"Buzz" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Edmund of the olden time, than she had ever seen him since her father's death. There were a good many people at luncheon that day. Mr. Faulkner was there, and there were some visitors staying in the house. Edmund was a good way from her, and she could only hear his voice now and then in the buzz; but it was a very pleasant sound to hear, and when he laughed, it was his own natural, free, gay laugh, such as it used to be. She was sure he was very happy, and wondered if it was possible Aunt Jessie's fortune could have made ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... on them cannot be sufficiently repaid. His instruments have a feature of their own; they are supplied with a peculiar escapement. Not one in a hundred makers attends to this; but, without it, it is impossible that a piano should not buzz and jar. His hammers fall as soon as they touch the strings, whether the keys be held down by the fingers or not. When he has completed an instrument of this class, (which he told me himself,) he ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... friend had recovered, or from other consciousness, he went no farther; and Anne who, in spite of the agitated voice in which the latter part had been uttered, and in spite of all the various noises of the room, the almost ceaseless slam of the door, and ceaseless buzz of persons walking through, had distinguished every word, was struck, gratified, confused, and beginning to breathe very quick, and feel an hundred things in a moment. It was impossible for her to enter on such a subject; ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... that had ever fallen upon the island seemed to have left some of their heat behind them here. The air was damp and close like the air of a laundry; and the mournful and perpetual buzz of insects filled ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... sleepit whan he was at the castle?" he inquired across the buzz and whiz and hum of the wheel. Through the low window, betwixt the leaves of the many plants that shaded it, he could see the sun shining hot upon the bare street; but inside was soft gloom filled ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... voices in which you may hear the sound of the wheels of machinery and the buzz of business, they tell us that should the Lord suddenly come it would paralyze all industry, put an end to commerce and to trade, overthrow all progress, make worthless every high endeavour for the betterment of man, shut the doors of school, of college and university, render useless ...
— Why I Preach the Second Coming • Isaac Massey Haldeman
... Molly asks Philip, presently, in a low tone, when the buzz is at its highest; "very old, I mean? ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... "Buzz if you do. The idgit is working out the supply list for that new exploration ship, and it wants service, too," she reminded him. "It's worse than you are," ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... love come back to me like music— Mid-ocean, midnight, the waves buzz drowsily; In the ship's deep churning the eerie phosphorescence Is like the souls of people who were drowned at sea, And I can hear a man's voice, speaking, hushed, insistent, At midnight, in mid-ocean, ...
— Flame and Shadow • Sara Teasdale
... hum and a stir and a buzz of whispering in the room. Two gray old men and two pretty young women passed up the aisle to the platform. One old man was stalwart and ruddy, with a cordial eye and a handsome, smooth-shaven, big face. The other was bent and trembled slightly; ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... talk she sometimes thought she heard a distressed sound in the hall. The buzz of tongues covered it up, then again she heard it, and she was sure at last that it was the voice of a dog. Never came an appeal in vain from any four-footed creature to Fleda's heart. All the rest being busy with their own affairs she quietly ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... only errand a man can go on, and not be willing to take another chap along. And I'll bet anything I've got, except my girl and my buzz-cart, that it isn't the fair, false one we met at the hour of ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... a little buzz through the church. All the occupants of the pews rose; all heads were turned towards the door. In the excitement of the moment the Beatricites clasped the Hartites by the hands, Mrs. Bell's fat fingers rested on ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... croaking of the frogs, the snore of the tree toads, the incessant buzz and chirr of insects, and the multitudinous nocturnal sounds incidental to life upon a tropical island overgrown with vegetation, ay, and despite the mosquitoes, too, all hands slept soundly that night, and awoke next morning refreshed and ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... Sir Buzz The Rat's Wedding The Faithful Prince The Bear's Bad Bargain Prince Lionheart and his Three Friends The Lambkin Bopolûchî Princess Aubergine Valiant Vicky, the Brave Weaver The Son of Seven Mothers The Sparrow and the Crow The Tiger, the Brâhman, and the Jackal The King of the Crocodiles ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... noise had subsided. The boats came no longer in splashing clusters of three or four together, but dropped alongside singly, in a subdued buzz of expostulation cut short by a "Not a pace more! You go to the devil!" from some man staggering up the accommodation-ladder—a dark figure, with a long bag poised on the shoulder. In the forecastle the newcomers, upright and swaying ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... was added the flutter of wings; for the birds had begun to shift perches, and to exchange slaps as well as to call names—the movement setting toward the tree-tops. None of the sparrows had left the roost. The storm of chatter increased and the buzz of wings quickened into a steady whir, the noise holding its own with that of the ice-wagons pounding past. The birds were filling the top-most branches, a gathering of the clans, evidently, for the day's start. The clock in Scollay Square station pointed to five minutes to ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... more numerous from day to day, inspect the premises; they buzz outside the glass galleries and the reed dwellings; they go in, stay for a while, come out, go in again and then fly away briskly into the garden. They return, first one, then another. They halt outside, in the sun, on the shutters fastened back against the wall; they hover in the window-recess, ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... consciousness," as antecedent to the infinity of processes simultaneously going on in all the plants that cover the globe, from scattered polar lichens to crowded tropical palms, and in all the millions of animals which roam among them, and the millions of millions of insects which buzz among them:'—Then the Psalmist would have answered him, I believe,—'If you cannot, my friend, I can. And you must not make your power of thought and conception the measure of the universe, or even of other men's ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... paying the army, just as if he was king, as I suppose he hopes to be some day. You wait till he gets his way, and I guess the tax collectors will make the people sing a different tune about him. If I'm elected to the Assembly this spring, I calculate to make some ears buzz and tingle a bit, once the legislature meets. I'll teach some of these swaggering military chaps—who were n't nothing but bond-servants once yet who some of you fellows is fools enough now to talk of sending to Congress— that this is a nation of freemen, and that now that ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... restraint were forgotten in this struggle for the common preservation, and above the buzz of general intense discussion there rose always the voice of some speaker with an idea ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... Cransac, bristling with tall chimneys and in a cloud of dark coal-smoke that filled the valley. Here, instead of the solemn calm of the barren uplands, the murmurous chanting of rills and shallow rivers, and the mystical voices that speak from the depths of the forest, I heard the fretful buzz of a human beehive. Here was human life intensified and yet lowered in tone by aggregation, by the strain of organized effort that suppresses initiative and makes the value of a man merely a question of dynamics. The number of shops, especially of drinking-shops—sordid ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... I have often seen, not only little boys and girls, but also chickens, small birds, and shrew-mice, evidently alarmed at his minatory attitude. So, too, the bumble-bee flies, which are inoffensive insects got up in sedulous imitation of various species of wild bee, flit about and buzz angrily in the sunlight, quite after the fashion of the insects they mimic; and when disturbed they pretend to get excited, and seem as if they wished to fly in their assailant's face and roundly sting him. This curious instinct may be put side by side with the ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... for the last and most elaborate feature of the day, Percival's enlistment was not discovered. It was not until the contestants ranged themselves in front of the judges' table that a buzz of fresh interest and amazement swept the deck. First came the Scot, lean, wiry, and deadly determined; then came Andy, plump and pink, with his fair hair ruffled, and a laughing retort on his lips for every ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... l'Observatoire! O pensive infantry soldiers! O all those charming nurses who, while they guard the children, amuse themselves! The pampas of America would please me if I had not the arcades of the Odeon. My soul flits away into the virgin forests and to the savannas. All is beautiful. The flies buzz in the sun. The sun has sneezed out the humming ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... better set of guests than in the Golden Lamb. The place is full. The great Dr. Hammond sees his patients there, and it is all one buzz of the wits. It was because of that that my Lord Sunderland made interest, and got me ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... observed it to comprehend. All the forenoon, screams, and cries, and croaks, and grunts, and whistles, ring out through the woods incessantly; while, if you listen attentively, you hear the low, deep, and never-ending buzz and hum of millions upon millions of insects, that dance in the air and creep on every leaf and blade upon the ground. About noon all this is hushed. The hot rays of the sun beat perpendicularly down upon what seems a vast untenanted solitude, and not ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... aid a whole legion of poetical authorities; all which, I presume, have been conclusive with the young couple, as I understand they are perfectly willing to marry in May, and abide the consequences. In a few days, therefore, the wedding is to take place, and the Hall is in a buzz of anticipation. The housekeeper is bustling about from morning till night, with a look full of business and importance, having a thousand arrangements to make, the squire intending to keep open house on the occasion; and as to ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... were there, men who meant eventually to assume the gray habit, and carry the Gospel over wilderness and forest, in the slums of towns, or amongst the heathen, counting peril as nought. There was no buzz of conversation, only from a stone pulpit the reader read a ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... In this buzz is all the world at present: as the plot thickens or opens, you shall hear more. In the mean time you will not dislike to know a little of the circumstances of this death. Mr. Pelham was not sixty-one; his florid, healthy constitution ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... ready. "Ask," she replied instantly, "for John the Baptist's head." Back from her mother she tripped into the banqueting-hall, her black eyes flashing with cruel hate, lighted from her mother's fierceness. A dead silence fell on the buzz of conversation, and every ear strained for her reply. "And she came in straightway with haste unto the king, and asked, saying, I will that thou forthwith give me in a charger the head of ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... buzz of bee And scent of flower; a dash of foam On rugged cliffs; the blessed sea, ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... of moths the males 'assemble' around the freshly emerged female, but no special advantage appears to attend on early arrival. The female sits apparently motionless, while the little crowd of suitors buzz around her for several minutes. Suddenly, and, as far as one can see, without any sign from the female, one of the males pairs with her and all the others immediately disappear. In these cases the males do not fight or struggle in any way, and as one watches the ceremony the wonder ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... fact is becoming generally recognised. You cannot go anywhere without hearing a buzz of more or less confused and contradictory talk on this subject—nor can you fail to notice that, in one point at any rate, there is a very decided advance upon like discussions in former days. Nobody outside the agricultural interest now dares to say that education ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... to awaken. He listened, but could hear no sound except the buzz of insects, and he knew, by the light which came in from the upper part of the entrance, that the sun was ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... circle of social chatterboxes, male commuters, and female shoppers. Some talked of their machines and rattled off the names of the makers. There was the Pierce-Arrow, the Packard, the Buick, and all the rest of the mechanical buzz-wagons. There was an inextricable mass of phrases—six-cylinder, self-starter, non-puncturable, non-skiddable. But he did n't hear any such terms as non-collidable, non-turnoverable, or non-waltz-down-the-hillable. Nor did they spare him the patriarchal jokes about the ubiquitous ...
