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More "Whirring" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... door (d[open o][schwa]) will not quite protect it. The whole line quoted from p. 7 is obscure, because a nightjar would never be recognized by the description of a bird that utters a crackling cry when flying. That it then makes a sound different from its distinctive whirring note is recorded. T.A. Coward writes 'when on the wing it has a soft call co-ic, and a sharper and repeated alarm quik, quik, quik.' It is doubtful ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 5 - The Englishing of French Words; The Dialectal Words in Blunden's Poems • Society for Pure English
... Whirring wheels, a current of traffic, a broad highway of steel—that's the sort of ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... do with her evenings and her Sundays? Was she bored? Was she miserable or exultant? Had she acquaintances, external interests; or did she immerse herself completely, inclusively, in the huge, smoking, whirring, foul, perilous hell which she had described? The contemplation of the horror of the hell gave him—and her, too, he thought—a curious feeling which was not unpleasurable. It had savour. He would not, however, inquire from her concerning ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... and light is come, And dew is cold upon the ground, And the far-off stream is dumb, And the whirring sail goes round, And the whirring sail goes round; Alone and warming his five wits, The white ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... clock struck. The sounds boomed heavily through the frost, and Patty thought there were four of them. Then, after due choking and whirring, our own clock struck, and we counted the strokes quite clearly—one! two! three! four! Then we got Kitty's shawl once more, and stole out into the back-yard. We ran to our old place, and peeped, but could ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... words Winterton gave a loup, as if he had tramped on something no canny, syne a whirring sort of triumphant whistle, and then a ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... Honey, Come to Sunny; Whizzing, whirring, Stillness stirring, Sunlight blurring; Friends ...
— All the Way to Fairyland - Fairy Stories • Evelyn Sharp
... Puffing and whirring the big automobile started off up the road, the old lady sitting stern and erect, as if she thought her driver needed watching, and she was determined to keep a sharp eye ...
— Dorothy Dainty at the Mountains • Amy Brooks
... domineered them, she treated them as if they were extremely young and incapable, to her they were little people, they were not her equals. So she was mostly alone, flying round the farm, entertaining the farm-hands and Tilly and the servant-girl, whirring on and never ceasing. ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... sorrowful, with no harvest sheaves to offer as witnesses for his toiling, suddenly back of him he heard a marvellous, many-toned, soft whirring, as of innumerable light wings, and over his head flew a countless crowd of silver-white birds, and floated in the air beyond. And as he gazed, surprised, at their loveliness, without speech again it was said ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... on whirring pinions, Scattering all of Hiisi's terrors, Brought the hissing of the serpents, And of snakes the dusky venom, 240 And of ants he brought the acid, And of toads the hidden poison, That the steel might thus be poisoned, In the tempering of ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... recovery we sought merely a purposeless whirring of machinery. It is important, of course, that every man and woman in the country be able to find work, that every factory run, that business and farming as a whole earn profits. But Government in a ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... toads, Nat; and that chirruping whirring is something in the cricket or cicada way. If we heard a jaguar or puma, it would most likely be a magnified tom-cat-like ...
— Through Forest and Stream - The Quest of the Quetzal • George Manville Fenn
... go on mechanically. The word is given—the dark lines dash forward; the firing from the wood breaks out in a crash of fury—there is a long harsh rattle, then a chance crack like a thunder-clap, and then a whirring like the spinning of some demoniac mill. Curses ring out amid a low sound of hard breathing; the ranks are gapped here and there as a man wriggles away like a wounded rabbit, or another bounds upward with a frantic ejaculation. Then ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... day they came out on a comparatively level plateau, where antelope were grazing and prairie chickens whirring. It looked like a fertile country, and they were glad of easy traveling for the wagons. Just at the edge of the pine woods that they were leaving was a beautiful little lake of clear, blue water, by which they stayed half a day, refreshing themselves, ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... kill ye, ghost or no ghost," he ejaculated, gazing all round into the gloomy depths of the woods with his cutlass uplifted. Instead of flying again in front of him, as he had expected, the bat flew with a whirring noise past his ear. Down came the cutlass with a sudden thwack, cutting deep into the trunk of a small tree, which trembled under the shock and sent a shower of nuts of a large size down upon the sailor's head. Startled as he was, he sprang backward with a wild ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... head, and his right hand flourishing a bayonet. The dancing consisted in the actors leaping suddenly to their feet with a whoop, and working the whole body convulsively up and down while standing on their toes, without moving from their position, a monotonous whirring sound being kept up all the time, in which the squaws sitting around assisted. This was kept up long enough for me to sketch one man, when with another whoop and a flourish they sank into a squatting position, the drums still going on ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... close by the boat. Usually a salmon takes the fly rather slowly, carrying it under water before he seizes it in his mouth. But this one is in no mood for deliberation. He has hooked himself with a rush, and the line goes whirring madly from the reel as he races down the pool. Keep the point of the rod low; he must have his own way now. Up with the anchor quickly, and send the canoe after him, bowman and sternman paddling with swift strokes. He has reached the deepest water; he stops to think what has happened to ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... with flowers: the yellows, blues, The purple violets, and marigolds, Shall as a carpet hang upon thy grave, While summer-days do last. Ay me! poor maid, Born in a tempest, when my mother died, This world to me is like a lasting storm, Whirring ...
— Pericles Prince of Tyre • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... me that, as I did so, the whirring of wheels within the contrivance stopped, and at that moment I heard a human throat inhale a long breath with a frightened gasp! It was as if the balanced glass eyes of the figure had recognized me or seen in my ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... continuous now of childhood. The night was hot; my little brothers were sleeping loud, as wee Davie called snoring; and a great moth had got within my curtains somewhere, and kept on fluttering and whirring. I got up, and went to the window. It was such a night! The moon was full, but rather low, and looked just as if she were thinking—"Nobody is heeding me: I may as well go to bed." All the top of the sky was covered with mackerel-backed clouds, lying like milky ripples on a blue sea, and through ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... home along the brown road, stepping lightly and swiftly, and full of busy thoughts. Flocks of birds went whirring by over the yellowed fields. Lucy Ann could have called out to them, in joyous understanding, they looked so free. She, too, seemed to be flying on the wings of a ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... It was a clear day. Hollister had a pair of very powerful binoculars. He gazed from this height down on the settlement, on the reeking chimneys of those distant houses, on the tiny black objects that were men moving against a field of white. He could hear a faint whirring which he took to be the machinery of a sawmill. He could see on the river bank and at another point in the nearby woods the feathery puff of steam. He often wondered about these people, buried, like himself, in this snow-blanketed and mountain-ringed remoteness. ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... troop-ships were handled well—no collisions and no gun-shells going aboard anybody else. A few went across other people's bows and sterns, but not too near to worry. And in the middle of it all, our guns made so much noise that before we heard them we saw them—two airplanes, whirring and cavorting about and above us. Whenever they saw a destroyer turn and shoot, they would turn and shoot after the destroyer. They could move about three times as fast as a destroyer, and so quite often ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... eight months of prosperity and liberty under Italian rule. Now these have been evacuated and scattered in the four corners of Italy, and the deserted houses and empty streets add to the unreality of the scene. The whirring of the field-telephone wires which hang low, hastily looped over the branches of olive and mulberry trees, alone indicates any activity of man. There are no troops in sight, save a patrol which stops us and examines our papers. It seems difficult to realize that a great battle is impending. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... the joy and horror of the moment, for my name was the first word my beloved had ever spoken to me, and at the sound of it from this, her child, my heart leaped into my throat; there came a whirring in the top of my head and a singing in my ears, and as I sank upon the old stone settle something like a ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... in idle hours, Tamed the wild weeds to garden flowers; Stroked the strange whirlwind's whirring wings, And made the ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... taken up by another close by, and by another at a distance, and then quite a chorus followed, resembling the sounds made by the house-cricket of the English hearth, but more whirring and ear-piercing. ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... hunt those big mountain canvasback? If you have, you know the story. If you have not, I am afraid I can not give you a correct impression of it. Sitting in a frozen blind, all at once you hear the whirring of wings, far off in the sky. Before you can locate the source of it, "Swish!" an old Can goes by. You look at the streak of light he leaves in the atmosphere. Then you hear another far-off alarm. You seize your gun as the gray mark passes overhead at about 125 miles an hour. You shoot at ...
