of ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... starting-point, whence he surveyed the course. There it lay, no more than a lane leading down between ranks of brown-faced men whose eyes were turned upon him. On the top rail of the corral perched Willie, revolver in hand. The babble of voices ceased, the strident laughter stilled, Speed heard the nervous Tustle of feminine skirts. Skinner was standing like a statue, his toe to the mark, his ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... blew strong from the east, that day; it whistled through the open, double-decked cars packed with gray, woolly bodies, whose voices were ever raised in strident complaint; and the stench of them smote the unaccustomed nostrils of the Happy Family and put them to disgusted flight up the track and across it to where the air ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... the deepening twilight we thoughtfully left the last resting-place of the mighty dead, a platoon of thirty Chinese soldiers approached, drew their swords, dropped upon one knee and shouted. The movement was so unexpected and the shout so startlingly strident that my horse shied in terror and I had visions of immediate massacre. But having learned that politeness is current coin the world over, as soon as I could control my prancing horse, I raised my hat ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... passed away, and he saw that maddening circle with the caracoling steeds. He head the discordant music, the monotonous creak of the machinery, the strident laughter of the excited riders. As first the thing was a blur, a kaleidoscope of whirling colors, into which there presently crept form and order. ... A boy who had cried to get on, and was now crying to get off. ... Old Rube Hobson and his young ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... climbed down from the rear of the 'bus, assisted by two young men in brass buttons. Mr. Hooker made way for a corpulent, puffing old lady. She stopped in front of him and demanded in hot, strident tones: ...
— The Flyers • George Barr McCutcheon
... Yellin' Kid, with his usual strident tones. "Take it easy, Bud, We've got a long, hard trail ahead of us, and we haven't any ...
— The Boy Ranchers Among the Indians - or, Trailing the Yaquis • Willard F. Baker
... still a great scarcity of engineers. All branches feel the need—civil, mechanical, mining, chemical, automotive, electrical—the call goes out. It is a call just now, owing to the vast reconstruction period confronting the world, lifted in strident voice. Engineers everywhere are needed, which in part accounts for the liberal salaries offered for experienced men. The demand greatly exceeds the supply, and gives promise of exceeding it for a number of years to come. All manufacturing-plants, all mining enterprises, ...
— Opportunities in Engineering • Charles M. Horton
... the youngest, who had come home from her day's work. She might have been ten or twelve years old and was small for her age, although she looked older; her voice was harsh and strident, and her little body seemed coarsened and worn with work. There was not a spot about her that shed or reflected a single ray of light; she was like some subterranean creature that has strayed to the surface. She went silently across the room and let ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... from it together until the church thrilled with their united voices. But the song they sang seemed to pain her, and her voice hurt her throat. His voice, too, grew harsh and piercing, and—she awoke with the sun in her eyes and the strident cries of the blue-jays ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... the two children by means of a long cord, watching them carefully, for fear of accidents, with that animal and celestial expression which is peculiar to maternity. At every backward and forward swing the hideous links emitted a strident sound, which resembled a cry of rage; the little girls were in ecstasies; the setting sun mingled in this joy, and nothing could be more charming than this caprice of chance which had made of a chain of Titans the swing ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... twilight stands, Above the shadowy pasture lands, With strained and strident cry, Beneath pale skies that ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... whole secret of Yoga, the science of the soul. The active turnings, the strident vibrations, of selfishness, lust and hate are to be stilled by meditation, by letting heart and mind dwell in spiritual life, by lifting up the heart to the strong, silent life above, which rests in ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... the yellow of its framework, a number of dark figures were surging to and fro as around a conflagration. Presently we heard something smashed to pieces—at all events, we heard the cracking and scraping of wood against stone, and then the strident, ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... Pamela's grimy street in the November fog, felt that London was terrible. An ugly clamour of strident noises and hard, shrill voices, jabbering of vulgar, trivial things. A wry, desperate, cursed world, as she had called it, a pot seething with bitterness and all dreadfulness, with its Rosalinds floating ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... of their incoherence and misapplication as because of the relative truths which they originally conveyed. Optimism is the cry of the times, and of all the voices which declare it, this is the most strident and insistent, proclaiming the shortest of all the short roads to happiness, declaring the secret of a contentment as impervious ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... Their corporal remained where he was, leaning against a wall in the shade, eating an onion and ready to give the signal with his whistle; he did not glance towards the two watching officers. To Lieutenant Jovannic, the falsity and unreality of it all were as strident as a brass band; yet in the long vista of the village street, brimful of sun and silence, the few people who moved upon their business went indifferently as shadows upon a wall. An old man trudged in the wake of a laden donkey; a girl bore ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... the last chain drop in the byre, and the strident tones of Jess exhorting Marly, he took a few steps to the gate of the hill pasture. He had to pass along a short home-made road, and over a low parapetless bridge constructed simply of four tree-trunks laid parallel and covered with turf. Then he dropped ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... with a coarse prettiness, laughed a mocking strident laugh that expressed the feelings of the crowd even more than the louder curses around her. The workers slowly dispersed, in little groups, talking in excited, angry tones. Dale Lynch detached himself ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... heard upon the borders of the great Grimpen Mire. It came with the wind through the silence of the night, a long, deep mutter, then a rising howl, and then the sad moan in which it died away. Again and again it sounded, the whole air throbbing with it, strident, wild, and menacing. The baronet caught my sleeve and his face glimmered white through ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... a duster fidgeted among the crowd, explaining and protesting, and a strident voiced girl, his companion, supported his argument, declaring to everyone her willingness to offer testimony in any court of law that every blessed word he said was the ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... lyrical effusion, a short, shrill, strident bell, twice interrupted, twice resumed and then ceasing. It ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... stand aloof from them now; for most of our company were old men, bent and worn and twisted with years, and women aged to all appearance as the Fates themselves. They sat together in knots and talked—God only knows what they found to discuss—in low equable tones, curiously in contrast to the strident babble with which natives are accustomed to make day hideous. Now and then an access of that sudden fury which had possessed me in the morning would lay hold on a man or woman; and with yells and imprecations the sufferer would attack the steep slope until, baffled and bleeding, he fell back ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... it is," came the strident voice of the station-master. "It ain't no mortal manner of use. Why, they spotted me to onct; said how was they to know I drawed ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... made good her course, she had run her distance till the punctual islets began to emerge one by one, the points of rocks, the hummocks of earth . . . and the cloud of birds hovered—the restless cloud emitting a strident and cruel uproar, the sound of the familiar scene, the living part of the broken land beneath, of the outspread sea, and of the high sky ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... I happened to be looking at it when the first impulse to get outside the nest seemed to seize it. Its parents were encouraging it with calls and assurances from some rocks a few yards away. It answered their calls in vigorous, strident tones. Then it climbed over the edge of the nest upon the plate, took a few steps forward, then a few more, till it was a yard from the nest and near the end of the timber, and could look off into free space. Its parents apparently shouted, "Come on!" But its courage was ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... their declaration of war against the Government to much effect. Their best chance comes during the first hour of the sitting, and their most useful weapon is the Supplementary Question. No sooner has Mr. DUKE read the official reply to the inquiry on the Paper than there comes a strident "Arising out of that, Mr. SPEAKER-R." Fortunately the CHIEF SECRETARY possesses a Job-like patience, and is rarely betrayed into any departure from his polite if somewhat ponderous manner. To badger Mr. BIRRELL was an exciting pastime rather like punching the ball. To heckle Mr. DUKE is like hammering ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, March 21, 1917 • Various
... "became pawns in the game."* (* The phrase is Professor Egerton's, Cambridge Modern History 9 735.) There was no Imperialism then, with its strident note, its ebullient fervour and flag waving. There was no national sense of pride in colonial Empire, or general appreciation of the great potentialities of oversea possessions. "The final outcome of the ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... what you call it, is it?" In spite of his weakness, anger made his voice strident, and upon this stimulation ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... narrow leads, or in huge bodies blackened the open pools or the projecting points of ice. Among them, too, wheeled many flocks of clamorous brent, while, from time to time, the desolate cry of the Moniac duck, or the shrill, monotonous, strident flight of the "Whistler" warned the sportsmen that new visitants were about to greet ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... issued into West Street, sitting on some straw in the bottom of an open baggage-wagon. It rained miraculously; and from that moment till on the following night I left New York, there was scarce a lull, and no cessation of the downpour. The roadways were flooded; a loud strident noise of falling water filled the air; the restaurants smelt heavily of ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... you do not perceive that it is a symbol of my peacock, my bird translated into the language of this narrow and suppressed existence of ours? What a strange and exquisite messenger! My poor peacock, with a strident shriek of terror, fled from me on that awful morning, the flames singeing its dishevelled train, its wings helplessly flapping in the torrents of conflagration. It bade me no adieu, its clangour of ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... is, I grant you, an importunate neighbour. Every summer she takes up her station in hundreds before my door, attracted thither by the verdure of two great plane-trees; and there, from sunrise to sunset, she hammers on my brain with her strident symphony. With this deafening concert thought is impossible; the mind is in a whirl, is seized with vertigo, unable to concentrate itself. If I have not profited by the early morning hours the ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... of the earth Come with softest rustle; The shy, sweet feet of life; The silky mutter of moth-wings Against my restraining palm; The strident beat of insect-wings, The silvery trickle of water; Little breezes busy in the summer grass; The music of crisp, whisking, scurrying leaves, The swirling, wind-swept, frost-tinted leaves; The crystal splash of summer rain, Saturate with the odours ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... incarnation of tempting deceit, with Othello's generous nature a mere puppet in his hands. As Richard III., we should look to find him most effective in schemeful soliloquy and the phases of assumed virtue and affection, while perhaps less eminent than his father or Edmund Kean in that headlong, strident unrest, which hurried on their representations to the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... diverse, and some heated, comment on the situation. But above the general clamor rose the strident tones of Black Mart, alluding with manifest satisfaction to the fact that Baldy was certainly ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... character, physical fitness, quality of voice, personal bearing, self-command, executive ability, capacity for supervision, are qualities that are modified by conditions. The voice that is satisfactory in conference with an examiner may be strident and irritating when the teacher is impatient or is trying to overcome street noises. On parade applicants are equally cleanly; this cannot be said of teachers in the service, coming from different home environments. Self-command is much easier in one ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... plain, so green and smiling under the sun. A single red spot, a tear of light, trembled in this obscurity. It was Caldera's cabin, where the women, squatting upon the floor, around the kitchen lamp, sighed with fright, anticipating the strident shriek of the sick youth,—the chattering of his teeth, the violent contortions of his body whenever he was seized with convulsions, struggling to repel the arms that ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... suvverings that you have got in it, wrapped up in paper. See if she haven't, Mr. Newcome," the refractory waiting-woman cried out, and again she laughed a strident laugh. ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... ranks for a time to escape detection. But a sound greeted their ears at that moment, and knowing what it meant, they scampered downhill without waiting to hear more. It was a ringing British cheer followed by strident commands to "Fix bayonets and give the devils cold steel." Begun by Major Karri Davis, the order ran along from Imperial Light Horse to Carbineers, who had not a bayonet amongst them, for irregular mounted infantry in this ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... too, as far as their appearance and breeding went, but Althea found their manners very bad. They were not strident and they were not arrogant, but so much noisiness and so much innocent assurance might, to unsympathetic eyes, seem so. They were handsome girls, fresh-skinned, athletic, tall and slender. They wore beautifully simple white lawn dresses, and their shining fair ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... cries, accompanied by the strident clank of chains, produces upon me the effect of a galvanic battery, and I am obliged to put forth all that remains to me of moral strength to prevent myself from screaming and moaning like the others. With my feet in blood and my eyes burning with weeping, and the effect ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... now in strident cynicism. It was the laugh of the red, of bastardy, of blanketless nights in the hedgerows, and boot soles worn through to the macadam, with the dust of speeding automobiles blown in the gaunt face of hunger. Dellarme ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... busily scraping lengths of split bamboo as serenely as if she had been alone and no sort of row going on. Suddenly, however, she sprang to her feet, advanced on the police officer, gesticulated violently with her arms right in his face, and gave him, in strident tones, a piece of her mind. In the twinkling of an eye three-quarters of the officer's excitement had subsided; he tried to put in a word or two of mild protest but did not get a chance, and so ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... friend Tybee, with a little strident laugh, "'tis you I am to take out and hang, is it, Master Lawyer? I thought mayhap you'd double on your track once too often, and so it seems you have. Up ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... say that!" he cried, and his voice had a new and strident note. "I had nothing whatever ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... Oh, good God!"—and there was in his voice a note that was new to her. Sharp and strident with keenest anxiety, it set a sudden fire in her heart, for it was ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... Hutchinsons' was almost like a life on another planet. Margaret was the younger, somewhat delicate daughter of a family of rather strident academics. Professor Hutchinson was not dependent on his salary to defray the expenses of his elegant establishment, but on his father, who had inherited from his father in turn the substantial fortune on which the family ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... noisy degrees, to bed. So tremendous, indeed, was the tumult that he was able to open the door and stand, within the room, watching and un-noticed. Mrs. Tressiter was attempting to bathe a fat and very strident baby. Two small boys were standing on a bed and hitting one another with pillows; a little girl lay on her face on the floor and howled for no apparent reason; Robin, but little older than Peter's last impression of him had painted, ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... thee,—foecunda domum tibi prole gravabit, [5786]thou wilt not be able to bring them up, [5787]"and what greater misery can there be than to beget children, to whom thou canst leave no other inheritance but hunger and thirst?" [5788]cum fames dominatur, strident voces rogantium panem, penetrantes patris cor: what so grievous as to turn them up to the wide world, to shift for themselves? No plague like to want: and when thou hast good means, and art very careful of their education, they will not be ruled. Think but of that old proverb, [Greek: haeiroon ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... 16.—The WINSOME WINSTON, sauntering in from behind SPEAKER'S Chair when Questions had advanced some way, startled by strident cheer from Ministerialists and Irish Nationalists. Opposition angrily replied. FIRST LORD, faintly blushing, found anchorage on Treasury Bench. Unpremeditated outburst of enthusiasm meant as welcome back from ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 25, 1914 • Various
... in the day. Since morning he had been toiling through the Sahara of the city's noise: arid, senseless, inhospitable noise: roaring of wheels, clanging of bells, shrieking of whistles, clatter of machinery, squawking of horns, raucous and strident voices: confused, bewildering, exhausting noise, a desolate and unfriendly desert of ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... day. That day we heard the arrival of new-comers in the hall below. We saw not their hue, but we recognized their cry as that of our countrypeople. We are not madly enamoured of our countryman in foreign climes. There his least adorable qualities—his bumptiousness, his provincialism, his strident tones and "costume de Yank"—are always more strikingly conspicuous than the chivalry toward women and the self-respecting manliness we always recognize so emphatically in him when we return to our own land after a prolonged absence. Hence we panted not for the dinner-hour, that should show ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... of the shrill, weird cry, the animal stood at bay. Again came the well-known strident halloo. A maelstrom of memories was awakened by the call. Instinctively obeying the old summons she started toward the train, when from over the hill behind ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... moments the fatigue of the old dealer seemed to have disappeared. He was sitting up straight, with tremulous lips, with flashing eyes, and continued in a strangely strident voice,— ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... The strident vigour of the applause showed no diminution. And through the thick, heavy rain of it could be heard the monotonous, insistent ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... would give them all to you for one kiss. To him who has learned all secret knowledge, the mind alone is God and city and home and friends,—everything, everything save love," and his voice, harsh, and strident, sank to a whisper in which was compassed all the fierceness of ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... was trembling violently, went and sat in her high chair. The blubbering of the boy continued. The strident voice of Mr. Brunt, the roar of Mr. Harby, came muffled through the glass partition. And now and then a pair of eyes rose from the reading-book, rested on her a moment, watchful, as if ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... of here!" he said to me in a fierce undertone. "Wait outside and I will see you later!" Still, from the desk, resounded that harsh, strident voice, running on in an ascending scale, pouring forth ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... the deck and shook his two clinched fists at us, cursing the while in a high, cracked voice. He was a good-sized, powerful man, and as he stood poising himself with legs astride I could see that from the thigh downwards there was but a wooden stump upon the right side. At the sound of his strident, angry cries there was movement in the huddled bundle upon the deck. It straightened itself into a little black man—the smallest I have ever seen—with a great, misshapen head and a shock of tangled, dishevelled hair. Holmes had already ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of James, and they ceased. James one day could not help overhearing a conversation between the two. He was in the stable, and the kitchen windows were open. He heard only a few words. "You don't mean to say you are goin' to hev him?" said Emma in her strident voice. ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... walking, worn-out by grief and fear, he fell into a doze in his chair, for he was afraid of his bed, as one is of a haunted spot. But suddenly the strident cry of the preceding evening pierced his ears, so shrill that Ulrich stretched out his arms to repulse the ghost, and he fell on to his back ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... his ancestors, and something hereditary in him still answered to it. He never seemed to realize that it was attached to the clock for any special purpose, such as rousing him to the affairs of the day. To him it was music, inspiration, even solace. When its strident concatenation of sounds smote the morning air Lazarus would let it rave on interminably, probably hugging himself with the fierce joy of it, lulled by its final notes to a relapse of dreams. It did not on any occasion stimulate him to rise and dress. That was a more strenuous matter—one ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... metropolis, in striking contrast to the quiet and seclusion of the sick room in which he had lived for so many weeks, astonished him. The crowds of suburbanites rushing frantically for trains, elbowing and pushing in their anxiety to get home, the strident hoarse cries of newsboys, the warning shouts of wagon drivers as they drove recklessly here and there at murderous speed, the blowing of auto horns, the ceaseless hum and roar of the big city's heavy traffic—all this bewildered and dazed him. At first he did not remember ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... overhead. To my left the camp fires of the soldiers still remaining at Yellow Banks began to show red with flame through the shadows of intervening trees, and I could hear the noise of hammering, together with an occasional strident voice. Immediately about me all was silent, the steadily deepening gloom ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... appearance, a terror to new members. Woe to any who in his ignorance passed between the Chair and the member addressing it; who walked in from a division with his hat on; or who stood an inch or two within the Bar whilst debate was going forward. Mr. Biggar's strident cry of "Order! Order!" reverberated through the House. Others joined in the shout, and the abashed offender hastily ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... shudder; but, as he saw the peculiar way in which the old man's eyes were fixed upon his, a feeling of resentment arose within him, and his voice sounded strident and ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... bad misfortune lately. I should say that Dicky is an oldish man, who drifted into this ugly quarter some time ago, and took his place in the parlour, which is a room that I now prefer to the bar. I was holding a friendly discussion with a butcher when a strident voice said, "You are absolutely and irredeemably ignorant of the rudiments of your subject." I started. Where had I heard that voice before? The man was clad in an old shooting-jacket; his trousers were out at the knee, and his linen was very dirty; yet there ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... trees as they fell, the blows of crowbars on the stones, the confused roaring of thousands of voices, the Marseillaise sung in chorus, and the irregular cannonading which resounded from the direction of the Rue Saint-Denis, all composed a strident, stupefying, tempestuous harmony, beside which Beethoven's Tempest would have seemed like the buzzing of ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... seconds after that brief speech during which the room might have been empty, so profound was the silence. The hissing of a kettle upon the stove rose sharp and strident to the ear. Seven white faces, all turned upward to this man who dominated them, were set motionless with utter terror. Then, with a sudden shivering of glass, a bristle of glistening rifle barrels broke through each window, while the curtains ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... picture gallery where a long row of Kings and Queens, in their full-length portraits, stand like Banquo's descendants. The portraits begin with that of bluff King Hal, very bluff and strident. According to Mr. Hare's account, which he has taken from Holinshed, Henry VIII. got St. James's when it was an hospital for "fourteen maidens that were leprous," and having pensioned off the sisters, "reared a fine ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... forward, and I went straightway to the chairman who seized me by the back and held me aloft in his right hand, while a deafening roar of strident ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... in her garden where she sat beneath a tree. Around, the cicadas whirred in the speaking trees. Zig-zig-zig-zig. But they were no longer strident. They seemed but a vibration of the high atmosphere ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... and strolled back to where the voices of the contending men of science rose in a prolonged duet, the high, strident note of Summerlee rising and falling to the sonorous bass of Challenger. I should have thought no more of Lord John's remark were it not that once again that night I heard him mutter to himself: "Blue clay—clay in a volcanic tube!" They were the last words I heard before I dropped into ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and the energetic sense of loathing for the negro proved it. The music, loud and strident—an ordinary Italian piano-organ having been introduced amongst the Oriental instruments—banged on, and then abruptly came to a stop when the negro cracked his whip. The two African women resumed their chairs, there was some applause, and a good many small coins fell ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... Certainly nothing new! Winnington knew it all by heart—had read it dozens of times in their strident newspaper, which he now perused weekly, simply that he might discover if he could, what projects his ward ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... horse that grazed in the meadow. My life, for a whole month, was embittered by that roving mountain. Lying under the hedge, I could see his heavy feet disfiguring the ground. I breathed his vulgar odor and heard his strident cry shaking the air. Once when he was eating the lower twigs of the hedge, I saw myself—the whole of me—reflected in one of his eyes! I fled ... and from that day my hatred was so strong that I wildly hoped to annihilate the monster. I'll go up to him, thought I, I'll plant myself firmly in ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette
... the station-master in singularly strident tones. "It be a rare year for sweet peas," and then he slammed the door of the carriage in a leisurely manner and did dismissive things with his flag, while the two gentlemen took stock, as people ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... have been intangible hints of change in earth and air; the birds are silent, and the universal strident note of insect life makes more musical to memory the melodies of the earlier season. The sense of overflowing vitality which pervaded all things a few days ago, when the tide was at the flood, has gone; the tide has turned, and already one sees the receding ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... matter of discipline, concessions may be allowed, but in doctrine none.' Let us examine into this doctrine. It is the doctrine of Christ, plain and straightforward; enunciated in such simple words that even a child can understand them. But the Church announces with a strident voice that there can only be one interpreter,—the Pope. Nevertheless Truth has a more resonant voice than even that of the Church. Truth cries out at this present day, 'Unless you will listen to ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... the bouts went on; the band answered with harsh chords the death of the dogs one by one, and welcomed the collapse of the bear with a strident bellowing passage on the great horns and drums; and by the time it was over and the spectators rose to their feet, Anthony's hopes were lower than ever. Can there be any compassion left, he wondered, ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... heartily tired were we of so continuously serpentine a track; we therefore kept pushing on. We saw several natives to-day, but they invariably fled to the fastnesses of their mountain homes, they raised great volumes of smoke, and their strident vociferations caused a dull and buzzing sound even when out of ear-shot. The pattering of the rain-drops became heavier, yet we kept on, hoping at every turn to see an opening which would free us from our prison-house; but night and heavier rain together came, and we ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... PICTON prosed on,—the style in which men preach In a dissenting chapel. Prince ARTHUR twined one lank leg t'other round, Drooping a long chin like BURNE-JONES's ladies; And HARCOURT, sickening of the strident sound, Wished CONYBEARE in Hades. For over all there hung a cloud of fear, A sense of imminent doom the spirit daunted, And said, as plain as whisper in the ear, The House ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, May 21, 1892 • Various
... wanting. The Landlady's Daughter is the prima donna in the way of feminine attractions. I am not quite satisfied with this young lady. She wears more "jewelry," as certain young ladies call their trinkets, than I care to see on a person in her position. Her voice is strident, her laugh too much like a giggle, and she has that foolish way of dancing and bobbing like a quill-float with a "minnum" biting the hook below it, which one sees and weeps over sometimes in persons of more pretensions. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... guard along the north wall of the Puritan sanctuary. The windows were open. We could see the rhythmic motion of the fan-drill in the pews. The pulpit was not visible; but from that unseen eminence a strident, persistent voice flowed steadily, expounding the necessity and uses of "a baptism of fire," with a monotonous variety of application. Fire was needful for the young, for the middle-aged, for the old, ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... Dr. Thorne, his voice hoarse and strident with emotion; but Mac, absorbed in his text, still read, flinging a fine and subtile emotion of ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... moment when she was recounting, in a strident voice, the shortcomings of one of her ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... brightly woven fabrics were draped to catch the eye. As he wandered about viewing cactus syrup, sweet, brown panocha-candy, fruit, dried meat, blankets, saddles, Drew was again aware of the almost strident color of this country. He fingered appreciatively a horn goblet carved with intricate figures of gods his Anglo eyes did not recognize. The hum of voices, the bray of mules, the baa-ing and naa-ing of sheep and goats, kept up a ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... where gulped the mouth of Bonanza, cavernously wide and filled with the purple smoke of many fires. There was the golden valley, silent for centuries, now strident with human cries, vehement with human strife. There was the timbered basin of the Klondike bleakly rising to mountains eloquent of death. It was dominating, appalling, this vastness without end, this unappeasable ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... never a woman but Tressa Torrance to whom he could speak without a blush. And, looking into the clear eyes of Mrs. Mahon, he blushed a little now at memories of her predecessors in that infamous end-of-steel village—blond-haired, flashing eyed, bejewelled, strident voiced hussies who had worn out their ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... open cabinot in great ponderous murdering clouds. In one of these clouds, erect and tense and beautiful as an angel—her wildly shouting face framed in its huge night of dishevelled hair, her deep sexual voice, hoarsely strident above the din and smoke, shouting fiercely through the darkness—stood, triumphantly and colossally young, Celina. Facing her, its clenched, pinkish fists raised high above its savagely bristling head in a big, brutal gesture of impotence and rage ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... his ears forward toward the strident buzzing which once heard is never forgotten, and which is never heard without a tensing of nerves. He sighted the snake, coiled and ready for war in the small shade of a rabbit-bush. He circled the spot warily, his head turned sidewise, and his eyes fixed upon the flattened, ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... happened that Providence, in equipping the lady for her world-mending mission, had forgotten to give her a pleasant voice. Now if there was one thing in the world which made Snarley "madder" than anything else could do, it was the high-pitched, strident tones of a woman engaged in argument. The consequence was that his self-restraint broke down, and before the lady had said half the things she had meant to say, or come within sight of the splendid offer she was going to make on behalf of the Earl ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... They were clad in town clothes; jackets cut with clumsy smartness, hard black hats, immense boots, polished highly. Their women all in simple black, with white caps and shawls of faded tints folded triangularly on the back, strolled lightly by their side. In front the violin sang a strident tune, and the biniou snored and hummed, while the player capered solemnly, lifting high his heavy clogs. The sombre procession drifted in and out of the narrow lanes, through sunshine and through shade, between fields and hedgerows, scaring the little birds that darted away ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... turn crossed over in order to witness the removal of the ailing pilgrims. All that they could as yet see, far away in the depths of the black country, was the lantern in front of the engine, looking like a red star which grew larger and larger. Strident whistles pierced the night, then suddenly ceased, and you only heard the panting of the steam and the dull roar of the wheels gradually slackening their speed. Then the canticle became distinctly audible, the song of Bernadette with the ever-recurring ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... reminder to them that they had no time to spare, and an incentive to avoid dawdling on the way. The multitudinous insect-life of the forest was already awake and stirring, the hum and chirp of the myriad winged things causing the air fairly to vibrate with softly strident sound, to which was added the rolling chorus of innumerable frogs inhabiting the marshy low-lying patches contiguous to the river margin. Great gorgeously winged dragon-flies swept hither and thither; a few belated butterflies—some of which were so large and so magnificently marked as to excite ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... floor-space was a gallery. One fronted the pulpit, curving widely and arranged with pews for the accommodation of the professors and their families. Opposite this was the choir loft over the preacher's head, a smaller gallery containing the strident old-fashioned reed organ, and seats for the dozen or so who made up the college choir. Places in the choir were much sought after, for a student could stretch his legs and indulge in a comfortable yawn unmolested by the scrutiny of the proctors who ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... rain was now grown to be a deluge; the gutters of the house roared; the air was filled with the continuous, strident crash. The stolidity of his face, on which the rain streamed, was far from reassuring me. On the contrary, I was aware of a distinct qualm of apprehension, which was not at all lessened by a view of the driver, craning from his perch to observe us with the expression ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... loins, thou dost not sing the praises of Lenten follies; thou alone receivest the carnal supplications and petitions of poor and avaricious families. Thou determinest the mother to sell her daughter, to give her son; thou aidest sterile and reprobate loves; Guardian of strident Neuroses, Leaden Tower of Hysteria, bloody Vase ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... decimated by that deadly volley, turn wildly in headlong flight for the only side of the stockade apparently left open. But before these arises another mass of assailants, barring their way, then springing upon them spear in hand; and the fiendish war-whistle screeches its strident chorus, as the broad spears shear down through flesh and muscle; and the earth is slippery with blood, ghastly ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... in a high, almost strident voice, totally out of keeping with the sensuous curves of her strange, sweet face. But the question remained unanswered, for at that moment her attention, as well as that of the men lingering at the gate, ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... hand of Fate That strident voice of yours Shall hush to silence, soon or late That Justice that endures Will mobilise its mighty ranks and free the human race, Then shall all Space, Yea, all the chains of sphere on sphere, With that loud hymn be ringing, Which Time goes singing His far flight winging And all ...