— Skinner's Dress Suit • Henry Irving Dodge
... more pleased with her play. The velocipede described wider and wider gyrations with accelerating speed; its keen buzz swelled on ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... all the faces that rose as one while the judge sidled from the bench, and the jury filed out of their box, and the prisoner disappeared down the dock stairs for the last time in ignorance of her fate. Next moment there was the buzz of talk that you expect in a theatre between the acts, rather than in a court of justice at the solemn crisis of a solemn trial. It was like a class-room with the master called away. Hats were put on again ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... the list was that of the Rev. Harvey Goodwin; and a faint buzz in the assembly was interpreted by the Vice-Chancellor, skilled in such sounds, as an expression of approval. Thereupon he passed on to name number two, which, with some agitation, but with clear, resonant ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... Hum-a-bum buzz! As I went over Tipple-tine I met a flock of bonny swine; Some yellow-nacked, some yellow backed! They were the very bonniest swine That e'er went ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter
... could still feel Madame Greloux's tears on my hand, and the scene seemed to me as lugubrious as the last toilette of a prisoner under sentence of death. When they had completed their task, I heard a buzz of admiration round me. If the sisters were worthy of belief, they had never seen such a wonderful transformation. Those who were in the class-rooms or the sewing-room, were summoned to view and admire me, and some of the elder children were also ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... moment, then said seriously, under the cover of a loud buzz of talk, 'He's wasting his time, dear ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... appearance bespoke fatigue and long travel; and as she neared the Upper Castle gate, she had to lean against the railing for support. The lamps were lighted, carriages rolling to and fro, and all the buzz of life was ringing in her ears; but, oh! from the expression of pain and suffering in her face, and the shrinking with which she surveyed the sentinels pacing up and down, it was evident that her mind but little accorded ...
— Ellen Duncan; And The Proctor's Daughter - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... half-grown boys noisily fared at another table; the Mexicans hung listless and phlegmatic about their wares. And it was still. The night hum of the city crowded to the wall of dark buildings surrounding the Plaza, and subsided to an indefinite buzz through which sharply perforated the crackle of the languid fires and the rattle of fork and spoon. A sedative wind blew from the southeast. The starless firmament pressed down upon the ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... park was the buzz of the approaching throng which was blackening the roads. The invasion was beginning again, but with a refluent movement. For hours at a time great strings of gray trucks went puffing by; then regiments ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... twilight thing, with drab and black patches here and there. The soft humming passed into a faint buzz that died away quite; and all ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... to paint dames like that," Bland was saying to the dazed professor. He explained how his pictures had enabled many a novelist to "eat up the highway in a buzz-wagon." As he approached the time when the novelists besieged him, he gave full play to his imagination. One, he said, sought out his apartments ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... vast wilderness, full of snares and dangers, behold many of them I have cut off, and thrust out of my heart, as Thou hast given me, O God of my salvation. And yet when dare I say, since so many things of this kind buzz on all sides about our daily life- when dare I say that nothing of this sort engages my attention, or causes in me an idle interest? True, the theatres do not now carry me away, nor care I to know the courses of the stars, nor did my soul ever consult ghosts departed; all sacrilegious ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... ground or may be plowed out in May and June and are commonly spoken of as May-beetles or June-bugs. They are usually of a yellowish-brown color and are often troublesome coming into the house at night where they buzz about the light, bumping into everything until they finally drop heavily to the floor. All country boys and ...