— Out of Doors—California and Oregon • J. A. Graves
... the simple operation. His impulse towards unreserve puzzled him, and several seconds of silence passed before he spoke again; silence, emphasised by broken snatches of talk and laughter; by the sharp crack of guns; and the whirring of a hundred wings, like the restless murmuring in ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... little while, and the jailer raised the candle from the water, and dropped down a stone from some he kept there for that purpose. This stone struck the wall half-way down, and went from side to side, crashing and whirring till it met the water with a booming plunge; and there rose a groan and moan from the eddies, like those dreadful sounds of the surge that I heard on lonely nights in the sea-caverns underneath our hiding-place ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... memories of this farm are of the fiber of poetry. The silence of the snowy aisles of the forest, the whirring flight of partridges, the impudent bark of squirrels, the quavering voices of owls and coons, the music of the winds in the high trees,—all these impressions unite in my mind like parts of a woodland symphony. I soon learned to distinguish the raccoon's mournful ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... set against my aunt's iron hand, that she might as well have been driving with a pair of halters for any power she had over them, when a rush of colts in an adjoining paddock on one side of the lane, and a covey of partridges "whirring up" out of a turnip-field on the other, started them both at the same moment. My aunt gave a slight scream, clutched at her reins with a jerk; down went the ponies' heads, and we were off, as hard as ever they could lay legs to the ground, along ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... though in the midst of moonlit noble gardens a giant machine had arisen swiftly from the ground and inundated the night with electrical glare and set its metal thews and organs and joints relentlessly whirring, relentlessly functioning. ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... and Robert the Devil went well. The long streets rolled behind us, and were lost in the rain; then with a rhythmic drumming of hoofs and a constant splashing from under the whirring wheels, we swept out into the blackness of a treeless plain. I knew the road and did not take the shortest one; and it was rapture to draw the rugs and apron round Grace's waist, and feel the soft furs she wore brushing against me. The ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... working, and girls and boys of all sizes, and one heard the sound of sharp knives ripping the fish, and the whirring of grindstones, and the flopping of offal in the water. These people were clad in ancient oilskins, stiff and evil with blood and slime, but they lifted gruesome hands to their forelocks as Miss Jelliffe went by and she did her best to ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... following effect: "These singers," said he, "count it for their principal glory that when one sings sanctus, another sings Sabbaoth and another gloria tua, and the whole effect of the music is little more than a confused whirring and snarling, more resembling the performance of cats in January than the beautiful flowers of May." At the same time Palestrina was desired to write a mass in a style suitable for the sacred office. Too modest to rest the case upon one work, he wrote three, ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... vandalism of the worst to eat them, only it was no use leaving them bare to the sun, as the birds abandoned them unless they had begun brooding. In that case the mother sat so tight, occasionally the reaper, passing over, took off her head. More commonly she flew away just in time, whirring up between the mules, with a great pretense of lameness. If the nest by good luck was discovered in time, grain was left standing about it. Nobody grudged the yard or so of wheat lost for ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... good, daddy!" she exclaimed. Everything was of intense interest to her. The sudden glimpse of some great mountain towering above the trees; the velvety green, billowy moss; the merry little brooks they crossed; the whirring flight of a startled partridge and now the sinking sun flooding the silent woods with gold. When she was not in ecstasies over these, her brown eyes glanced at the clean-cut, handsome profile of the young woodsman who was so ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... agree; but not with their reason. For they say that poetry declined because cities are such dreadfully unpoetic things; because they have become synonymous only with riveting-machines and the kind of building that the Germans call the "heaven-scratcher," with elevated railways, "sand hogs," whirring factories, and alleys reeking with the so-called "dregs" of Europe. They claim that the new and hopelessly vulgar creed of the modern city is epitomized by such things as a certain signboard in New York, which offers ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... to watch for danger and he usually would send the flock whirring into the jungle while they were well beyond shotgun range. When flushed from the open the birds nearly always would alight in the first large tree and sit for a few moments before flying deeper into the jungle. We caught several hens in our steel traps, and one morning at the edge ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... The whirring of a motor reached him. Headlights flung gigantic, distorted shadows of trees across the walls of the old ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... in the world? Did he not pray every day to be delivered from the Satan Mekatrig? Had he not meant it for the best when he took her into his workshop? It was only when, at the age of sixteen, Gittel Goldstein left the whirring machine-room for the more lucrative and laurelled position of heroine of Goldwater's London Yiddish Theatre that he had discovered how this whimsical, coquettish creature had insinuated herself ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... the ends of their being, the higher animal to violate some of the most blessed laws of his Creator. Gradually the sun rose and dispelled the mists, while it warmed everything into strong vitality. As they passed up, clouds of water-fowl rose whirring from their lairs, and luxuriant growth of weeds threatened to obstruct ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... there was only one. He and Harry jumped about and snapped and barked, and Harry was thinking with joy that he was the last, when the clock in the hall gave that whirring sound which some clocks do before they strike, as if ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... colour of him, as rich a purple as that of your sunset cloud, with crest and throat like gold painted green. And then, the long curved beak of him, see how daintily he dips it into the cup of the flower and sips the honey therefrom. And his wings, why they are whirring so quickly that you cannot see but can only hear them! Can any of your fancies touch a thing like ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... away from her. She watched him cross to the bureau. He pulled out each one of the drawers in turn. He peered blankly into them, where there was only the smell of mold and whirring dust ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... cloud nor a breath of wind; the sway of summer lay over all things. But, though the heat was broiling, the walk was lovely. All about me was alive with voice or perfume. Clouds of linnets fluttered among the branches, golden beetles crawled upon the grass, thousands of tiny whirring wings beat the air—flies, gnats, gadflies, bees—all chorusing the life—giving warmth of the day and the sunshine that bathed and penetrated all nature. I halted from time to time in the parched glades to seek ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... for the battle to begin, the four-footed beasts all came running along to the field, shaking the earth with their roaring and bellowing. The wren King also came with his army, whirring and buzzing and humming enough to terrify any one out of his senses. Then the wren King sent the hornet forward to settle upon the fox's tail and sting it with all his power. As soon as the fox felt the first sting he drew up his hind ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... upon his lips, he has had time to lean back in his chair with the languid air of one who has given to the world views not admitting of contradiction, when a sharp whirring noise is heard, followed by a crash of broken glass and the dull thud of a bullet that has found its home in the wall right opposite the squire. Right opposite Brian, too, for they had been side by side with Owen Kelly, fortunately not ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... exclude machinery, which must be regarded as an indispensable adjunct to the worker's life. It would simply put it in its proper place,—that of aid, but never master. It is the spirit of competition which is motive power to-day, and which drives the whirring wheels and crowds the counters of every shop with productions which have no merit but that of cheapness, and the price of which means no return to the worker ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... way he rattled on for some minutes, obviously talking himself down and trying to prevent me from thinking. But the grim moment came at last, and it was like the empty gap of time when you are waiting for the whirring of the clock that is to tell the end of the old year and the beginning of ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... curt warning behind him and then swept past and on its way, kicking dust upon him from its whirring wheels. ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... sea as if they were alive,—and so they were,—and drew up, as if in order of battle, just before the mouth of the cave; and then a silver trumpet sounded on the shore, and a swarm of hornets appeared, whizzing and whirring all about the cave; and then there was another trumpet, and another, about as loud as you may hear from a caged blue-bottle, and compliments were interchanged, and a salute fired, which frightened the little lady-fairies into all sorts of shapes, and ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... bounce, flapping his wings. I heard a roaring whirr of other turkeys. With my eye on my gobbler I seemed to see the air full of big, black, flying things. My gobbler came down, bounced up again, got going—when with the second barrel I knocked him cold. Then I stood there watching the flock whirring every way into the forest. Must have been thirty-five or forty of them, all gobblers. It was a great sight. And right here I declared myself—wild turkey ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... agility for one so fat, he knocked the musical box from Hans' head, so that it fell to the ground and after a little whirring grew silent. ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... at him without reply, then looked at his watch. It was twenty minutes after ten. He laid his hand upon the throttle and pulled. There was a gasp of steam, a whirring and slipping of the drive wheels, and the engine plunged forward. Jawn fingered the lever with a lover's caress. He knew old "eleven," every foot of her, every tube, bolt, and strap. As they cleared the yards, he threw her wider and wider open until she was lunging ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... cavernous dark doors, the hoofs of the horses thundering on the floor, the smell of cattle from below, the pigeons in the loft whirring startled from their perches. Then the hot, scented, dusty "pitching off" and "mowing in"—a fine process, an honest process: men sweating ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... whirring noise, that made Mr. Winkle start back as if he had been shot himself. Bang, bang, went a couple of guns—the smoke swept quickly away over the field, and curled ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... itself known. The wind rose to such a point of violence that it was little short of a hurricane. Trees began to go down here and there, and the passage of the gale through the forest on each shore was like the whirring flight of myriads ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... ground. The machine was poised in the air for a second before it crashed into the ditch and turned over completely, throwing me clear, but burying Blackie and Peter under its weight of steel and wood and whirring wheels. ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... his burrow, Heard the pheasant, Bena, drumming, Heard the squirrel, Adjidaumo, Rattling in his hoard of acorns, Saw the pigeon, the Omeme, Building nests among the pine-trees, And in flocks the wild-goose, Wawa, Flying to the fen-lands northward, Whirring, wailing far above him. "Master of Life!" he cried, desponding, "Must our lives depend on these things?" On the next day of his fasting By the river's brink he wandered, Through the Muskoday, the meadow, Saw the wild rice, Mahnomonee, Saw the blueberry, Meenahga, And the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... Dr. Harford, and he started the machine to whirring. Everybody bent forward so as to miss nothing. But there was no need, for the familiar tones of Mrs. Caswell had been well recorded by the Edison invention and floated out in full and plain confirmation of the charges Dr. Harford had so ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... sheer exhaustion on this shabby couch Is all my week's repose. Read? But the tired eyes close, The book from nerveless fingers drops; Almost the slow heart stops. But the clock halts not on its restless round. Weariness shudders at the whirring sound, As the sharp strike declares Swift to its closing wears One more of those brief interludes from toil Which leave us still the labour-despot's spoil, Slaves of long hours and unrelaxing strain, Unstrengthened and unsolaced, soon again To tread the round, and lift ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 8, 1893 • Various
... small birds flew out of the hedges, with a whirring sound, to settle further on, while an incessant chatter was kept up on ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... chap and took him into his pay. But what the new apprentice heard about the mill and his predecessors was not encouraging; so the first night when it was his duty to watch in the mill he took care to provide himself with an axe and a prayer-book, and while he kept one eye on the whirring, humming wheels he kept the other on the good book, which he read by the flickering light of a candle set on a table. So the hours at first passed quietly with nothing to disturb him but the monotonous ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... although less noisy, was the enemy's 1-pound Maxim. A very loud hammering, quickly repeated, and almost simultaneously a whirring in the air, followed by four quick explosions, and then we knew this poisonous devil was at work. The shells were little gems in their way, and when they did not burst, which was often the case, were tremendously in request as ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... came forward with the ladders as the storming party moved up to the gateway. And just at that moment there the sentry let off his alarm shot. It set all within the San Vincente bastion moving and whirring like the works of a mechanical toy; feet came running along the covered way; muskets clinked on the stone parapet; tongues of fire spat forth from the embrasures; and then, as the musketry quickened, a flash and a roar lifted the glacis away ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... we shall also be entitled to call him so—kept his eye out for game, as he drove leisurely along; stopped once or twice for a rabbit on the edge of the woods; and, finally, pulled up sharply, as a prairie-hen shot whirring out, almost from ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... sudden whirring and shrill clatter of an ancient clock, action began again, but before the striking hour had entirely died away, he said to her, "Whatever happens, we are, at any rate, friends. We can snatch a moment together even out of the ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... Some are too high, some too low. There is an answering roar from all the Rebel boats. The air is full of indescribable noises. The water boils and bubbles around us. It is tossed up in columns and jets. There are sudden flashes overhead, explosions, and sulphurous clouds, and whirring of ragged pieces of iron. The uproar increases. The cannonade reverberates from the high bluff behind the city to the dark-green forest upon the Arkansas shore, and echoes from bend ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... Willy!" but he came of a stock which condemned an oath, or even an expletive, on its face value, so this natural outlet for his irritation was denied him. Instead, therefore, of replying in words, he merely glanced sourly at the half-open door, through which issued the whirring noise of the little dressmaker at her sewing. Now and then, in the intervals when her feet left the pedal, she could be heard humming softly to herself with her ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... seen a flash and a puff of smoke from one of the guns. There was a dead silence for the space of a few moments, and then a screech and a peculiar whirring sound, as a shell hurried through ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... the big meadow. He passed again and again amid whirring blades and sweet odours of grass, encompassing with narrowing circles the sacred centre of the field. Tom ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... the war we agreed to try our fortune together down here," "Red" told her; and the little machine went whirring along. "That's the Hardy ranch," he said, pointing to the left. "Nice folks." His eyes seemed to cling to the low house, and Lucia did not realize it at the time, but he slowed up the car. Presently a young girl came out on the stone terrace and waved ...
— The Bad Man • Charles Hanson Towne
... five o'clock! Again I sank under the weight of my prolonged nervous excitement. The hollow whirring in my head made itself felt anew. I stared straight ahead, kept my eyes fixed, and gazed at the chemist's under the sign of the elephant. Hunger was waging a fierce battle in me at this moment, and I was suffering greatly. Whilst I sit thus and ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... when climbing the wall of the canyon, for he had slain too many of the reptiles in his distant home not to understand their nature. Whirlwind, like all of his kind, had a mortal dread of every species of serpents, and he showed his timidity the moment the locust-like whirring sounded from the bush at the side of the path the ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... in his winter home below could hear them whirring along, cutting fancy figures in the ice, and calling merrily to ...