— Hello, Boys! • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... out in a strident voice, raising his arm aloft, "I may say, with one foot on sea and one on land, for I hold the elemental secret of them both. And I swear by the living god—Science incarnate—that the suffering of the centuries is over, that for this ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... lips. This theme does not enter into their program. Suddenly a strident voice speaks out of ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... Governor Lincoln, who had long retired, happened to be mentioned. The old fellow brought the point of his staff down with great emphasis upon the floor, and then held it loosely with the fingers of his trembling and shaking hand, and said, very earnestly, but with a shrill and strident voice like that of one of Homer's ghosts: "They say, sir, that that Mr. Lincoln has got to be a very respectable man. But I can remember, sir, when ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... the conclusion of the cantankerous little Highlander's speech was beyond all words, but before the chairman could get to his feet, through the uproar a voice strident with passion was demanding a hearing. "Mr. Ernest Switzer has the ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... for a more thorough cultivation of the speaking voice. It is astonishing how few persons give specific attention to this important subject. On all sides we are subjected to voices that are disagreeable and strident. It is the exception to hear a voice ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... Speech.—The champions of free silver replied in strident tones. They accused the gold advocates of being the aggressors who had assailed the labor and the homes of the people. William Jennings Bryan, of Nebraska, voiced their sentiments in a memorable oration. He declared that their cause "was ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... express, looking out on the undulating, green acres of Leicestershire. And while his train was making a three minutes' stop at Leicester itself, the purpose of his journey was suddenly recalled to him by hearing the strident voices of the ...
— The Paradise Mystery • J. S. Fletcher
... a roar of ironic mirth broke from his lips, resounding high above the strident rasping of the beetle-legs, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... hum of city cabs that sought the Bois, Suburban ashes shivered into song. A patter and a chatter and a chirp And a long dying hiss—it was as though Starched old brocaded dames through all the house Had trailed a strident skirt, or the whole sky Even in a wink had over-brimmed in rain. Hark, in these shady parlours, how it talks Of the near Autumn, how the smitten ash Trembles and augurs floods! O not too long In these inconstant latitudes delay, O not too late from the unbeloved north Trim ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the strident voice of Blackrock, who, jerking himself back several years into youth again, was umpiring the game with great joy. Nonchalantly Sam snapped the ball back over-hand. Princeman smiled with calm superiority. He wound ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... at the curb. As it moved off like a boat on a labyrinthine ocean and lost itself among the inchoate night masses of the great buildings, among the now stilled, now strident, cries and clangings, Anthony put his arm around the girl, drew her over to him and kissed her ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... Martha Foote was a beaming, motherly person who called you dearie. Neither was she one of those managerial and magnificent blonde beings occasionally encountered in hotel corridors, engaged in addressing strident remarks to a damp and crawling huddle of calico that is doing something sloppy to the woodwork. Perhaps the shortest cut to Martha Foote's character is through Martha Foote's bedroom. (Twelfth floor. Turn to your left. That's ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... Drowsiness stole upon his senses. He enjoyed it, but keeping a hold, so he thought at least, on his wits; but he must have been gone further than he thought because he was startled beyond measure by a fiendish uproar. He had never heard anything so pitilessly strident in his life. The witches had started a fierce quarrel about something or other. Whatever its origin they were now only abusing each other violently, without arguments; their senile screams expressed nothing but ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... him over to paint your Matabel; and here he has been, admiring her, saying soft things to her, and turnin' her head. Sometimes you've been present. Most times you've been away. And now you've sent her to the Ship, and you are off stag huntin'." Then with strident voice, the woman sang, and looked ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... I am unkind" (As Colonel LOVELACE said) if I From festal scenes for you designed To solitude propose to fly; If, when the strident trumpets blare From Hampstead Heath to Clapham Junction, And bunting fills the ardent air, I don't assist ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 4, 1919. • Various
... another, and he had seized that opportunity to examine him attentively in detail with the keenest curiosity, as though he hoped to obtain some revelation, to draw some secret from him. He could still hear the man's voice—a voice of very peculiar tone, somewhat harsh and strident, with an interrogative inflection at the end of each sentence. Again he saw those pale, pale eyes under the great prominent forehead, eyes that at times assumed a hideous, glassy, dead look, and at others lit up with an indefinable ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... "protest," although at that moment he had the written one in his pocket. After a moment's struggle to remember what he wished to say, he found himself hopelessly befogged, and abandoned the attempt. Then, to the amazement of all who heard him, he burst out into a loud, strident peal of unmeaning, maniacal laughter—laughter which had no spice of merriment in it, and which was a mere spontaneous effort of nature to relieve the strain upon the shattered nerves. Bench, bar, jury ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... pride of race will grow and increase in the Bantu as it has done in the Negroes in the Southern States of America, and elsewhere. General education, so far from hindering the growth of nationalism and racialism seems in some sort to subserve and foster that growth; witness the strident self-assertion of the newly-constituted little nations in Europe, and the cult of "Nationalism" in South Africa to-day. It is natural for birds of feather to flock together and screech together, and in the same way throughout mankind particular groups of people tend naturally to keep together ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... guess freedom 's better 'n befo' d' wah?" hazarded one of his tormentors, a hatchet-faced, yellow stable-boy with a loud, sharp voice. He burst into a strident guffaw. ...
— Bred In The Bone - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... of humanity, it would not be advisable to recommend a poem like The Listeners, where the people are ghosts and the sounds only echoes. Yet there are times when it would seem that every one must weary of strident voices, of persons shouting to attract attention, of poets who capitalize both their moral and literary vices, of hawking advertisers of the latest verse-novelties; then a poem like The Listeners reminds us of Lindsay's bird, whose simple ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... with Ethelwynn, and she entirely agreed with me. I had not the slightest desire to have a consulting-room of my own in Harley Street. All I longed for was a life in open air and rural tranquillity; a life far from the tinkle of the cab-bell and the milkman's strident cry; a life of ease and bliss, with my well-beloved ever at my side. The unfortunate man compelled to live in London is deprived of half of ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... clock crept on and she kept hushing the strident tones of Elijah and Elisha, opening and shutting the oven door to look at the corn bread, advising Susan as to her dishes, and marveling that the minister ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... far from her now, that old breeding ground of great, incisive sons, that nest of passions so strong that only a grip of granite—like her sea line—could master them (do you fancy, O languorous, faded South, do you bellow, O strident, bustling West, that because she neither sighed them nor trumpeted them, she had no passions? Allez, allez!) but I can close my eyes at any moment and smell the challenge of her Atlantic winds here on the Mediterranean or feel the heady languor of her miraculous ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... then one by one, with the unexpectedness of a flight of glow-worms, sparkled the serried ranks of the hotels. Out they flashed, breaking up the mystery, defying the mountains, as insistent and strident as life. ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... made a very pleasant dream. In fact, I was just impressing a fervent kiss on the charming lips of the princess, when I heard (and the voice seemed at first a part of the dream) someone exclaim, in rough strident tones. ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... will make the tone clearer will also make it more agreeable. The nasal pessimistic whine is not a pleasant recommendation of personality. High, forced, strident tones produce not only irritation in the listener but throat trouble ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... sharply in his low, strident voice, "what's that bay there? Too weak for the work—no good. You want better stuff than that. An axle yonder not packed properly! . . . And look at that black pony—came out of a governess-cart, I should think! . . . Hey, you man there, you don't ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... forward; but his face was not cherubic now. His blue eyes blazed with emotion much in keeping with his sobriquet; and, raising his hand, the nervously crooking fingers of which made it almost a fist, he said, in a voice explosively strident: ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... ten. To where she stood came the strident sounds of the mechanical piano-player, for some of the gay party were waltzing in the hall. Their merry shouts and laughter were discordant to her ears. What cared any of those friends of her step-mother if she were in ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... could no longer distinguish any sign of a trail; but the breed bent steadily ahead. Once or twice an owl whirred suddenly low over their heads; and somewhere far off a loon guffawed insanely. In the end their guide, to cheer his own soul, lifted up his voice in the strident, unearthly chant of the Crees; and it only needed this to add the last touch of unreality to their eerie journey. They began to feel like spirits after death, hurried in the darkness they knew ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... over the earth; whilst spectres and goblins now stood motionless, and tall as lofty palm trees; then, as if in fits, leaped, danced, and tumbled before their evocator. The air was filled with shrill and strident cries, with the fitful moaning of the storm-wind, with the hooting of the owl, with the jackal's long wild cry, and with the hoarse gurgling of the swollen river, from whose banks the earth-slip ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... to be met with in life, but none that is much harder upon the nerves than a mannish woman. With a strident voice and a swaggering walk, and a clattering tongue, she takes her course through the world like a cat-bird through an orchard; the thrushes and the robins are driven right and left before the advance of the noisy nuisance. A coarse-tongued man is bad ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... the beneficial characteristics of the Tibia class of stop already detailed. If only by reason of the faculty so largely exercised, of thus mollifying and enriching the upper notes of other stops—which too often prove hard and strident in tone—the Tibia Minor deserves recognition as one of the most valuable of ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... Washington till near the end of the month, then he seemed for a while in doubt, or to be upon both sides of the question as to whether the army should be advanced or withdrawn; but ultimately, in the contemptuous language of Mr. Swinton, he "added his strident voice in favor of the withdrawal of the army from the Peninsula." This settled the matter; for the President had decided to place himself under the guidance of his new military mentor; and, moreover, his endurance was ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... Ranger toward the main street of the town. From round a corner there came to them a strident voice. ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... the noisy city street, I listened to the newsboys' strident cries Of "Extra," as with flying feet, They strove to gain this man or that-their prize. But one there was with neither shout nor stride, And, having bought from him, I stood nearby, Pondering the cruel crutches at his side, Blaming the ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE
... some bound for the neighboring glaciers and cascades, and others preparing for more distant and more hardy enterprises. It was a perfect Babel of voices—French, Scotch, German, Italian, and English; with notes of every sort of patois—above which the strident bass of the mules soared triumphantly at intervals. There are not many busier spots than Chamouni at early morning in the height of ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... there had been set a big armchair upholstered in blue tapestry. In it sat a tall, fair-haired, curly-headed lad, with merry blue eyes. He wore a robe of pale green, the green of young onion tops. Against that green the red of Brinnaria's gown showed strident and glary, for Brinnaria was sitting on his lap. His arms were round her waist, hers about his neck. She was slowly swinging her blue-shod feet rhythmically and was kissing the lad audibly and repeatedly. ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... raised his voice suddenly to a strident shout, "hear me all you within the house. Give up the girl and the child to their legal protectors, and no harm shall befall either life or property. We shall be on shipboard in half-an-hour. I shall see to it that every man within the castle is rewarded from the Maitland money that ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... hidden in shrubbery, is of weather-stained stucco, and looks at first sight a little gloomy, with the patina of time upon it. But it is a restful change from the spick-and-spanness of the near-by millionaire colony, so eloquent of the paint-brush and the lawn-valet's shears, so smug and new and strident in its paraded opulence. Peter's gardens, in fact, are a rather careless riot of color and line, a sort of achieved genteel roughness, like certain phases of his house, as though the wave of refinement driven too high had broken and ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... colonial possessions "became pawns in the game."* (* The phrase is Professor Egerton's, Cambridge Modern History 9 735.) There was no Imperialism then, with its strident note, its ebullient fervour and flag waving. There was no national sense of pride in colonial Empire, or general appreciation of the great potentialities of oversea possessions. "The final outcome of the great war ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... Casiana the boarding-house keeper, idyllic silence had reigned for some time. Only through the balcony windows, which were wide open, came the distant rumbling of carriages and the song of a neighbouring cricket who scratched with disagreeable persistency upon the strident string of his instrument. ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... charms on part of the women, and of her mental gifts on part of the men. Mr. Lambert had commended her to the care of Mrs. Burton. Her board was paid in advance and no questions asked. She went to church and sang softly, but in a voice so exquisitely sweet and penetrating that it tempered the strident melodies of the devout Omahannas, and caused many a head to turn. She spent the first few days at the rector's, or in her room. Then came a roomer with the rumor that she had a follower, and for two evenings ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... that wretched men must toil for bread; The tragedy of life he has not read, Or deems it but the comedy of fear: He never lifts his eyes above the ground To gaze upon the glittering world of stars; The poet's richest music only mars The rasping of the locust's strident sound. And yet I've never seen a wilder light Glow in the beauteous eyes of dawning love, Than flashes from this strange man's soul at sight Of some rare flower he finds in mountain cove: Mere fungus, or the poisonous, dank mushroom, Enchants him ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe
... interests, fascinates me. Wordsworth is the only simple-minded man I ever loved, if that great austere mind, chill even as the Cumberland year, can be called simple. But Hugo is not perverse, nor even personal. Reading him was like being in church with a strident-voiced preacher shouting from out of a terribly sonorous pulpit. "Les Orientales...." An East of painted cardboard, tin daggers, and a military band playing the Turkish patrol in the Palais Royal.... The verse is grand, noble, tremendous; I liked it, ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... these cries, accompanied by the strident clank of chains, produces upon me the effect of a galvanic battery, and I am obliged to put forth all that remains to me of moral strength to prevent myself from screaming and moaning like the others. With my feet in blood and ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... breathless they could hear the rustle of the leaves in the almost motionless air, while the strains of gay music floating from the open windows sounded loud and strident. ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... literature was acridly republican in tone and of a levelling tendency. Thus, for the first time since the brief attempt of the Cromwellian Levellers, the rich and the poor began to group themselves in hostile camps, at the strident tones of Paine's cry for a graduated Income Tax. Is it surprising that the sight of the free institutions of France and of the forced economy of the Court of the Tuileries should lead our workers to question the utility of the State-paid debaucheries ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... idle arms. They were clad in town clothes; jackets cut with clumsy smartness, hard black hats, immense boots, polished highly. Their women all in simple black, with white caps and shawls of faded tints folded triangularly on the back, strolled lightly by their side. In front the violin sang a strident tune, and the biniou snored and hummed, while the player capered solemnly, lifting high his heavy clogs. The sombre procession drifted in and out of the narrow lanes, through sunshine and through shade, between fields and hedgerows, scaring the little birds that darted away in troops right and ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... visibly, looked at him, and shrank two steps away; but she answered, in a voice which I could hardly recognise as hers, it was so high and strident; "I should call it a ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... of a loud high pitched, strident voice floated into the room through the open window. Gay, whose eyes had never shifted from the girl outside, saw her cheeks suddenly blanch. She looked round hurriedly like a frightened rabbit seeking a way ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... was strident, her hands clasped and unclasped. Then, as if a string had been loosened, she sank back in ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... you?" he exclaimed in a shrill and strident voice, for it acquires that quality when he is angry or alarmed, "and what are you ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... Montgomery was a quiet, sleepy old town, and had expected to go immediately to bed on our arrival. What then was our amazement at hearing, echoing through the wide street in front of the hotel, the sound of strident ragtime. Investigation disclosed a gaudily striped tent of considerable size set up in the street and illuminated by those flaring naphtha lamps they use in circuses. Going over to the tent, we learned that there was dancing within, whereupon we paid our fifteen cents apiece ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... maples that stood guard along the north wall of the Puritan sanctuary. The windows were open. We could see the rhythmic motion of the fan-drill in the pews. The pulpit was not visible; but from that unseen eminence a strident, persistent voice flowed steadily, expounding the necessity and uses of "a baptism of fire," with a monotonous variety of application. Fire was needful for the young, for the middle-aged, for the old, and for those, if any, who occupied the intermediate positions. It was needful for the ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... and tremble of the steamer's engines, above the surge and gurgle of the sea, a cry swept toward them from the shore. Long-drawn, sweetly-penetrating, yet with some strident accent of power and command, this voice of Earth rushed upon them over the quiet water—then died away again among the mountains and the night. Its passage through the sky was torrential. The whole pouring flood ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... God!"—and there was in his voice a note that was new to her. Sharp and strident with keenest anxiety, it set a sudden fire in her heart, for it ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... encounter all the types of men which go to make up Indian country life—the red-slippered banker jogging on his pony beneath a white umbrella, the vendor of palm-wine urging a donkey almost lost beneath the swollen skins, barefooted ryots with silent feet and strident tongues, crowds of boys and children driving buffaloes and cows, all coming homeward from their labour ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... as it went. The cocher, a torpid, purplish lump of gross flesh, pyramidal, pearlike, sat immobile in his place. The protuberant back gave him an extraordinary effect of being buttoned into his fawn-colored coat wrong side before. At intervals he jerked the reins like a large strange toy, and his strident voice said: ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... charmante!" cried the actress, with an inflection of irony in her strident voice. "Miladi, il faut absolument que nous nous connaissions. Je connais votre chere mere depuis si longtemps! A Paris, l'hiver passe c'etait une amitie ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... her another disdainful glance and darted off into the thick of the crowd. A moment later Pollyanna heard his strident call of ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... the way quietly, and she reached the front door without incident, but when she felt for the great bar whose strident clanging in its bracket had been a last signal of night within the house, her hand encountered nothing. Wonderingly she slid her fingers up and down the polished oak. At last she realized that the bar hung loose; the door was ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... interested, and the energetic sense of loathing for the negro proved it. The music, loud and strident—an ordinary Italian piano-organ having been introduced amongst the Oriental instruments—banged on, and then abruptly came to a stop when the negro cracked his whip. The two African women resumed their chairs, there was some applause, and a good many small coins fell on the stage from the hands ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... this peroration, which had been delivered with an accompaniment of violent gesture and a wealth of obscene epithets, quite beyond the power of the mere chronicler to render. Lenoir had a harsh, strident voice, very high pitched, and he spoke with a broad, provincial accent, somewhat difficult to locate, but quite unlike the hoarse, guttural tones of the low-class Parisian. His enthusiasm made him seem impressive. He looked, in his ragged, dust-stained clothes, the very personification ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Henley's verse is imperialistic, over-muscular and strident, his noisy moments are redeemed not only by his delicate lyrics but by his passionate enthusiasm for nobility in whatever cause it was joined. He never disdained the actual world in any of its moods—bus-drivers, ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... she was one of those who hold themselves erect and firm, however much old age may try to bend them. She had a sweet face and soft white hair. She looked so mild and gentle that it was surprising to hear her speak with a voice that was as strident and solemn as ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... off, the silence which came in their place was startling to the sense. The voices of the striking employees, who retained possession of the Union Passenger Depot, resounded strangely through the vast building, which was usually a babel of shrill and strident sounds. ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... the children were marched through the squalid streets, a strident band, to the dingy railway station, a grimy proletariat third-class railway station in which the sign "First Class Waiting Room" glared an outrage and a mockery, and were marshalled into the waiting train. The wonderful experience of which Paul had dreamed ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... everything, rises day and night from the whole country the song of the cicalas, ceaseless, strident, and insistent. It is everywhere, and never-ending, at no matter what hour of the burning day, or what hour of the refreshing night. From the harbor, as we approached our anchorage, we had heard it at the same time from both shores, from both walls of green ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... a sudden fresh shouting from the large crowd that still lingered outside the palace. I ran to the window, and saw a commotion in the midst of them. I flung the sash up. Then I heard a well-known, loud, strident voice: "Make way, ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... silent as the one in which we stood. This last fact struck us as the most incomprehensible of all. Mrs. Lansing was not the woman to sleep through a disturbance. Where was she, then? And why did we not hear her strident and aggressive tones rising in angry remonstrance at our intrusion? Had she followed her niece from the room? Should we in another minute encounter her ponderous figure in the group of people we could now hear ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... a strident voice shouting the evening papers in the street outside. Indeed, even while she spoke to Nelly, half her brain was listening in a strained way to that voice as it came nearer. What was it the creature was shouting? Before ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... is aware now of a shrill, insistent, strident sound. It drills into his soul; it will not be quiet; it will not let him be. Bing! His body, catching up from behind, drops about him again—and then he knows. It is Dolly; Dolly screaming, poor little ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... whips we started, and it was with satisfaction that I heard the trampling of hoofs bite into the sod and the bright steel edges rip through the matted roots. Soft earth and tangled grasses filled the iron scoop behind, the air vibrated with the strident clang of rails, and the locomotive engineer performed an inspiriting solo upon his whistle, while the rest of our party followed to finish the wake we left with their shovels. Somewhat improved appliances are ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... the turmoil of waters and wind along {24} the wave-lashed rocks came the hoarse, shrill, strident cry of the sea-lion, the boom and snort of the great walrus, the roar of the seal rookeries, where millions of cubs wallowed, and where bulls lashed themselves in their rage and fought for mastery of the herd. By November, Waxel alone was holding the vessel ...
— Pioneers of the Pacific Coast - A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters • Agnes C. Laut
... pointed head that swings and rolls its yoke of slender plumage! Ah! Eros, is it possible that you do not perceive that it is a symbol of my peacock, my bird translated into the language of this narrow and suppressed existence of ours? What a strange and exquisite messenger! My poor peacock, with a strident shriek of terror, fled from me on that awful morning, the flames singeing its dishevelled train, its wings helplessly flapping in the torrents of conflagration. It bade me no adieu, its clangour of despair rang forth, an additional note of discord, from the ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... to knock when the locomotive's whistle emits its strident crow, as we pass through a station. But the train is not going to stop, I know, and I wait ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... timidly in their turn at Maximilian, and each finding a hand stretched forth, grasped it silently. But the priests of the condemned, who were waiting apart, felt their blood turn to icy beads. For them the quick metallic gust of strident life down in the street had the merciless quality of hammering ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... miles. She had made good her course, she had run her distance till the punctual islets began to emerge one by one, the points of rocks, the hummocks of earth . . . and the cloud of birds hovered—the restless cloud emitting a strident and cruel uproar, the sound of the familiar scene, the living part of the broken land beneath, of the outspread sea, and of the high ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... noiseless little noises of the earth Come with softest rustle; The shy, sweet feet of life; The silky mutter of moth-wings Against my restraining palm; The strident beat of insect-wings, The silvery trickle of water; Little breezes busy in the summer grass; The music of crisp, whisking, scurrying leaves, The swirling, wind-swept, frost-tinted leaves; The crystal splash of summer rain, Saturate with the ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... a coarse prettiness, laughed a mocking strident laugh that expressed the feelings of the crowd even more than the louder curses around her. The workers slowly dispersed, in little groups, talking in excited, angry tones. Dale Lynch detached himself from one of these groups and walked on alone, a frown darkening his face; nor ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... where they could get a good view of the lugger swinging by a rope abreast of the starboard gangway, and as they passed along the quarter-deck, the shrill strident tones of the American's voice reached them through one of the open cabin skylights, while directly after, Murray, keen and observant of everything, noted that the two marines of whom his companion had spoken were standing apparently simply on duty, but thoroughly upon the alert and ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... scarlet card-case, and as slowly produced a very large card. Even in the instant of its production, they fancied it was of a queer shape, unlike the cards of ordinary gentlemen. But it was there only for an instant; for as it passed from his fingers to Arthur's, one or another slipped his hold. The strident, tearing gale in that garden carried away the stranger's card to join the wild waste paper of the universe; and that great western wind shook the whole house ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... play go on. There were some really clever stunts done that called for loud cheers on the part of the small crowd present. O. K. added his strident ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... Ethelwynn, and she entirely agreed with me. I had not the slightest desire to have a consulting-room of my own in Harley Street. All I longed for was a life in open air and rural tranquillity; a life far from the tinkle of the cab-bell and the milkman's strident cry; a life of ease and bliss, with my well-beloved ever at my side. The unfortunate man compelled to live in London is deprived of half of God's ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... But one more pale, more pensive, most beloved of you all. I seek her from afar, I come from temples where her altars are, From groves that bear her name, Noisy with stricken victims now and sacrificial flame, And cymbals struck on high and strident faces Obstreperous in her praise They neither love nor know, A goddess of gone days, Departed long ago, Abandoning the invaded shrines and fanes Of her old sanctuary, A deity obscure and legendary, Of whom there now remains, For sages ...
— Second April • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... from wall to wall across the end of the room where stood the seven seemed to be charged with red hot needles. Suddenly these ceased to leap and jump and burn; the old rug and the hidden wires under it were again quiescent. But the strident voices of the afflicted prisoners were not silenced, though the late lamentings were given over to a medley of condemnations, ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple
... to face, I think perhaps we would all be better off for no knowledge of that subjective war. Man has too much to do to lift himself out of the still clinging primordial slough to dally with subjectiveness. We should be acting, aggressive, strident in the strength of the ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... he was accustomed, and faute de mieux, Lord Alvanley invented a remedy. At his own expense, he engaged a hackney coachman who undertook to rattle his vehicle up and down past King Allen's lodgings till the early dawn, and another man who agreed to shout the hours throughout the night in the strident tones of a London watchman. The ruse was successful. Whether other persons living in the neighbourhood were equally pleased, history does not relate, but the melancholy dandy, deluded into a belief that he was back once more in his favourite haunts, slumbered peacefully, and was in ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... as sometimes overheard in the cars, arising from a group of young persons, who may have taken the train at one of our great industrial centres, for instance,—young persons of the female sex, we will say, who have bustled in full-dressed, engaged in loud strident speech, and who, after free discussion, have fixed on two or more double seats, which having secured, they proceed to eat apples and hand round daguerreotypes,—I say, I think the conversational soprano, heard under these circumstances, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... they don't care whether it is true or not true. All they want is the privilege of howling out that their correspondent rescued you, and they would take that privilege without in any ways worrying if I refused my consent. You see, sir? I wouldn't like you to feel that I was such a strident idiot as I doubtless am appearing now ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... God from the souls of drowning men, and was not less acceptable than the song of songs no mortal ear may hear, the harps of the seraphs and the choiring cherubim. Under the sea the music-makers lie, still in their fingers clutching the broken and battered means of melody; but over the strident voice of warring winds and the sound of many waters there rises their chant eternally; and though the musicians lie hushed and cold at the sea's heart, ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... awaiting her permission to enter. She gave it through Noie; and, the horn wand in her hand, seated herself upon a carved stool in front of the great hut. Presently an altercation arose upon the further side of the reed fence in which she recognised Ishmael's strident voice, mingled with the deeper tones of the Zulus, who seemed ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... voice hoarse and strident with emotion; but Mac, absorbed in his text, still read, flinging a fine and subtile emotion of ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... could hardly, even by courtesy, be called musical; in fact, it was harsh and strident; but this evening the hills, and the trees, and the wide open spaces, Nature's mighty modulator, subdued the harshness, so that the voice rolled up to the people clear, full, and sonorous. Nor was the preacher possessed of great learning nor endued with the gift of eloquence. ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... ever since. I can't make it out. Spring has come again and I'm nearly sixteen and go to the tracks mornings same as always, and I see Sunstreak and Middlestride and a new colt named Strident I'll bet will lay them all out, but no one thinks so but me and two ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson
... that all the notes of these most engaging birds, symbolic of light in plumage and in flight, are shrill and strident. When they feed—and they seem always to be feeding or carrying food—their chatter is perpetual and varied in tone. Occasionally a male bird sets himself to beguile the time with song. Then his flame-red eyes flash ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... of the attributes with which she endowed it. A few were conventional enough, but they served only to accentuate others that were too hastily selected in the heat of this crisis. Enough to say that the lady overbore by sheer mass of tone production the strident soprano of Lew Wee, controlling it at length to a lucid disclosure of ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... avoid dawdling on the way. The multitudinous insect-life of the forest was already awake and stirring, the hum and chirp of the myriad winged things causing the air fairly to vibrate with softly strident sound, to which was added the rolling chorus of innumerable frogs inhabiting the marshy low-lying patches contiguous to the river margin. Great gorgeously winged dragon-flies swept hither and thither; ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... should say that Dicky is an oldish man, who drifted into this ugly quarter some time ago, and took his place in the parlour, which is a room that I now prefer to the bar. I was holding a friendly discussion with a butcher when a strident voice said, "You are absolutely and irredeemably ignorant of the rudiments of your subject." I started. Where had I heard that voice before? The man was clad in an old shooting-jacket; his trousers were out at the knee, and his linen was very dirty; yet there was a something about him—a ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... voices arose; an attempt at drunken ribaldry, strident hisses, 'Sh! Sh!' Cries of 'Shame.' 'Chuck it!' Then again, McKeith's voice, this time like thunder. 'Stop that I say—one more word and out you go, whether you like it ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... banged. Before its strident vibrations had ceased troubling the thin morning air, the train began to move slowly out of Kerb. Pobloff ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... of darker blue; so bright were they that the colonel, looking around for the moon, was surprised to find that luminary invisible. On the green background of the foliage the fireflies glowed and flickered. There was no strident steam whistle from factory or train to assault the ear, no rumble of passing cabs or street cars. Far away, in some distant part of the straggling town, a sweet-toned bell sounded the hour of an evening ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... and, with no "perhaps" at all, some strident voices will pronounce that offer the finest boon ever conferred upon the youth of a nation. Then, if there is any manliness or fibre left in the adherents of freedom, they will answer that we adopted Conscription for a definite object, and, when once that object is attained, ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... concerned in a social wrong, in pursuits and interests of their own which shut out all outlook beyond. In our day we hear much about the crowding rush of material interests, but that crowd and rush was felt almost as much in the earlier generations, when hardly less than the most strident tones of the agitator could pierce the absorption of the street and market-place. There was the inertia of custom; there were the commercial interests closely interwoven of the Southern planter and the Northern manufacturer; there was the ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... Minkiewicz became strident as he repeated his old story. Some of the clients of The Fallen Angels stopped talking for a moment; it was only that crazy Pole again with ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... thus in the Song of Death all human life and its developments, recalling the sufferings of the cradle, swelling to the griefs of other ages in the stronger male voices and the quavering of the priests,—all this strident harmony, big with lightning and thunderbolts, does it not speak with equal force to the daring imagination, the coldest heart, nay, to philosophers themselves? As we hear it, we think God speaks; the vaulted arches of ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... rooms upon which the plate-glass windows looked, virtually no business, in the vulgar form of buying and selling, was carried on in the vestry, in the classroom or in the book-lined study. Many modern and entirely worthy businesses are conducted under the strident banner of "Cash Only." Fortune, East and Sabre's did not know the word cash. One would as soon look for or expect a till, to say nothing of one of those terrific machines known as cash registers, in the vestry, the classroom or the ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... culture; every syllable, every lapse of his rude dialect, was as distinct as if he had been taught to speak in this way; his tones were low and even, and modulated to suave cadences; the ear experienced a sense of relief after the loud, strident voice of the miller, poignantly penetrating ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... puppet in his hands. As Richard III., we should look to find him most effective in schemeful soliloquy and the phases of assumed virtue and affection, while perhaps less eminent than his father or Edmund Kean in that headlong, strident unrest, which hurried on their representations to the fury or ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... giant, the other rolling in billows of fat—and his "nieces," the crowds thronging the landing-place and streets greeted the "menagerie" with jeers and shouts of laughter. They nicknamed Schulenburg the "Maypole," and Kielmansegg the "Elephant," and pursued the cavalcade with strident mockeries and insults. ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... city street, I listened to the newsboys' strident cries Of "Extra," as with flying feet, They strove to gain this man or that-their prize. But one there was with neither shout nor stride, And, having bought from him, I stood nearby, Pondering the cruel crutches at his side, Blaming the ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE
... impossible to exaggerate the horrors of the last day of the doomed city. The rumbling of the earth beneath; the dense obscurity and murky shadow of the heaven above; the long, heavy roll of the convulsed sea; the strident noise of the vapors and gases escaping from the mountain-crater; the shifting electric lights, crimson, emerald green, lurid yellow, azure, blood red, which at intervals relieved the blackness, only to make it ghastlier than before; the ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... fatigue of the old dealer seemed to have disappeared. He was sitting up straight, with tremulous lips, with flashing eyes, and continued in a strangely strident voice,— ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... few days Plooie reappeared and his strident falsetto appeal for trade rang shrill in the space of Our Square. Trouble developed at once. Small boys booed at him, called him "yellow," and advised him to go carefully, there was a German behind the next tree. Henri Dumain, our little old French David who fought the tragic duel ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... last sentence, I heard the strident rain drawing near across the forest, and by the time I was come to the word "cream" it burst upon my roof, and has since redoubled, and roared upon it. A very welcome change. All smells of the good wet earth, sweetly, with a kind of Highland touch; the crystal rods of the shower, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not forget that the House was the jury in this case, and capable of human emotions upon which he might play. At times he became declamatory beyond the point of good taste. In voice and manner he betrayed the school in which he had been trained. "When I hear gentlemen," he cried in strident tones, "attempting to justify this unrighteous fine upon General Jackson upon the ground of non-compliance with rules of court and mere formalities, I must confess that I cannot appreciate the force of the argument. In cases of war and desolation, in times of peril and disaster, ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... surrounding Babel of speech in mingled Spanish, Dutch, German, English, Italian, and French, all at the highest pitch, for a few rods away the cathedral bells were saluting Heaven with all the clangor and din of the other place, and only the strident of voice gained any heed in that contest. Even after the bells paused, the habit of effort kept the voices up. Miss Brewster, dining with her father a few hours after her return from the mountain, absolved her conscience from any intent of ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... for a while that unknown noise increased A rattling, that with strident roars did blend, And whining moans; but suddenly it ceased, A fearful thing stood at the cloister's end, And eyed him for a while, then 'gan to wend Adown the cloisters, and began again That rattling, and the moan ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... for a moment or two; then the strident voice of the Mate rang out, "Boy! Boy! Where the hell have you got to now? Lay aft ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... travel, however, people are more interesting than land, and so it was at this time. As twilight shut down upon the valley of the Kennebeckasis, we heard the strident voice of pa going on with the Grecian catechism. Pa was unmoved by the beauties of Sussex or by the colors of the sunset, which for the moment made picturesque the scraggy evergreens on the horizon. His eyes were with his heart, and that was in Sparta. Above ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... sitting on some straw in the bottom of an open baggage-waggon. It rained miraculously; and from that moment till on the following night I left New York, there was scarcely a lull, and no cessation of the downpour. The roadways were flooded; a loud strident noise of falling water filled the air; the restaurants smelt heavily of wet people and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... said he, and strolled back to where the voices of the contending men of science rose in a prolonged duet, the high, strident note of Summerlee rising and falling to the sonorous bass of Challenger. I should have thought no more of Lord John's remark were it not that once again that night I heard him mutter to himself: "Blue clay—clay in a volcanic ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... will find the involuntary pleasurable thrill at a strong man's chivalrous attention, the delicious sense of a man's care and protection, which centuries and centuries of physical weakness have woven into the very tissues of her being, in however loud and strident a voice she may deny it. Whatever changes in the position of women may take place, the basic fact remains, and will always remain, the man is stronger than the woman, and his strength is given him to serve the weaker; and you have got to get your girls to be your fellow-helpers ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... cart drawn by two horses whose hempen harness told of the back country. Sometimes there sounded the slow and heavy tread of a pensive carabao, drawing a great tumbrel; its conductor, on his buffalo skin, accompanying, with a monotonous and melancholy chant, the strident creaking of the wheels. Sometimes there was the dull sound of a native sledge's worn runners. In the fields grazed the herds, and among them white herons gravely promenaded, or sat tranquil on the ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... is the shorter?" asked the elder of the two travellers in a harsh, strident voice. Though visibly the elder, he was scarcely thirty years ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... she was full of vim. She usually talks at the top of a very high and strident voice (I don't know what they did with it at the convent), and I suddenly heard her screaming to the cabinet minister, 'Haven't you heard that? Oh, everybody's quoting it in Fleet Street, aren't they, Mr. Bryan? But I ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... the volume of the receiver so that the clicks in the mike no longer were so strident. "Set on maximum and ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... weather. There had been every probability of a breeze springing up at sundown, but the great orange globe had slowly rolled down and disappeared in the golden west, amidst the loud barking of the hornbills and the strident shrieks of flocks of parrots, and not a breath of wind was astir. Then came down the night, a purply black darkness spangled with stars overhead and reflected in the water, and with that darkness ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... space where two or three sound posts were standing, she spoke to her sister. There was something strident in her voice, as if she pleaded for strength to ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... now grown to be a deluge; the gutters of the house roared; the air was filled with the continuous, strident crash. The stolidity of his face, on which the rain streamed, was far from reassuring me. On the contrary, I was aware of a distinct qualm of apprehension, which was not at all lessened by a view of the driver, craning from his perch to observe us with the expression of ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... which were somewhat strident caused Madame Sagittarius to come away from her communion with the mighty dead with a loud ejaculation of the nature of a snort combined with a hissing whistle, to kick up her indoor kid boots into the air, turn upon her right elbow, and present ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... woman threw her shawl on the brown straw, and sat down quite near the road. She leaned her bare head against the trunk of a pine, listened to the katydids gossiping in a distant oak that shaded the "branch," to the quavering strident song of a locust; and she intended, after resting for a few moments, to return to the station-house; but unexpected drowsiness overpowered her. Suddenly aroused from a sound sleep, she heard the clatter of galloping hoofs, and as she sprang up, the horse, startled ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... over in order to witness the removal of the ailing pilgrims. All that they could as yet see, far away in the depths of the black country, was the lantern in front of the engine, looking like a red star which grew larger and larger. Strident whistles pierced the night, then suddenly ceased, and you only heard the panting of the steam and the dull roar of the wheels gradually slackening their speed. Then the canticle became distinctly audible, the song of Bernadette ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... circumspect, thy charge will undo thee,—foecunda domum tibi prole gravabit, [5786]thou wilt not be able to bring them up, [5787]"and what greater misery can there be than to beget children, to whom thou canst leave no other inheritance but hunger and thirst?" [5788]cum fames dominatur, strident voces rogantium panem, penetrantes patris cor: what so grievous as to turn them up to the wide world, to shift for themselves? No plague like to want: and when thou hast good means, and art very careful of their education, they will ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... corrections will make the tone clearer will also make it more agreeable. The nasal pessimistic whine is not a pleasant recommendation of personality. High, forced, strident tones produce not only irritation in the listener but throat ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... "clumpety-clump! clumpety-clump!" of a stamp-mill on a shoulder of a hill high above the camp, drowned the whir and chirp of night insects, and from the second story of a house they passed they heard the crude banging of a piano, and a woman's strident voice wailing, "She may have seen better da-a-ys," with a mighty ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... woman strident and hysterical and thoughtless for persisting in her plans for the next day in face of her own faint, barely acquiescent smiles, and a poor, feckless, fashionless housewife for thrusting those unwanted saucepans on the cook. But these had been alibis she had sought to establish ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... voices just as individuals have voices. New York is not yet old enough to have found its own sex. It belongs still to the neuter gender. New York is not even a noun—it's a verb transitive; but its voice is a female voice, just as Paris' voice is. New York, like Paris, is full of strident, shrieking sounds, shrill outcries, hysterical babblings—a women's bridge-whist club at the hour of casting up the score; but London now is different. London at all hours speaks with a sustained, sullen, steady, grinding tone, never entirely sinking into quietude, never rising to ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... wondering why he doesn't come around is as though a coop full of turkeys went wondering why the poulterer didn't come around. No; I can't tell you why he—whoever he is—so leaves us in protracted peace. Perhaps he's fattening us," and the old gray buccaneer cheered the conversation with a laugh as strident as saw-filing. ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... lighted and he stooped to pick it up. Where the other sticks were from grass trees this was something else. And among the bleached pile it had the vividness of flame. For it was a strident scarlet. Weeks turned it over in his hands, running his fingers lovingly across its perfect grain. Even in this crude state it had beauty. He stopped the Salarik who had just brought ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... deepening twilight we thoughtfully left the last resting-place of the mighty dead, a platoon of thirty Chinese soldiers approached, drew their swords, dropped upon one knee and shouted. The movement was so unexpected and the shout so startlingly strident that my horse shied in terror and I had visions of immediate massacre. But having learned that politeness is current coin the world over, as soon as I could control my prancing horse, I raised my hat and bowed. Whereupon the soldiers rose, wheeled into line and marched ahead of us to our ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... in strident tones; this is no time for weeping. "What have you done? How came this body in your room? Speak freely to one who may be helpful. Do you imagine I would ruin you? Do you think this piece of dead flesh on your pillow can ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... were 'nice,' too, as far as their appearance and breeding went, but Althea found their manners very bad. They were not strident and they were not arrogant, but so much noisiness and so much innocent assurance might, to unsympathetic eyes, seem so. They were handsome girls, fresh-skinned, athletic, tall and slender. They wore beautifully simple white lawn dresses, and their shining ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... and her companion visibly slackened their pace—he must make his choice between joining them and passing obliviously by. He passed, hesitated, then slowed down. In a moment the pair were abreast of him again, dissolved in laughter now—not such strident mirth as he would have expected in the North from actresses in this familiar comedy, but a soft, low rippling, like the overflow from some subtle joke, into which ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... The crashing of the trees as they fell, the blows of crowbars on the stones, the confused roaring of thousands of voices, the Marseillaise sung in chorus, and the irregular cannonading which resounded from the direction of the Rue Saint-Denis, all composed a strident, stupefying, tempestuous harmony, beside which Beethoven's Tempest would have seemed like ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... be distinguished from Lamartine, chief of the angelic school, by a wheedling tone like that of a sick-nurse, a treacherous sweetness, and a delightful correctness of diction. If the chief with his strident cry is an eagle, Canalis, rose and white, is a flamingo. In him women find the friend they seek, their interpreter, a being who understands them, who explains them to themselves, and a safe confidant. The wide margins given by Didot to the last edition were crowded with Modeste's pencilled ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... her in her garden where she sat beneath a tree. Around, the cicadas whirred in the speaking trees. Zig-zig-zig-zig. But they were no longer strident. They seemed but a vibration of the high ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... to examine him attentively in detail with the keenest curiosity, as though he hoped to obtain some revelation, to draw some secret from him. He could still hear the man's voice—a voice of very peculiar tone, somewhat harsh and strident, with an interrogative inflection at the end of each sentence. Again he saw those pale, pale eyes under the great prominent forehead, eyes that at times assumed a hideous, glassy, dead look, and at others lit up with an indefinable gleam that savoured of madness. Those hands too, he saw—white and ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... searching the darkness with unwinking yellow stare, led by a great green light. They creep up under the bridge which spans the river with its watching eyes, and vanish, crying back a warning note as they make the upper reach, or strident hail, as a chain of kindred phantoms passes, ploughing ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless
... was now well up to the derelict, and pretty soon a prolonged and vibratory hissing noise, strident, insistent, ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... for herself. She answered excitedly, and her neck craned forward as though to help her head to peer through the perpetual darkness which surrounded her. Her thin body, wrapped in an Indian shawl of many colours, the hissing of her strident words, which flowed freely, all contributed to make her resemble a serpent in some terrible nightmare. My mother did not like this woman, who had married my grandfather when he had six big children, the eldest of whom was sixteen and the youngest, ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... close to the signal mast the strident howl of the fog-horn went off in his very face. He was so startled that he nearly fell, and shrank back as far as the granite parapet. The steamer which was the first to reply seemed to be quite near and was already at the entrance, the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... suddenly interrupted a strident voice speaking in Spanish and then some bad language in the same ...
— The Hilltop Boys on Lost Island • Cyril Burleigh
... doors is fresh and green, But no more green than we Who help to run the Grit machine, Or bow the Tory knee. We hear the strident party call In words no one believes; The Liberals are traitors all, The Tories ...
— War Rhymes • Abner Cosens
... of findin' now. The boy's dead." His strident voice quavered and broke, but rose again to a snarl. "And, by God, I'll spend a million to get ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... said. Then he laughed as only an Australian black can, with a glitter of seemingly endless white teeth, and a strident roar that might have ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... struck ten. To where she stood came the strident sounds of the mechanical piano-player, for some of the gay party were waltzing in the hall. Their merry shouts and laughter were discordant to her ears. What cared any of those friends of her step-mother if she were in disgrace and ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... where twilight stands, Above the shadowy pasture lands, With strained and strident cry, Beneath pale skies that sunset bands, ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... branches of the great willow, and one inquisitive robin swept boldly through the clustering vines which screened the front of the veranda and perched upon his shoulder. He heard the merry hum of the bees at work and the strident call of the locusts, mingled with the distant neighing of horses and the soft lowing of the cows, but all the sweetness of nature was powerless to lift the gloom which seemed to envelop him as in a shroud. His face ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... once, and if she had not been prepared for him she must have guessed him to be a man come on a message of importance. There was conscious emphasis in his voice, and there needed to be if it was to accomplish anything: a high voice, strident, and, like the rest of him, somehow suggesting insect life. He held out his hand and ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... his Sulla Physionomia, has given among the signs of libidinous impulse: knees turned inwards, abundance of hairs on the legs, squint, bright eyes, a high and strident voice, and in women length of leg below the knee. Aristotle had mentioned among the signs of wantonness: paleness, abundance of hair on the body, thick and black hair, hairs covering the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... her betimes. Morning and eve She in her wood-girt chapel sings her prayer, Which wins us kindlier harvest, and, some think, Success in war. She strives not with our Gods: Confusion never wrought she in my house, Nor minished Hengist's glory. Had her voice, Clangorous or strident, drawn upon my throne Deserved opprobrium'—here the monarch's brows Flushed at the thought, and fire was in his eyes— 'The hand that clasps this sceptre had not spared To hunt her forth, an outcast in the woods, Thenceforth with beasts to herd! ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... orders to charge. "Charge!" The word carries magnificent poetic associations, but, alas, it is a very prosaic affair nowadays! The lines move onward in short rushes, and it seems as if a swarm of ants were migrating warily. The strident voices of the officers ring here and there: the men edge their way onward: it seems as if there were no method in the advance; but somehow the loose wavy ranks are kept well in hand, and the main movement proceeds like ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
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