— An Elementary Study of Insects • Leonard Haseman
... file. We scarcely exchanged another word until our horses came abreast in the creek and stopped to drink. Conditions beyond were much the same until near the end of our detour, when my horse swerved abruptly and the buzz of a rattlesnake sounded almost under foot. The mare swerved, too, and hurried forward to ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... even the complexion, the one like silver, the other like the camelia. Having breakfasted from white dishes placed on a white napkin, she was busy with a carpet-sweeper sweeping up possible crumbs. In an interval of the carpet-sweeper's buzz she heard ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... soon the streets were full of scurrying pedestrians. Most of them followed the direction taken by the mob. The listeners in the doorway could hear now, from far away, the sound of shouts and cheering. And from all around them came the buzz and hum of busy streets. The city was thoroughly awake—alert ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... the day there was a grand talolo, or ceremony of gift giving. My mother, as guest of honor, sat just inside the guest house, on a pile of mats, with the rest of us in a semi-circle around her, all facing the sea. There was a hum and buzz of excitement in the village, and we could catch glimpses of fine headdresses and old women scurrying about with mats and flowers. Soon the procession appeared, led by the manaia in full costume, dancing ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... echoes from cracked and crannied ruins; the burnished golden frescoes of Saint Mark's blare at you as with brazen trumpets; every third medieval church has been turned into a moving-picture place; and the shopkeeping parasites buzz about you in vermin swarms and bore holes in your pocketbook until it is all one large painful welt. The emblem of Venice is the winged lion. It ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... mountaineers, he lowered himself, inch by inch, foot by foot. Louder and louder sang the sea, as if in derision at his petty efforts, but through his head there rushed another sound infinitely more terrible: a painful, continuous buzz, which seemed to press upon his temples. A dull pain was slowly creeping up the muscles of his neck towards his head. All these symptoms the climber knew. The buzzing in his ears would never cease ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... would be the Terra rocket making its controlled fall to home with Flip aboard. Without slowing, he leaped across the high speed track, narrowly missing a senior space officer. He shouted his apologies, and gained the entrance to Valve Eight just as the high buzz of the radiation warning sounded, signaling a nuclear drive cruiser preparing ...
— Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet • Blake Savage
... uninterrupted buzz fills the air; it comes from the cicadas whose monotonous note wearies the ear, and from hornets and bees of every description that keep up an incessant hum as they suck Juices from the plants or dive ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... there had been a close and almost breathless attention. As he concluded a buzz of agitation pervaded the group; not a word was spoken for a little while until Pilkington exclaimed, slowly passing one hand over ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... discern, Had known divine Sarpedon, from his head To his foot-sole with mingled blood and dust Polluted, and o'erwhelm'd with weapons. They Around the body swarm'd. As hovel-flies 780 In spring-time buzz around the brimming pails With milk bedew'd, so they around the dead. Nor Jove averted once his glorious eyes From that dread contest, but with watchful note Marked all, the future death in battle deep 785 Pondering of Patroclus, whether him Hector should even now slay on divine Sarpedon, ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... again. The hens paid about as much attention to the roar as a gang of ditch diggers might pay to the buzz of a mosquito. Obviously something more drastic than shooing was necessary. The captain stooped and picked up a stone. He threw the stone and hit a hen. She rose in the air with a frightened squawk, ran around in a circle, and then, coming ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... one for that box of matches, Beany—er—Mr.—and it would be rather asinine for you or your pugilistic partner to begin monkeying with our buzz-saw. I happened, you see, to overhear part of your talk with J. Pinkney Hare just now. How others might view it I know not, but to me it seemed only fair to warn you that that interesting young man must be shunned by the wise. As to the mayoralty, he has as much ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... the 14th of December the troops advanced from Frere to Chieveley. Reveille was sounded at 3 A.M., and soon the camp was one buzz of active life. In the warm glow of camp-fires tents were struck, kits packed, horses fed and watered, and the men breakfasted. Four regiments of infantry "fell in" and moved out from the camp, followed at intervals ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... a drawing-room, your name has been wrongly announced, or has passed unheard in the buzz of conversation, make your way at once to the mistress of the house, if you are a stranger, and introduce yourself by name. This should be done with the greatest simplicity, and your rank made as little ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... paused, his head bent forward, his eyes alert and searching, both hands gripping the table. There was a long silence, in which the ticking of the clock upon the wall seemed unduly loud and in which the buzz of cross-cut saws came sounding through the evening air. Yet Tarboe ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Manna-hata, everybody was anxious to embark under the standard of Oloffe the Dreamer, and to be among the first sharers of the promised land. A day was appointed for the grand migration, and on that day little Communipaw as in a buzz and a bustle like a hive in swarming time. Houses were turned inside out, and stripped of the venerable furniture which had come from Holland; all the community, great and small, black and white, man, woman, and child, was in commotion, forming lines from the houses to the water side, like lines ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... It appeared to be used as a storehouse of some kind, for it was half filled with bags, apparently containing potatoes. In one corner stood a grindstone operated by a treadle. Then the door was shut with a bang, and he was left to his own, none-too-pleasant reflections. Outside he could hear the buzz of voices. But he couldn't catch much of what was being said. Once ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... on the first night, so as to be able to buzz until morning, as they had used to do in their young days, when one of them was allowed to go on a visit to the other and stay overnight. There ensued a very orgy of talk, a going over of all that had happened since their separation, quite as if they had ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... his mind was in a good deal of a hubbub. The mind of almost any lover would be stirred up if he came fresh from an interview, in which his lady had pinned him, to use a cruel figure, in various places on the wall to see how he would spin and buzz in different lights. But the disdainful pin had not yet gone through a vital part of Lawrence's hopes, and they had strength to spin and buzz a good deal yet. As soon as he should have an opportunity he would rack his brains to find out what it was that had put Roberta March into such a strange ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... a moment's buzz—the quiet of a crowd expectant of great events. Then Wallbridge charged into the throng with a roar. I could not distinguish his words, but I knew that he was carrying out my order to drop five thousand shares on the market. At his cry there was an answering roar, and the scene upon the floor ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... accomplished his mysterious rebellion. The idea of such a sigh, of a whisper circling through the planet, of the light growing thick with the unimaginable charge, and the purple eclipse of Death throwing a penumbra; that may, but nothing else ever can, equal the unutterable sublimity of that buzz—that rumour, that susurrus passing from mouth to mouth—nobody knew whence coming or whither tending, and about a being of whom nobody could tell what he should be—what he should resemble—what he should do, but that all peoples and ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and ...