— Little Jack Rabbit and the Squirrel Brothers • David Cory
... was now on in good earnest, and the Spaniards on the hills were engaged in heavy volley firing. The Mauser bullets drove in sheets through the trees and the tall jungle grass, making a peculiar whirring or rustling sound; some of the bullets seemed to pop in the air, so that we thought they were explosive; and, indeed, many of those which were coated with brass did explode, in the sense that the brass coat was ripped ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... Putih entrance about 5 P. M., the visitor will suddenly hear a whirring sound from below, which is caused by the myriads of bats issuing, for their nocturnal banquet, from the Simud Itam caves, through the wide open space that has been described. They come out in a regularly ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... time rolls by, comes that final week; period of mania, of abandon; and in the mere sorcerous passage of a pair of whirring wings, Dr. Jekyll, the exemplary, is no more. In his place, wearing his shoes, audaciously signing his name even to checks, is that other being, Hyde: one absolutely the reverse of the reputable Jekyll; repudiating with scorn that gentleman's ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... paved square outside. They were at work, too, that very afternoon, though I do not think the cathedral was their objective for the moment. We walked to and fro in the silence of the streets and beneath the whirring wings overhead. Presently, a young woman, keeping to the wall, crossed a corner. An old woman opened a shutter (how it jarred!), and spoke to her. The silence closed again, but it seemed to me that I heard a sound of singing—the sort ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling
... the brake the whirring pheasant springs, And mounts exulting on triumphant wings: Short is his joy; he feels the fiery wound, Flutters in blood, and panting beats the ground. Ah! what avail his glossy, varying dyes, His purple crest, and scarlet-circled ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... what I've got here," shouted Boase, straightening his long back and holding his curved-out hands aloft. Ishmael ran towards him, the tussocks, dry from long drought, swaying and sagging beneath him. As he drew near he caught a whirring sound, so strong as to seem metallic, and saw a big green and yellow dragon-fly fighting in the Parson's hands. Boase took hold of it carefully but firmly by the wings, and the creature stared angrily at Ishmael ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... the crowded street With whirring noise and throbbing beat, Exhaling odours far from sweet? ...
— Mr. Punch Awheel - The Humours of Motoring and Cycling • J. A. Hammerton
... the train was still running around, and Miss Davis had to catch it and leave it turned upside down with the little wheels whirring around while she marched her class into Miss May's room for the ...
— Sunny Boy and His Playmates • Ramy Allison White
... woodpeckers, larks and yellow hammers—made merry din in the morning air. Shep, running on ahead as usual, disturbed half a dozen grouse from the underbrush in a little canon, and the muffled roll of their whirring wings threw Shep into brief consternation and prolonged subsequent joy. She saw the bob and flash of a rabbit's tail, noticed again and again the lean, muscular body of a tree squirrel, heard upon a wooded slope the snapping and crashing of brush that told of the ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... hard at work sending shots at the Spanish gunboat, which was in lively action a short distance away, we became aware of a peculiar whirring noise—a sound like the angry humming of a swarm of hornets. It would rise and fall in volume, then break off short with a sharp crash. Suddenly, while glancing through the port, I saw something strike the surface, ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... fills the kitchen, Drear and lonely our retreat, Speak a word and break the silence, Dearest little Mother, sweet! Has the moaning of the tempest Closed thine eyelids wearily? Has the spinning wheel's soft whirring Hummed a cradle song ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi
... danger had been real enough the deserted river proved; terror of these same revolutionaries had swept the usually busy waterway clean of craft, and nothing further disturbed the quiet but the hoarse honk of wild geese and the whirring of ducks' wings. ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... would call, or soon or late, as it calls the whirring wings; It's the olden lure, it's the golden lure, it's the lure of the timeless things; And to-night, O God of the trails untrod, how it whines ...
— Songs of a Sourdough • Robert W. Service
... to her feet; there came a whirring flutter, a twittering shower of sweet notes, soft wings beating almost in their very faces, a distant shadow against the sky, ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... pool, just mad with the joy of life; the midges dancing over the water in the still sunshine, and the trout jumping for them—oh, it's the bonny, bonny place. You would think so too. You would like it, tramping knee-deep in the heather, to see the moorcock rise whirring at your feet; you would like to set sail with the fisher folk after the silver herring. It would make you feel good to see the calm faces of the shepherds, the peace in the eyes of the women. Ay, that was the best of ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... exhilarating sound of straining cordage in the air while the vessel glided on. The young journalist was not an impressionable man, but he felt all these things. The sense of open freedom, the gentle rise and fall of the vessel, the whirring breeze, and the distant line of high land up the Rance towards Dinant—all these were surely worth hearing, feeling, and seeing; assuredly, they added to the joy ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... ominous whirring sound came from the apparatus in front of the house and a sudden ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... sorts of monkey-like feats. At the other lived David's rabbits in numerous hutches, Ambrose's owl, a jackdaw, a squirrel, and a wonderfully large family of white mice. Besides those captives there were bats which lived free but retired lives high up in the rafters, flapping and whirring about when dusk came on. Pigeons also flew in and out, and pecked at the various morsels of food left about on the ground, so that the barn was a thickly-peopled place, with plenty of noise and flutter, and much coming and ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton
... hangar, straightens out again near the earth at a dizzy speed a few feet above it and, losing momentum in a surprisingly short time, hits the ground with tail and wheels. It bumps along a score of yards and then, its motor whirring again, turns, rolls toward the hangar, and stops. A human form, enveloped in a species of garment for all the world like a diver's suit, and further adorned with goggles and a leather hood, rises unsteadily ...
— Flying for France • James R. McConnell
... the door open, shrieking, and suddenly the Toy, released, was darting a small whirring droning horror, straight at Rakhal's eyes. I yelled. But there was no time even to warn him. I bent and butted him in the stomach. He grunted, doubled up in agony and fell out of the path of the diving Toy. ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... of voice and piano was very loud just then, so that the little, soft, whirring sound of the electric bell reached only one or two pairs of ears in the big room. It did not reach the host certainly, and neither he nor most of the others observed the servant make his way among the groups ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... stalketh, But repair'd to hear the music, When the ancient Woinomoinen, When the Father joy awaken'd. E'en at Woinomoinen's harping 'Gainst the hedge the bear up-bounded. There was nothing in the forest On two whirring pinions flying, But with whirl-wind speed did hasten; There was nothing in the ocean, With six fins about that roweth, Or with eight to move delighteth, But repair'd to hear the music. E'en the briny water's mother {38} 'Gainst the beach, breast-forward, ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... protecting his rear with the fallen Galpy's cricket bat, and the two other cricketers were fighting back to back on the other side. Carroll was clubbing his way toward Mr. Brewster, but his weapon was now in his left hand. Matters looked dark indeed, when there shrilled fiercely from above them the whirring peal of ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the audience because the lack of apparent effort in the artist has the most comforting effect upon the listener. It is like turning from the whirring machinery of process to the finished article, which bears no traces of the making except the harmony and beauty of the whole, which make one realize that the individual parts have received all proper attention. What really brings about this apparent simplicity which insures the success of the ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... caught fire at once, and the wind carried the flame in a long line down the length of the wall, licking upwards as it ran; and with shrieks and wailings, the crowded row of forms upon the top melted away into the air on the other side, and were gone with a great rush and whirring of their bodies down into the heart of the haunted valley, leaving Vezin breathless and shaken in the middle of the ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... autumnal gales, Wild whirring gannets pierce the sails Of barks that sweep by Arran's shore,[90] Thus swept the train through Barnesmore. Through many a varied scene they ran, By Castle Fin, and fair Strabane, By many a hill, and many a clan, Across the ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... ravel line sweel, From