— The Velveteen Rabbit • Margery Williams
... large round table with a huge punchbowl in the centre and a ring of shining glasses about it. Each guest toasted the fair lady of the manor, and some particular lady of his own fancy, with such charming sentiments as his wit supplied. There was a great buzz of talk ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... cloakroom. He inherited the chairmanship of the railroad committee, and all employees came to him for their railroad passes; so he was the god of the blue-bottle flies of politics that feed on legislatures, and buzz pompously about the capitol doing nothing, at three dollars a day. In that session Handy was for the "peepul." He patronised the State Shippers' Association, and told their committee that he would give ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... detector on his table. Occasionally it would buzz with calls: liners or patrols in our general neighborhood. He ignored them with a sardonic smile. Once or twice, when our dim lights might have been sighted, he altered our course sharply. And, when at one period we ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... set fire to evything, to keep it away from the Yanks, aimin to starve em out o dat country. Dat's what dey done. Some of dem Rebs was mean as the Yanks. And dat was bein' mean. Some called de Yanks, 'de Hornets', 'cause dey fight so. Take a Yank an he'd fight acrost a buzz saw and it ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Tennessee Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... Raleigh's friend Captain Keymis admitted a private interview between Cobham and Raleigh during Count Aremberg's stay in London, were then read. In the discussion on these documents the court and the prisoner fell to actual wrangling; in the buzz of voices it was hard to tell what was said, until a certain impression was at last made by Coke, who screamed out that Raleigh 'had a Spanish heart and was a spider of hell.' This produced a lull, and thereupon followed an irrelevant dispute as to whether or no Raleigh had once had in his possession ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... years ago, the Chaldean lover was carried. It is the mark of great art that its appeal is universal and eternal.[3] Significant form stands charged with the power to provoke aesthetic emotion in anyone capable of feeling it. The ideas of men go buzz and die like gnats; men change their institutions and their customs as they change their coats; the intellectual triumphs of one age are the follies of another; only great art remains stable and unobscure. Great art remains stable and unobscure because the ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... general joy. As if intoxicated with delight, the people dance along the streets, sporting merrily with each other's persons and mutually scattering the yellow-tinted fluid. On every side, the music of the drum and the buzz of frolic crowds fill all the air. The very atmosphere is of a yellow hue, with ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... business began Crossfield rose and asked to be allowed to put a question. This was the signal for a general buzz of anticipation which was not lessened by the sight of Messrs. Game and Ashley looking very ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... time. The bar parlor will no longer be open to you, until you have proved your right to be there. And I don't mean to promise any thing certain by that, neither; but what with your fast talking and fine speaking I'm all in a buzz." ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... you may here discern in its perfectest motion, justling and turning. It is a heap of stones and men, with a vast confusion of languages; and were the steeple not sanctified, nothing liker Babel. The noise in it is like that of bees, a strange humming or buzz mixed of walking tongues and feet: it is a kind of still roar or loud whisper. It is the great exchange of all discourse, and no business whatsoever but is here stirring and a-foot. It is the synod of all pates politick, jointed and laid together in most serious ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... which will soon be heard over the heated hay in the valley and over the cooler hills alike. It is not enough to be called a hum, and does but just tremble at the extreme edge of hearing. If the branches wave and rustle they overbear it; the buzz of a passing bee is so much louder it overcomes all of it that is in the whole field. I cannot, define it, except by calling the hours of winter to mind—they are silent; you hear a branch crack or creak as it rubs another in the wood, you hear the hoar-frost ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... Johnson, sir? I don't old with telephones. They buzz at you or makes you jump. And the young person keeps on saying ave you got them? before you've ad time to breathe, in ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... assumed, when he wished, an excellent manner; but this cavalier, his own master from his childhood, knew no other law but his own pleasures and desires. He had made people talk about him in his earliest youth; he awoke the same buzz of scandal now that he was fifty. Madame de Maintenon, hoping to reform him, and wishing to constrain him to beget them an heir, made him consent to the bonds of marriage. She had just discovered a very pretty heiress of very good family, when he married secretly the daughter ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... on a hot afternoon Francesca stepped out from a shop entrance near the Piccadilly end of Bond Street and ran almost into the arms of Merla Blathlington. The afternoon seemed to get instantly hotter. Merla was one of those human flies that buzz; in crowded streets, at bazaars and in warm weather, she attained to the proportions of a human bluebottle. Lady Caroline Benaresq had openly predicted that a special fly-paper was being reserved for her accommodation ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... do they'll get more than they bargained for," said Bart grimly. "They'll find they're monkeying with a buzz saw. What our fellows would do to them would be a sin and a shame. But here come Tom and Billy, if I'm any ...
— Army Boys on German Soil • Homer Randall
... effect spake the Literary Man from London, when next he met Zora. Nunsmere was in a swarm of excitement and the alien bee had, perforce, to buzz with the rest. ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... the Signor announced in a wondering whisper. A little buzz rose, filled the air for a moment and then sank into silence again. Mrs. Lazarus was without her orange because she had to wear mittens now, and that made peeling the thing difficult. "I'm sure," she said, in a voice like that of a very excited cricket, "that Mr. Westcott ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... enough to hold us, and Mrs. Kane doesn't mind if we make a good deal of noise. Come upstairs to my room and take off your wraps. Then we'll join the crowd." A little later they followed their hostess downstairs to the big living room, that seemed fairly overflowing with girls. The buzz of conversation ceased as they entered. Gertrude introduced them one after another to the assembled crowd of young women, who received them with ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... she had in mind; not one fierce hum asked another where the bazaar's money was. That earlier bazaar, in the St. Louis Hotel, had taken six weeks to report its results, and now, with everybody distracted by a swarm and buzz of far larger, livelier, hotter queries, the bazaar's sponsors might report or not, as they chose. Meanwhile, was the city really in dire and shameful jeopardy, or was it as safe as the giddiest boasted? Looking farther away, over across Georgia to Fort Pulaski, so tremendously walled ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... I cannot be a tavern keeper here the rest of my days with nothing to do half of the time except to watch the men pitch horseshoes behind the blacksmith shop, and listen to the flies buzz in the windows on summer afternoons; and everything else so quiet and dead you don't know whether you are on the street or in the graveyard. If you'd ever crossed the Mississippi River ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... smoke of my own breath, Echoes, ripples, buzz'd whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine, My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing of blood and air through my lungs, The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and dark-color'd sea-rocks, and ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... the privileges of the noblesse and of the clergy, and gave his mind anxiously to the instruction of the people, whose condition and welfare he wanted to simultaneously elevate and augment; already there was a buzz of murmurs against him, confined as yet to the courtiers, when the dearness of bread and the distress which ensued till the spring of 1775 furnished his adversaries with a convenient pretext. Up to that time the attacks had been cautious and purely theoretical. M. Necker, an ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Breezes just laughed and laughed and wouldn't say a word. Then all of a sudden, out of the tall meadow grass crept Spotty the Turtle and laid the hickory nut at the feet of old Grandfather Frog. Old Grandfather Frog was so surprised that he actually let a great green fly buzz right past his nose. ...
— Old Mother West Wind • Thornton W. Burgess
... A whisper and buzz went around the court-room when Howkan finished interpreting the affair of the canoe, and one man's voice spoke up: "That was the lost '91 mail, Peter James and Delaney bringing it in and last spoken at Le Barge by Matthews going out." The clerk scratched steadily away, and another ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... conversation rose from the court. Presently the light began to fade, and the buzz faded with it; then some lights were turned on, and there was a crescendo of voices. It was possible to see more clearly the multitude of faces, all of them hot, nearly all of them excited and expressive. ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... old man was trying to find Winch's wound, in order to prevent his bleeding to death while they were carrying him out, when the report of a rifle sounded, seemingly quite near, and a bullet passed with a swift vehement buzz close by their ears. At the instant Frank felt something like a quick tap or jerk on his arm. He looked, and saw that the strip of red flannel, which betokened the service he was engaged in, and which should have rendered his person sacred from any intentional harm, ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... A buzz of comment rose from all sides. "Is that all that you made of such a chance as that?"—"Certainly the gods waste their favors on such as Biorn Herjulfsson."—"Is he a coward, or what does he lack?" "He is as dull ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... rip the spangles from the frame, listening absently to the buzz of talk which rose and fell with the coming and going of Miss Haines's active figure. The air was closer than usual, because Miss Haines, who had a cold, had not allowed a window to be opened even during the noon recess; and Lily's head was so heavy with the weight of ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... palace of our kings. It is that St James's, where they dwelt till nobler buildings rose with the improving times. See here, Charles—there is less ruin here. This opener space was park and garden; and time has been that I have heard the buzz of men filling all this place, when the sovereigns came to hold their courts in that building. I think that this dreadful fire must have taken place before life was quite extinct; for see, there are heaps of bones here, as though men had fled together to avoid it; and it either overtook ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... although they were the sort of men to whom, in their more intimate movements, their wives would very naturally address such nicknames as "Toby Jug," "Marmot," "Fatty," "Pot Belly," "Smutty," "Kiki," and "Buzz-Buzz," they were men also of good heart, and very ready to extend their hospitality and their friendship when once a guest had eaten of their bread and salt, or spent an evening in their company. ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... U-shaped table, the subdued clatter of dinnerware and the buzz of conversation was dying out; the soft music that drifted down from the overhead sound outlets seemed louder as the competing noises diminished. The feast was drawing to a close, and Dallona of Hadron fidgeted nervously with the stem ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper
... met Rufus Carder? Well, ye don't know him or else ye wouldn't ask that. Don't monkey with the buzz-saw is a pretty good motter where he's concerned. I'm lookin' fer Pete now. This is his day to come in an' stock up. He's so stupid he couldn't make up anything, and we'll know fer sure if there's any truth at all in ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... there was a buzz of excitement in the Doane home for old ladies. Word had got around that Drusilla had been left a fortune and was going away. Some of the ladies were plainly envious and said spiteful, catty things, while others were glad that at least one of their number would ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper
... sea as they rose into the cold silvery sunlight and then passed on into the shadow of the ship; or in tracing far away, the broad even track marked by edges of tiny bubbles, where the vessel's course had been. Gradually she became aware through her abstraction of a greater stir and buzz of conversation on the deck behind her; she turned, and seeing everybody looking in one direction, rose and looked too. A ...