the fast-whirring reel, With a music that gladdens the ear; And the thrill of delight, In that glorious fight, To the heart of the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... halting step of a stranger; coming quickly and gladly afterwards, as an old friend comes back to the place where he is sure of a welcome; and lastly, with a sound of ten thousand pattering feet, with a whirring of innumerable wings, with a roar of triumph and ecstasy, Prosperity poured ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... a large flock of ptarmigan, startled by the double report, rose with a loud whirring noise about a hundred yards in advance, and after flying ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... near," says Mr Webber, who has observed their habits, "they approach the spot they have fixed on, in the usual manner, by short flights, with none of that whirring of wings for which they are noted when suddenly put up; but they make ample amends for their previous silence when they arrive. From the pigeon-roost there is a continuous roar, caused by the restless shifting ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... look right or left; and I suppose I must have taken the wrong turn, for as I lifted my eyes, I found myself standing under the willow-tree at the creek where Mabel and I had been sitting in the afternoon. The locusts, with their shrill metallic voices, kept whirring away in the grass, and I heard their strange hissing sh-h-h-h-h, now growing stronger, then weakening again, and at last stopping abruptly, as if to say: "Didn't I do well?" But the blue-eyed violets shook their heads, and that means in their language: ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... story of the Sawmill Country in Western Washington. Redolent of fir, cedar, and hemlock as the whirring saws let loose the stored perfume of ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... deep with Sacnoth, and Thok tumbled into the abyss, screaming, and his limbs made a whirring in the darkness as he fell, and he fell till his scream sounded no louder than a whistle and then could be heard no more. Once or twice Leothric saw a star blink for an instant and reappear again, and this momentary eclipse of a few stars was all that remained in the world of the ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... smoothed to a silky lustre, It greeteth the fingers of the spinner. In this Hygeian concert Leader of the Orchestra, was the Great Wheel's tireless tenor, Drowning the counter of the snapping reel, and the quill-wheels fitful symphony, Whose whirring strings, yielded to children's hands, prepare spools for the shuttle. At intervals, like a muffled drum, sounded the stroke of the loam, Cumbrous, and filling a large space, with its quantity of timber, Obedient ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... this was a peaceful sort of grave, so remote, so silent. That endless torturing thought—the chain of weary reproach and useless speculation, which beset every waking moment—had ceased for the moment. It was like quiet after a perpetual whirring sound. ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... "We must make the land!" But it took a stupendous effort. His strokes became unequal, some of them feeble and ineffective; his muscles ached with the strain; now and then a strange whirring and dizziness in his head caused him to wonder dimly whether he were above or below water. He could no longer swim with closed lips, but constantly threw his head back with the gasp ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... them outright. Even the bees found this out thousands of years ago; and in their hives in hot weather they station lines of worker-bees, one just behind another from the door right down each of the main passages, whose business it is to do nothing but keep their wings whirring rapidly, so that they fan a steady current of fresh air into ...
— The Child's Day • Woods Hutchinson
... darkened room! What do they gaze on with wide-open eyes? A dense, dense forest, where no sunbeam pries, And in its centre a cleared spot.—There bloom Gigantic flowers on creepers that embrace Tall trees; there, in a quiet lucid lake The white swans glide; there, "whirring from the brake," The peacock springs; there, herds of wild deer race; There, patches gleam with yellow waving grain; There, blue smoke from strange altars rises light, There, dwells in peace, the ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt
... saddles the humming-birds were whirring round the tree-tops; the Qu'est-ce qu'il dits inquiring the subject of our talk. The black vultures sat about looking on in silence, hoping that something to their advantage might be dropped or left behind— possibly that one of our horses ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... frightened cry from a soldier and, like a bird whirring in rapid flight and alighting on the ground, a shell dropped with little noise within two steps of Prince Andrew and close to the battalion commander's horse. The horse first, regardless of whether it was right or wrong to show fear, snorted, ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... roar of artillery reverberating through the surrounding hills; the constant ping; pinging and singing of rifle bullets; the rattling discharge of platoon firing; the whirring of heavy shot and shell through the air above the ranks and the bursting every now and then of some huge bomb in their midst, knocking down the men like ninepins and sending up a pyramid of dust and stones, mingled with particles of their arms and clothing, ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... overmastering desire to have his own son at his side, as though this visit to the dead man's body was a battle in which otherwise he must single-handed meet those two. And the thought of how to keep June's name out of the business kept whirring in his brain. James had his son to support him! Why should he not send ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... moment when another friend of mine, in the midst of an interminable scolding that was being given by a nasal-voiced conductor to a passenger just before the dawn, exposed his head and remarked: "Has it occurred to you that this is a sleeping-car?" In the swift silence the whirring of my private ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... curious hysterical ring in his loud laugh as, with the bullets whirring and whistling about him and a cross fire concentrated upon where he stood, he too leaped down, to begin running, while a burly-looking sergeant literally rolled over the wall, followed by two more men from the rear company, all plainly seen ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... bustle and breeze, The whirring of wheels and the murmur of trees; By night or by day, whether noisy or stilly, Whatever my mood is—I ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 13, 1917 • Various
... God of battles, make their wall of shields Firm as thy cliffs, strengthen their palisades! What is that whirring sound? ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... the wild-brier and the mock-orange. The birds are carolling in the trees, and their shadows flit across the window as they dart to and fro in the sunshine; while the murmur of the bee, the cooing of doves from the eaves, and the whirring of a little humming-bird that has its nest in the honeysuckle, send up a sound of joy to ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... darkness, how intense is that darkness! Then comes the pitiable result of acting as if darkness were man's native air—"the vanity of the mind." That word vanity means aimlessness. The mind is still keen, even brilliant, but the guiding star is shut out, and that keen mind goes whirring aimlessly around. Sometimes a very earnest aimlessness. The man's on a foggy sea without sun or star. The compass ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... milkmaid sings; The whistling ploughman stalks afield; and, hark! Down the rough slope the ponderous waggon rings; Through rustling corn the hare astonish'd springs; Slow tolls the village clock the drowsy hour; The partridge bursts away on whirring wings; Deep mourns the turtle in sequester'd bower, And shrill lark carols ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... along the brown road, stepping lightly and swiftly, and full of busy thoughts. Flocks of birds went whirring by over the yellowed fields. Lucy Ann could have called out to them, in joyous understanding, they looked so free. She, too, seemed to be flying on the wings ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... of this farm are of the fiber of poetry. The silence of the snowy aisles of the forest, the whirring flight of partridges, the impudent bark of squirrels, the quavering voices of owls and coons, the music of the winds in the high trees,—all these impressions unite in my mind like parts of a woodland symphony. I soon learned to distinguish the ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... ready, and Robert the Devil went well. The long streets rolled behind us, and were lost in the rain; then with a rhythmic drumming of hoofs and a constant splashing from under the whirring wheels, we swept out into the blackness of a treeless plain. I knew the road and did not take the shortest one; and it was rapture to draw the rugs and apron round Grace's waist, and feel the soft furs she wore brushing against ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... closed with a cushioned soft definiteness. The inside of the rocket suddenly seemed extraordinarily still. The silence was oppressive. It was dead. Then there came the whirring of very many electric fans, stirring ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... atmosphere of emptiness. They did, however, have one brief moment of panic. They had all climbed the stairs to the third floor and had paused upon the landing, undecided as to which way they should go first, when a sharp whirring or rustling was heard in ...
— The Girl Scouts' Good Turn • Edith Lavell
... so loudly before; and when at last Nic lay down in his rustling bunk, and the place had been locked and the black sentry placed at the door, it seemed to the listener as if the great goat-suckers were whirring about just outside, and the bull-frogs had come in a body to the very edge of the woods and up the ditches of the ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... leg; pass by at evening, and they have moved on three hundred yards, and are resting again. In the daytime hens peck and cackle in every street; at nightfall the bordering veldt hums with crickets and bullfrogs. At morn come a flight of locusts—first, yellow-white scouts whirring down every street, then a pelting snowstorm of them high up over the houses, spangling the blue heaven. But Burghersdorp cared nothing. "There is nothing for them," said a farmer, with cosy satisfaction; "the frost killed ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... eyes lazily roamed his surroundings, evidently a bedroom and bath in a good hotel. His head was whirring and picture after picture was forming and blurring and melting before his eyes, but beyond the desire to laugh he had no entirely conscious reaction. He reached for ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... swamps where loathsome, crawling things that shun by day the presence of man, now seemed to seek his acquaintance. How mysterious are these dense untrodden forests of the South! The very air one breathes is living. Throughout the day a million chirping, whirring, twittering sounds, salute the ear. The short grass beneath the forest trees moves, writhes, and creeps with microscopic life, until the brain grows dizzy at the sight. At night it is no less marvellous to hear the myriad denizens of the swamps ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... clock to pieces will fall Sans groaning of axle or whirring of wheel. And away like a mist of the morning steal, To stand no more in creation's hall; Its mighty weights will fall down plumb Into the regions where all is dumb; No more will its hands, in horror ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... to believe me that, as I did so, the whirring of wheels within the contrivance stopped, and at that moment I heard a human throat inhale a long breath with a frightened gasp! It was as if the balanced glass eyes of the figure had recognized me or seen in my ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... Janice, with glad tears in her eyes, turned and thanked Philemon by a glance that meant far more than any words. Then she went to her room, only to lie for hours staringly awake, listening to the wild whirring and whistling of the wind as she bemoaned her unintentional treachery to the aide, and sought for ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... in close proximity to railroad tracks, or upon the main thoroughfares of cities where stone or asphalt pavements resound to every hoof-fall, and where street cars go whirring and clanging by all night long, is something more than an anachronism; it is a fiendish disregard of ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... explore the shelf, when something went whizzing past his head, and, embedding itself in a stunted oak behind him, shook and quivered with the shock,—a Tonto arrow. Only an instant did he see it, photographed as by electricity upon the retina, when with a sharp stinging pang and whirring "whist" and thud a second arrow, better aimed, tore through the flesh and muscles just at the outer corner of his left eye, and glanced away down the hill. With one spring he gained the edge of the shelf, and shouted to the scouts to come on. Even as he did so, bang! bang! went the reports ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... a space with her foot and sat down on the top step. Beside her loomed the blank warehouse wall, and from the narrow passage-way below came the smell of garbage. The clanging of cars and the rumbling of trucks mingled with the nearer sounds of whirring sewing machines in Lavinski's sweat-shop on the floor below. From somewhere around the corner came, at intervals, the sharp cry of a woman in agony. With that last sound Nance was all too familiar. The coming and going of a ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... wet evening, several months after the last chapter, two interminable rows of cars, pulled by slipping horses, jangled along a prominent side-street. A dozen cabs, with coat-enshrouded drivers, clattered to and fro. Electric lights, whirring softly, shed a blurred radiance. A flower dealer, his feet tapping impatiently, his nose and his wares glistening with rain-drops, stood behind an array of roses and chrysanthemums. Two or three theatres emptied a ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane
... wind; the sway of summer lay over all things. But, though the heat was broiling, the walk was lovely. All about me was alive with voice or perfume. Clouds of linnets fluttered among the branches, golden beetles crawled upon the grass, thousands of tiny whirring wings beat the air—flies, gnats, gadflies, bees—all chorusing the life—giving warmth of the day and the sunshine that bathed and penetrated all nature. I halted from time to time in the parched glades to seek my way, and again pushed onward through the forest paths overarched with ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... Mrs. Sutherland's right hand, she was always ready to do her bidding. Mrs. Sutherland would call across the room full of shirts and towels and whirring machines, "Mrs. Boyd, my dear, could you find me the back of this shirt? I must have mislaid it." And Joanna would run and wait on her hand and foot, Joanna who used to throw the dishwater so it would splash ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... and laughter glowing in her countenance as she watched the landscape that fled by them, with its hillsides clad in their brightest green and with its fresh-plowed farm-lands and snowy orchards; the clattering of the horses' hoofs and the whirring of the wheels in the sandy road were music and inspiration such as Helen longed for, and she would have sung with all her heart had ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... of the procession began to pass, now, and it was a wonderful sight. It swept along, thick and solid, five hundred thousand angels abreast, and every angel carrying a torch and singing—the whirring thunder of the wings made a body's head ache. You could follow the line of the procession back, and slanting upward into the sky, far away in a glittering snaky rope, till it was only a faint streak in the distance. ...
— Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven • Mark Twain
... tread of sentinels at their posts. He wondered that he had ever gained his present position unnoticed. It was doubtful now that he could make his own escape, for a gray dawn was breaking in the east. But the thought of his own danger troubled the boy little. He was thinking of a peculiar whirring sound that he and the master had once practiced together. A sound like an insect. "'Twould be a good signal," the teacher had said. Would ...
— Then Marched the Brave • Harriet T. Comstock
... manager, sharply, and the play proceeded, while the young moving picture operator clicked away at the handle of his camera, the long strip of film moving behind the lens with a whirring sound, and registering views of the pantomime of the actors and actresses at the rate of sixteen ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms - Or Lost in the Wilds of Florida • Laura Lee Hope
... still whirring up and down Stoney Island Avenue when Sommers left the cottage, but he did not think to stop one. Instead, he walked on heedlessly, mechanically, toward the city. Frequently he stumbled and with difficulty saved himself from falling over the dislocated planks of the wooden walk. The ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... weapons. We who look on from the outside marvel at their skill. Here is the carpenter bumble-bee hovering and darting about the verge-board of my porch-roof as I write this. It darts swiftly this way and that, and now and then pauses in midair, surrounded by a blur of whirring wings, as often does the hummingbird. How it does it, I do not know. I cannot count or distinguish the separate stroke of its wings. At the same time, the chimney swifts sweep by me like black arrows, on wings apparently as stiff as if made of tin or sheet-iron, now beating ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... bosom of this wood; And as Guy went he saw two eyes of fire Burn through the darkness of the wood, like blasts Sent from a smith's forge suddenly at night. But, nought dismay'd, he bent his bow of steel, And sent an arrow whirring through the leaves. He heard the shaft ring on the monster's ribs, And backward leap, as when a falchion strikes Full on a warrior's casque with fiery force; Whereat with roaring horrible to hear, Like storm-winds belching through a cavern's mouth, Forth rush'd the monster, furious ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... eagerly, boyishly. "Yes. Whirring wheels, a current of traffic, a broad highway of steel—that's the sort of monument I want ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... the engine, which he must keep going in order to turn out the produce of a great city factory. He was no more here than one of the many parts of that engine, and if some day he should be absorbed into the midst of those whirring wheels and ground up like corn, who would ever ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... moment a whirring in the air and a joyous shout were heard. It was Prince Ricardo flying home ...
— Prince Ricardo of Pantouflia - being the adventures of Prince Prigio's son • Andrew Lang
... the precipice. He stooped down and stepped upon the narrow wall, calling all the time to his sheep, who followed close upon his heels, walking in single file. He said "tahl, tahl," "come, come," and then made a shrill whirring call, which could be heard above the roaring of the waves on the rocks below. It was wonderful to see how closely they followed the shepherd. They did not seem to notice the camels on the one side, or the abyss on the other side. Had they left the narrow ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... grand-aunt (whose portrait we still have in the family) who got into the clock-case at the Royal Rosicrucian Lodge at Bungay, Suffolk, to spy the proceedings of the Society, of which her husband was a member, and being frightened by the sudden whirring and striking eleven of the clock (just as the Deputy-Grand-Master was bringing in the mystic gridiron for the reception of a neophyte), rushed out into the midst of the lodge assembled; and was elected, by a desperate unanimity, Deputy-Grand-Mistress for life. ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... self-possession that belongs to those with horses, guns, and dressing-bags. The wife, her chin comfortably settled in her fur, kept her grey eyes on the ground, and, when she spoke, her even and unruffled voice reached Shelton's ears above all the whirring of the traffic. It was leisurely precise, as if it had never hurried, had never been exhausted, or passionate, or afraid. Their talk, like that of many dozens of fine couples invading London from their ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the recovery we sought merely a purposeless whirring of machinery. It is important, of course, that every man and woman in the country be able to find work, that every factory run, that business and farming as a whole earn profits. But Government in a democratic Nation does not exist solely, or ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... as the rest of the body. Only about three inches of the folded primaries show white. The breast seems to have golden iridescent colors, white under the wings. It allowed me to approach within twenty feet. It walked down a sixty degree slope of the rock, took flight with a few whirring wing-beats, then sailed with wings perfectly motionless four hundred yards down a gentle grade, and vanished over the brow of a cliff. Ten days ago Loomis told me that he found a nest with nine eggs. On the way down to my sled I saw four more ptarmigans. They ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... bird. The flock of chattering birds flew by with whirring wings. "Oop! oop!" called some to ...
— Old Indian Legends • Zitkala-Sa
... maid and dame, All took the sight's electric stirring, And hats were waved and staves were sung, And kerchiefs white were countless whirring. ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... were large, and the hole where a nail was missing had not to be sought. Cosmo took a fine bradawl, and pushed it gently into the hoof. A loud, whirring noise followed, but with ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... grind of a motor's starting crank, the chug of an engine. As its strident whirring continued her captor came again to her side, and with rudeness aided her to the seat of what she took to be a small car. She felt the leap of the car under his rude driving as he turned the gas on full, felt it ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... but as he was afraid of descending among them, he made a noose with a long piece of rattan, lowered it gently, and slipping it over one of them, drew her up into the tree. She cried out, and they all disappeared with a whirring noise. The girl he caught was very young, and she cried sadly because she had no clothes on; so he rolled her in a chawat (long sash), and immediately heard the gongs at his own house, which he had thought was a long way off. He took the child home, and she was brought up by his ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... its bosom, crinkling the surface as it passed, and rustling the tops of a few trees along the bank as it went on and was lost in the wood beyond. The great wilderness, on every hand, stretched miles and miles away, until it was lost afar, like a sea of gloom, in the sky. Once a night-bird rushed whirring past, so startlingly close, that the Lieutenant felt a cold chill run over him as its wings fanned his face. It shot off like a bullet directly across the river, and could be distinguished for several minutes, its body resembling ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis
... with the stationmaster, constituted the entire railway staff at Verrieres, came bustling along the platform, and while the bell continued its monotonous whirring ring, pulled forward trucks in readiness for any possible luggage. Puffing portentously, the engine slackened speed, and the heavy train slowed down and finally stopped, bringing a noisy atmosphere of life into the station ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... hear the great drums pounding, And the small drums steady whirring; And every blow of the great convulsive drums Strikes me ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... night. I thought the morning and evening warble of birds delightful; but I find I can listen to these strange insects with just as much pleasure. A single locust is now heard near noon from a tree two hundred feet off, as I write—a long whirring, continued, quite loud noise graded in distinct whirls, or swinging circles, increasing in strength and rapidity up to a certain point, and then a fluttering, quietly tapering fall. Each strain is continued from one to two minutes. The locust-song is very appropriate to the scene—gushes, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... among the bushes a whirring of wings, and up flew a covey of large birds of the turkey species. Flinn stepped briskly aside, saying, "Now thin, let drive!" while the attenuated black fell cautiously ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... roughness at the extremity of the recess. He was aware instantly that there was some secret spring; he pressed with some force on the spot, and he felt the board give way; he pushed it back towards him, and it slid suddenly with a whirring noise, and left a cavity below exposed to his sight. He peered in, and drew forth a paper; he opened it at first carelessly, for he was still trying to listen to Fanny. His eye ran rapidly over a few preliminary lines till it ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... people saw him, they sent up loud shouts of welcome until the venerated man landed. A steep ascent led up the banks of the lake to the place occupied by the council; and, as he walked up, a loud whirring sound was heard above, as if caused by some rushing current of air. Instantly, the eyes of all were directed upward to the sky, where was seen a dark spot, something like a small cloud, descending rapidly, and as it approached, enlarging in its size and increasing ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... believed to be injured inwardly, as he spat blood, and suffered almost the pain of death. The ride with these men, over twenty miles of hilly, woody country, was like one of Dante's excursions into the Shades. In the awful stillness of the dark pines, their screams frightened the hooting owls, and the whirring insects in the leaves and tree-tops quieted their songs. They heard the gurgle of the rills, and called aloud for water to quench their insatiate thirst. One of them sang a shrill, fierce, fiendish ballad, in an interval of relief, but plunged, ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... the Master's eye is on us, Never off us, still upon us, Night and day! Work away! Keep the busy fingers plying, Keep the ceaseless shuttles flying; See that never thread lie wrong; Let not clash or clatter round us, Sound of whirring wheels, confound us; Steady hand! let woof be strong And firm, that has to last so long! ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... branches; the air was filled with beauteous sights and soft murmuring melodies. Under the shade of the luxuriant hop-vines, that covered the rustic porch in front of the little dwelling, the light step of Catharine Maxwell might be heard mixed with the drowsy whirring of the big wheel, as she passed to and fro guiding the thread of yarn in its course: and now she sang snatches of old mountain songs, such as she had learned from her father; and now, with livelier ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... Hill, I'll come and pick you up and we 'll be off like a streak of lightning across the hills to New Hampshire. How lucky that Riverboro is only thirty miles from the state line!—It looks like snow, and how I wish it would be something more than a flurry; a regular whizzing, whirring storm that would pack the roads and let us slip over ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... she was torn from their arms and hoisted into the cart; and Mahony, the reins in his hand, began to unstiffen from the wooden figure-head he had felt himself during the ceremony, and under the whirring tongues and whispered confidences of ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... sleep. The window stood open, and the room was filled with the soft mysterious twilight of the summer night with its thousand wandering perfumes, its tiny sounds of bats and whirring wings. ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... five o'clock, from beneath the ridge of the mountain, where the shadows of night still lingered, a strange noise swept across the air, a sort of whirring, accompanied by the beating of mighty wings. And had it been a clear day, perhaps the farmers would have seen the passage of a mighty bird of prey, some monster of the skies, which having risen from the Great Eyrie sped away toward ...
— The Master of the World • Jules Verne
... all the Rebel boats. The air is full of indescribable noises. The water boils and bubbles around us. It is tossed up in columns and jets. There are sudden flashes overhead, explosions, and sulphurous clouds, and whirring of ragged pieces of iron. The uproar increases. The cannonade reverberates from the high bluff behind the city to the dark-green forest upon the Arkansas shore, and echoes ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... soft whirring in the air like the sound of a humming-bird close by; it came from a spinning-wheel, and grew louder as a servant admitted me into the house and guided me to a sunny ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... He seized the prickly branches coiling about and above him; he gasped in prayerful pleading, the home teaching still strong in him; but there was no answer, save the crooning night-birds and the croaking frogs. Slimy things touched his torn flesh; whirring birds shot past him, disturbed in their night perches. The deadly odor, pungent and nauseous, of a thousand exhaling herbs, filled his nostrils. The darkness grew, instinct with threatening forms. He gasped, struggled, and in a fervent outburst of thanksgiving ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... out his boat, and made ready for the day's sail. Sometimes the talk grew so absorbing that the factory bell sounded out its last warning call before Bridget could tear herself away, and afterward, through the long day, shut up among the whirring wheels, in the dust and heat of the big dreary room, she kept the vision of the white flapping sail, and of Michael Davitt standing by the tiller of the boat ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... a laugh like the whirring sound in a disabled clock. "Not yet up? Had she gone to bed? Do you know at what time she came on board? This morning at seven!" ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... boundary-walls were cloaked with clambering vines, and under a leaning cliff over on the left the mulberry grove had planted itself, proclaiming the spring which the party were seeking. And thither the guide conducted them, careless of whistling partridges and lesser birds of brighter hues roused whirring ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... her raid upon the raiders, Jacqueline posed and strutted happily, making the welkin ring with the piteousness of Madame Butterfly. From without came distant, languid, sounds of late summer, grass-mowers whirring in the hay-meadows, a stallion nickering in his stall for the freedom of the pasture, crickets and katydids shrilling their cheerful dirge for the summer that was passing. All of these sounds the girl knew and savored in the intervals between her singing. Now and then ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... the use of the sewing machine in the Mission bungalow. All the days before Christmas her bare feet on the treadle keep the wheels whirring. Morning and afternoon she is at it, for Jewel has a quiver full of little brothers and sisters, and in India no one can go to church on Christmas without a new and holiday-colored garment. One after another they come from Jewel's deft fingers and lie on the floor ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... a very little, just to peep inside. All at once there was a whirring, rustling sound, and before she could shut it down again, out flew ten thousand strange creatures with death-like faces and gaunt and dreadful forms, such as nobody in all the world had ever seen. ...
— Old Greek Stories • James Baldwin
... Super-elephants would say, and quite properly, "What a horrible life!" But it naturally seems stimulating to simians. Boys envy the fellow. On the other hand whenever we are told about factory life, we instinctively shudder to think of enduring such evils. We see some old workman, filling cans with a whirring machine; and we hear the humanitarians telling us, indignant and grieving, that he actually must stand in that nice, warm, dry room every day, safe from storms and wild beasts, and with nothing to do but fill cans; and at once we groan: "How deadly! What monotonous toil! Shorten his hours!" His work ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day
... bells and whistles drowned our voices, and, amid the whirring of switch-bells, the hissing of steam, and the cries of 'Paris! All out!' our train ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... a moment of silence, no sound of word, no movement of horse or foot upon the ground. Insects among the trees were grinding their scythes for tomorrow's reaping, it seemed, whirring in loud, harsh chorus such as one never heard out on ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... Time's whirring loom our garments we've wrought Eternally weave we on network of Thought, Our kin and our country, by Mind brought to birth, Were patterned in ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... time over the simple operation. His impulse towards unreserve puzzled him, and several seconds of silence passed before he spoke again; silence, emphasised by broken snatches of talk and laughter; by the sharp crack of guns; and the whirring of a hundred wings, like the restless murmuring in ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... was not the false courage of association with a crowd. Before this enterprise at hand she could not remember anything she had undertaken alone. Her thrills seemed to be in abeyance to the end of her journey. That night her sleep was permeated with the steady low whirring of the wheels. Once, roused by a jerk, she lay awake in the darkness while the thought came to her that she and all her fellow passengers were really at the mercy of the engineer. Who was he, and ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... ornaments, long braided hair, feathers in his head, and his right hand flourishing a bayonet. The dancing consisted in the actors leaping suddenly to their feet with a whoop, and working the whole body convulsively up and down while standing on their toes, without moving from their position, a monotonous whirring sound being kept up all the time, in which the squaws sitting around assisted. This was kept up long enough for me to sketch one man, when with another whoop and a flourish they sank into a squatting position, the drums still going on unceasingly. After a little rest up they got again, ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... grave, so remote, so silent. That endless torturing thought—the chain of weary reproach and useless speculation, which beset every waking moment—had ceased for the moment. It was like quiet after a perpetual whirring sound. ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... hard to stalk, and as they generally frequented the tallest trees they were out of shot. They usually flew about in flocks, and made a most extraordinary noise, rather like a whole farmyard full of turkeys, guinea fowls and dogs. The whirring noise they made with their wings was not unlike the shunting of a locomotive. I had often before heard of the curious habit of the male in plastering up the female with mud in the hollow of a tree, ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... from, we discovered the songster to be a song-sparrow. Focussing our "gun" upon the bird we made note of its coloring and marking, making sure that if we heard or saw another we would recognize it at once. While we were eating our breakfast, there was a dash of white, yellow, and grayish-brown, a whirring sound and, as the bird lighted upon the low bushes nearby, a clear, piercing whistle came from its throat. Our "gun" revealed to us a meadow lark. By this time the boys were as much excited over the bird hunt as over ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... from Corinna's thoughts that they seemed to drift to her from some distant point in space, out of the world beyond the garden and the black brows of the cedars. They were as meaningless as the wind that brought them, or the whirring of the white moth at the window. Beneath her vacant words and expressionless gestures, which were like the words and gestures of an automaton, she was conscious of a profound current of feeling which flowed steadily between Alice Rokeby and herself; and on this current there was borne all ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... long rangy book-shelves, he sensed with a very different feeling through his heavy oak door, the soft whirring swish of skirts and the breathy twitter of muffled voices. Faintly to his acute ears came the sound of his little daughter's temperish protest, "I won't! I won't!" and the White Linen Nurse's fervid pleading, "Oh, you must,—you must!" and ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... their never-changing vesture of gloom despise the bright garniture of Spring, and where, instead of the joyous carolling of little birds awakened anew to gladness, nothing is heard but the ominous croak of the raven and the whirring scream of the storm-boding sea-gull. A quarter of a mile distant Nature suddenly changes. As if by the wave of a magician's wand you are transported into the midst of thriving fields, fertile arable ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... She had run In fear of him, his evil leering eye, And when he came she, bolted in her room, Refused to show, though gave no reason why. The spinning of her future had begun, On quiet nights she heard the whirring of her doom. ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... at this invasion of her domain, no sooner saw them than she changed them all into crows. Night came on, and their little sister was anxiously awaiting her brothers' return, when on a sudden she heard a loud whirring sound in the air, and round the tree flocked a hundred black crows, cawing and offering her berries and roots which they had dug up with their sharp bills. Then the little sister guessed too truly what must have happened—that some malignant spirit had metamorphosed her brothers into this hideous ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... cliffs, from whence there was a path through the rocks up to Ardkill. And there he would remain for hours,—having his gun with him, but caring little for his gun. He told himself that he loved the rocks and the wildness of the scenery, and the noise of the ocean, and the whirring of the birds above and below him. It was certainly true that he ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... nest I discovered in a dense forest on the side of a mountain. The sitting bird was disturbed as I passed beneath her. The whirring of her wings arrested my attention, when, after a short pause, I had the good luck to see, through an opening in the leaves, the bird return to her nest, which appeared like a mere wart or excrescence on a small branch. The humming-bird, unlike all others, ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... often to spend the whole night stalking the deer or setting traps for game. Now it happened one night that he was watching in a clump of bushes near the lake for some wild ducks that he wished to trap. Suddenly he heard, high up in the air, a whirring of wings and thought the ducks were coming; and he strung his bow and got ready his arrows. But instead of ducks there appeared seven maidens all clad in robes made of feathers, and they alighted on the banks of the lake, and taking off their robes plunged into the waters and bathed and sported ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs
... in America, but everywhere to-day, Where snow-crowned mountains hold their heads, the vales where children play, Beside the bench and whirring lathe, on every lake and stream And in the depths of earth below, men share a common dream— The dream our brave forefathers had of freedom and of right, And once again in honor's ...
— Over Here • Edgar A. Guest
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