— A Canadian Heroine - A Novel, Volume 3 (of 3) • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... so nice, poetic, and warm, you understand; there are no children squealing behind the wall, and you've got rid of your wife, and your conscience is clear—what more can you want? You fall asleep—and suddenly... you hear a buzz!... Gnats! [Jumps up] Gnats! Be they triply accursed Gnats! [Shakes his fist] Gnats! It's one of the plagues of Egypt, one of the tortures of the Inquisition! Buzz! It sounds so pitiful, so pathetic, as if it's begging your pardon, but the villain stings ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov
... faced Hsiao Hung. "My dear girl," she smiled, "what a trouble you've been put to! But you speak decently, and unlike the others who keep on buzz-buzz-buzz, like mosquitoes! You're not aware, sister-in-law, that I actually dread uttering a word to any of the girls outside the few servant-girls and matrons in my own immediate service; for they invariably spin out, what could be condensed ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... after the first buzz of surprise and excitement had spent itself, people settled down, and reluctantly accepted the official explanation furnished by the newspapers—namely, that the popular actress had suffered considerably in health from the strain of several ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... as her frock. Parson Babbage kept picking up the heavy Prayer-book, opening it, and laying it down impatiently. Occasionally, as one of the congregation scraped an impatient foot, a metallic sound made itself heard, and the buzz of conversation would sink for a moment, as if ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and a buzz all through the circus, and the fierce King Padella even felt a little compassion. But Count Hogginarmo, seated by His Majesty, roared out 'Hurray! Now for it! Soo-soo-soo!' that nobleman being uncommonly angry still ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray
... never left his, watching, wistful, patient. And at last the boy bent forward and rested his elbows on his knees and dropped his face in both hands. Time ebbed away in silence; there was no sound in the ward save the blue flies' buzz or the slight movement of some wounded man ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... neighbor and made a face. Lucy Hooper and Grace Sherwood whispered behind their napkins, and got to laughing till they both choked. Johnnie's cross feelings came back; she felt as if the party was being spoiled, and she wanted to cry. A low buzz of whispers, broken by titters, went round the table, and through it all Miss Inches' voice sounded solemn and distinct, as she slowly read one passage after another, pausing between each to let the meaning sink properly into ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... chimneys. Here, she stopped. An acquaintance would hardly have recognized her, her ruddy cheeks had grown so pale. But she trotted on to the great building on the corner from whence came a low, incessant buzz. She went into the first door and ran against Carl Olsen. "Carl, I got to see Mr. ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet
... with unimaginable velocity. From thirty to thirty thousand in fifteen years is the usual rate. Pavements are laid down, stores and bigger stores and still bigger stores spring up. Trams buzz along the streets towards the unregarded horizon that lies across the end of most roads in these flat, geometrically planned, prairie-towns. Probably a Chinese quarter appears, and the beginnings of slums. ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... he sat holding the piece of branch in one hand, the bird in the other. He glanced at us to see if we were watching him, and then smoothing the feathers quickly, he began to buzz and whirr like a beetle, as cleverly as a ventriloquist. Next he made the dead bird he held dart from its perch, and imitated the quick flight of one chasing a large beetle through the air, catching it, and returning to its perch, where with wonderful accuracy he went through the movements ...
— Through Forest and Stream - The Quest of the Quetzal • George Manville Fenn
... of his character in early youth, that he felt dislike at applying to a stranger even for casual information, without previously glancing at his physiognomy and appearance. While he looked about in order to select the person with whom he would most willingly hold communication, the buzz around saved him in some degree the trouble of interrogatories. The names of Lochiel, Clanronald, Glengarry, and other distinguished Highland Chiefs, among whom Vich Ian Vohr was repeatedly mentioned, ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... waltz was just o'er. The chaperons and dancers were all in a flutter. A crowd block'd the door: and a buzz and a mutter Went about in the room as a young man, whose face Lord Alfred had seen ere he enter'd that place, But a few hours ago, through the perfumed and warm Flowery porch, with a lady that lean'd on his arm Like ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... Jonas to buzz for me at 9:20," explained young Abbott. "I don't dare keep the people in the waiting-room watching the clock longer than that. We'll fit this in at odd times, as usual. Remember, Mr. Secretary, you can't give these people more than fifteen minutes. Shall I come in and speak to you, ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... spare, what with the racing and the general bustle of the day. The miners gave a sort of buzz of admiration as Bella and Maddie and the others came up the aisle. They looked very well, there's no manner of doubt. They were both tallish girls, slight, but well put together, and had straight ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... Its evening psalms, when fragrant lilies Pointed up the way her Christ had gone, God called the wife and mother home, And bade him wait. Oh! why is it so hard for Man to wait? to sit with folded hands, Apart, amid the busy throng, And hear the buzz and hum of toil around; To see men reap and bind the golden sheaves Of earthly fruits, while he looks idly on, And knows he may not join, But only wait till God has said, ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... like music, Some voices arouse to action and ambition. Some voices fill you with despondency. Some voices irritate like a buzz-saw. Some voices snap like turtles, and some hiss ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley
... set away the glass, the bees upon the ceiling began to buzz in a most angry manner, and rally about the queen-bee; the south-wind cried round the palace corner; and a strange light, like the sun shining when it rains, threw a lurid glow over the graceful fairy forms. Then the door of the hall flung open, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... coarse marsh grass. These were succeeded by ridges of crumbling rock, between which were numerous small lakes. The land seemed very barren of life. Even the shores of the ponds were hardly inhabited. No song of bird or buzz of insect broke the stillness. Rock after rock was turned over in the vain expectation of finding living things on the damp under side at least; and the cushions of moss were broken up in the same fruitless chase. All was barren and lifeless. Not so on the shore, where the collecting ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... who were now taking leave of each other had concentrated in one spot. There was a loud buzz of conversation and laughter, when suddenly, without a moment's warning, the electric lights went out. The gasoline torches had burned down by now and the place was ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... they are not so tormenting if you plunge your face in the grass, though they titillate the back of the hand as they run over it. Under the bramble bush was a bury that did not look much used; and once or twice a great blue fly came out of it, the buzz at first sounding hollow and afar off and becoming clearer as it approached the mouth of the hole. There was the carcass of a ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... together with a sharp effort and entered into the conversation that had begun again to buzz round him. Moreover, he entered into it with keen pleasure, for the Brothers—there were perhaps a dozen of them in the little room—treated him with a charm of manner that speedily made him feel one of themselves. This, again, was a very subtle ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... more cheery tonight, when the long table was surrounded by over sixty students in their brightly coloured dresses; the buzz of conversation rose steadily throughout the meal, and by the time that coffee was served curiosity seemed satisfied, for the staring had ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... to W——, and quite near her, Judge Harris and her father were in earnest conversation. Astonished at the sudden apparition, her eyes followed him as he bowed to the member of the central group; and as she heard the deep, rich voice above the buzz of small talk she waited to see if he would notice her. Soon Governor G—— gave her his arm for a promenade, and she found herself, ere long, very near Maria, who was approaching with Russell. He was saying something, at which she laughed delightedly; ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... She was only half-conscious of this motion; her consciousness was full of a softening toward him, a leaning upon that strength which she had seen in action. On his side, he did not fail to notice it—this first movement in her which had seemed like an advance. He stopped his buzz of talk at one moment and all the lines of his face relaxed as though he were about to say something softer and deeper. But he only caught his breath and changed to another story. He had remembered—and just in time, he thought—the advice ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... I don't know him by sight. However, there was no one in the room when I entered; a little later some others came in, for I heard a faint buzz, like that of persons talking in a whisper. However, I was no eavesdropper, as a person behind a screen is on the ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Harry Carrington and Carrie Howard were grave and thoughtful, while Lucy and Mary seemed restless and excited, and the lesser ones full of curiosity and expectation. There was quite a little buzz all over the room as the two gentlemen and Arthur entered, but it died away instantly, and was succeeded by an almost death-like stillness, broken the next moment by the elder Mr. Dinsmore's voice, as he briefly stated his object in thus calling them together, and earnestly requested any one ...
— Holidays at Roselands • Martha Finley
... gin makes a man or woman look as though they had swallowed a buzz saw. I always thought drinking liquor made people think they were enjoying themselves, or that they took it to drive away care and make them forget their sorrows, but when these people drink gin they seem to do it the way an American drinks carbolic ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck
... the evening came to an end, as every thing does in this world. The dean retired, leaving the house, as it seemed, empty, and very soon there remained of the alcalde's wife only an echo, like the buzz which remains in the air after a storm has passed away. The judge also deprived the company of his presence, and at last Don Inocencio gave his ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... seeing lies, as they have in Scotland for seeing spirits, how admirably he might entertain himself in this town by observing the different shapes, sizes, and colors of those swarms of lies which buzz about the heads of some people, like flies about a horses' ears in summer; or those legions hovering every afternoon in Exchange alley, enough to darken the air; or over a club of discontented grandees, and thence sent down in cargoes to ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey |
