"Buzzing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... no greater exertion than to flick an occasional fly off his horse's haunch, or to bend down and hook open the gate of a plantation with his stout hunting-crop. Bates had many a brief snatch of slumber in those warm enclosures, where the air was heavy with the scent of the pines, and the buzzing of summer flies made a perpetual lullaby. There was a delicious sense of repose in such a sleep, but it was not quite so pleasant to be jerked suddenly into the waking world by a savage plunge of the aggravated hunter's hindlegs, goaded to madness ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... were working the raft slowly to the shore now, and, a little farther down, Chad could see more rafts tied up—rafts, rafts, nothing but rafts on the river, everywhere! Up the bank a mighty buzzing was going on, amid a cloud of dust, and little cars with logs on them were shooting about amid the gleamings of many saws, and, now and then, a log would leap from the river and start up toward that dust-cloud with two glistening iron teeth sunk in one end and a long ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... after sunrise was impossible on account of the number of flies which kept buzzing about the face. To open our mouths was dangerous. In they flew, and mysteriously disappeared, to be rapidly ejected again in a violent fit of coughing; and into the eyes, when unclosed, they soon found ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... hear that awful buzzing or whizzing, and then something seems to strike you in the face and head. I noticed that at first the boys threw their hands to their heads every time a shell went over; but they soon came so fast and so close that it was a ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... winter, steaming torridly in the summer, swollen in the spring when the woods have turned a vivid green and the buffalo gnats by the million and the billion fill the flooded hollows with their pestilential buzzing, and in the fall ringed about gloriously with all the colors which the first frost brings—gold of hickory, yellow-russet of sycamore, red of dogwood and ash and ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... defenseless interpreter—me. My head ached, one foot fell asleep. The Social Democratic Party, the Social Revolutionist Party, the Constitutional Democrats, in and out of my head they trooped. If this be revolution, then God save the king! Crushed to earth, as we left at last, my head still buzzing with economics, I looked dismally back on my poor cafe, on liberty, justice and human rights. There was something as bad as the harbor in Joe; he ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... how it happened?" he asked cheerily. I read the article. Its headlines began where I heard the buzzing leave off the night before. It ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... understood the sufferings of that timid, gloomy heart; she rose from the table, Monsieur imitated her mechanically, and all the domestics, with a buzzing like that of several bee-hives, surrounded Raoul for ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... for some time. This part of the house seemed quite empty, save for one buzzing fly, which he or Mary had let in. The little housekeeper was very particular about flies in summer, every window and chimney-opening being wire-netted, every door labelled with a printed request to the user to ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... my 8 pounds. More of them along the Pelasgicum, more by the temple of Asclepius, a bigger crowd still over the Areopagus. Why, positively there are a few at the tomb of Talos; and see those putting ladders against the temple of Castor and Pollux; up they climb, buzzing and clustering like a swarm of bees. In Homeric phrase, on this side are exceeding many, and ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... falling prostrate with their own weight, in less than a twinkling they were dispersed and flying over the smooth short grass in every direction, their innumerable scales all the time emitting a low buzzing sound as they ran along. Every moment others glided into the area from the tall grass, and those assembled thither rushed towards them in a body ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... work on British Quadrupeds speaks of a long-eared bat which fed from the hand; and if an insect were held between the lips, it would settle on its master's cheek, and take the fly from his mouth with great quietness. So accustomed was it to this, that it would seek his lips when he made a buzzing noise. It folded its beautiful ears under its arm when it went to sleep, and also during hibernation. Its cry was acute and shrill, becoming more clear and piercing when disturbed. It is most frequently seen in towns and villages. This instance of taming to a certain ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... buzzing around them and making a continuous, gentle sound, and the sun, the bright sun of a perfectly still day, shone over the bright slopes and from that forest of blossoms a powerful fragrance was borne toward them, a breath of perfume, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... unbroken, and as the sallies and charges were made on both sides, the temporary rash, the indentation of the multitudinous body, and the rebound into its original position, gave an undulating appearance to the compact mass—reeking, dragging, groaning, and buzzing as it was, that resembled the serpentine motion of a rushing ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... buzzing in one corner of the place, and making believe to read out of a picture-book, which one of them held topsy-turvy. It was a grave and dreadful tract, of Mr. Bolton's collection. Fanny did not hear her sisters prattling over it. She noticed ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... you cuss the waters that hand you your life. Then there's times when I love it like—like a pup loves offal. You can't figger it out any more than you can figger out why the sun and moon act foolish chasing each other around an earth that don't know better than to spend its time buzzing around on a pivot that don't exist. You can't explain these things any more than you can explain the reason why no two folks can think the same about things, except it is their own way of thinking it's the right ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... of technological and scientific progress—Today, the manufacturers changed the 'copter models twice a year—and, except for altering the shape of a few chromium-plated excrescences or changing the contours slightly, they were the same 'copters that had been buzzing over the country at the time of the Third World War. Every month, the pharmaceutical companies announced a new wonder drug—and if it wasn't sulfa, it was penicillin, and if it wasn't penicillin it would ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... from the road, climbed an inviting little hill, and chose a spot in an old meadow in the shade of an apple tree and there I lay down on the grass, and looked up into the dusky shadows of the branches above me. I could feel the soft airs on my face; I could hear the buzzing of bees in the meadow flowers, and by turning my head just a little I could see the slow fleecy clouds, high up, drifting across the perfect blue of the sky. And the scent of the fields in spring!—he who has known it, even once, may ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... in surprise. She saw Sary on the safe side of the screen-door glaring at the hornet, which was crawling slowly towards the crack in the opening, while buzzing threateningly, ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... basket on his back. By means of the torch, he ejects the bees from their aerial domiciles; and, then having torn their combs from the branches, he deposits them in his basket—the incensed insects all the while buzzing around his ears, and inflicting numerous wounds over his face and throat, as well as upon his naked arms! Very often he returns to the ground with his head swollen to twice the size it was previous ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... his forlorn little cousin in the great buzzing vestibule of the hotel whither he had piloted the whole party, and gave her tea, while he plied the boys with questions. But he never noticed that she could not eat, or commented upon her evident weariness. Mademoiselle did both, but ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... in service at a farmhouse, where she dreamed for three nights running that a noble lady came towards her, and desired her to go to the village spring on St. John's Eve. Perhaps she would have forgotten all about the dream; but on St. John's Eve she heard a small voice like the buzzing of a gnat always singing in her ear, "Go to the spring, go to the spring, whence trickle the watery streams of your good fortune!" Although she could not listen to this secret summons without a shudder, yet she fortified her heart at length, and leaving the other maidens, ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... door the next morning, looking at his scholars as they came by in twos and threes. They were nearly all come, and he was considering the place of the sun in the heavens to know whether it was time to begin, when he heard a sound that was like the buzzing of a swarm of bees in the air, or the rushing of a hidden river in time of flood. Then he saw a crowd coming up to the cabin from the road, and he took notice that all the crowd was made up of old ...
— Stories of Red Hanrahan • W. B. Yeats
... 'Roger,' and yet ashamed of being afraid. Catherine could see that all the poor thing's foolish whims and affectations were trampled on; that she suffered, rebelled, found herself no more able to affect Mr. Wendover than if she had been a fly buzzing round him, and became all the more foolish and whimsical ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... unmarried. He was rich enough, and the son-in-law should live with him. He was so assured of her good judgment, he knew that whenever this son-in-law came along, there would be another man in the family. He had long ceased to bother his head about the flylike buzzing of fortune hunters. He had been father and mother and brother to ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... the Forest the rather alarming stag-beetle is to be seen on the wing on a warm evening; though really harmless, its size and habit of buzzing round frightens people who are not acquainted with its ways. They are called locally, "pinch-bucks," as their horns resemble the antlers of a buck, and they can nip quite hard by pressing them together. I once saw a fight between a stag-beetle and a toad, it had evidently been proceeding for some ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... Isaac had been haunted by the vision of the piper in his dreams; for, certes, the jovial buzzing of the pipes had not been able to drown the deep drone of his ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... as they so realise 'from day to day the need of patience.' All your desires that I should rest are being fulfilled. If you could but see me sitting on a bank with three or four little heads leaning on my lap, the others buzzing round, bringing flowers and weaving wreaths for our hats! Then a hand opens to show 'such a dear' young frog! Another brings an endless variety of caterpillars, &c. Then there come shrieks of delight from a group ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe
... about the cabin a few times, sat down on one of the lockers, and the humming, buzzing noise of the escaping steam began to have a strange effect upon him. First he began to nod, and then he dropped off fast asleep, but started up again directly and began to walk about to try and ...
— The Little Skipper - A Son of a Sailor • George Manville Fenn
... that strange rumbling and buzzing I hear?" interrupted Jeff. "Your carriage sounds as though you had installed a motor in ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... away," broke in Mrs. Shackelford; "there are more Federal officers buzzing around her now than I wish ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn
... of dust on chairs and table, the threadbare rooms were little changed. A loaf of bread, green and furred with mold, lay beside an empty marmalade pot from which a cloud of flies emerged with angry buzzing; a breakfast cup without a handle completed the furniture of the table, and in the rickety armchair was an eight-week-old ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... take great pleasure in her smile of approval, whenever I pronounced well; and her patience and perseverance in struggling with us over that thick little word are becoming to her even now, after fifteen years. It is not her fault if any of us to-day give a buzzing sound to the ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... anything but a pleasing spectacle even when the interior of a fine "Strad" or Joseph is laid bare. Many years ago a friend owning a fine Cremonese viola asked me to open it and find out the cause of some buzzing or rattling within that had not been evident till that time. After an examination, finding that opening it would be absolutely necessary, I asked him whether he would like to see the interior of what he had paid so much for; it might not prove an enjoyable sight from the roughness and ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... said Dean sharply. "Yes, it's hot enough to make everyone seem lazy. Look at those black fellows there, fast asleep in the sun with their mouths open and the flies buzzing about. But I say, I don't think much of these soldiers. What ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... back-ground with the river and the sea. The setting sun, surrounded by hues of variegated beauty, now retires through the western portals of the firmament, leaving all nature to love and repose. The soft twilight of evening awakens new sensations in animals and plants, and buzzing sounds prove that the gloomy recesses of the woods are full of life and motion. Love-sighs are breathed through the fragrant perfumes of newly collapsed flowers, and all animated nature feels the influence of this ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, No. - 537, March 10, 1832 • Various
... hush'd the shouts; But the temple was full "inside and out," And a buzz kept buzzing all round about Like bees when the day is sunny— A buzz universal that interfered With the right that ought to have been revered, As if the couple already were smear'd With Wedlock's ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... of a sudden, "Hark!" At first we thought it was the buzzing of the glittering flies on the water, but it grew loud and fierce, so that all ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling
... that no one was coming after him. All was as before and the dark group of buildings, his home for nearly two months, loomed in silent dignity behind him. But Renwick knew that it would not be long before the whole countryside would be buzzing like a hornet's nest. In his enfeebled condition, he could hardly hope to cope with his pursuers in the matter of speed and so as he went on across the stream at the base of the hill, he tried to plan something that would outwit them. The nearest outlying houses ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... of her words, but in a moment he stumbled into a trap, set by bear-catchers. When the trappers found him they were delighted to have caught a curiosity, and they immediately dragged him to the palace courtyard. There he heard the whole court buzzing with gossip. Prince Cherry had been struck by lightning and killed, was the news, and the five favourite courtiers had struggled to make themselves rulers, but the people had refused them, and offered the crown to ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... completed; one thing to be begun, another to be cleared away; always in search of the peace which one never found; and if one did achieve it, then it was surrounded, like some cast carrion, by a cloud of poisonous thoughts, like buzzing blue-flies. Now at last one lived indeed; but there grew up in the soul, very gradually and sweetly, the sense that one was resting, growing accustomed to something, learning the ways of the new place. I became more and more aware that I was not alone; it was not that I met, or encountered, ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Mademoiselle de Bourbon, perfectly dazzling, indeed, with her majestic bearing and exquisite complexion, but the face had entirely lost that innocent, wistful expression that had so much enchanted me before. Half a dozen gentlemen were buzzing round her, and though I once caught her eye she did not know me, and no wonder, for I was much more changed than she was. However, there I stood forlorn, in an access of English shyness, not daring to take a chair near ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... on the flower-bedecked and grassy plains, they each bestrode a fiery charger; and, in the exultation of health, and strength, and liberty, they swept over the green sward of the undulating campos, as light as the soft wind that fanned their bronzed cheeks, as gay in heart as the buzzing insects that ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... silvery tube at Professor Dane and there was a soft buzzing and the smell of ozone and Professor Dane was no longer in the room—or ...
— This is Klon Calling • Walt Sheldon
... very clear,— Amphoric buzzing, as I'm alive Five doctors took their turn to hear; Amphoric ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the vent she flew, and almost before the four men inside were aware of the strange buzzing, she was directing her swarm ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... rose with a steady, perceptible movement. I could see it travel upward. In a minute, it seemed, it had reached the tops of the trees, through which I had watched it. Up, up—It was broad daylight now. Behind me, I was conscious of a sharp, mosquito-like buzzing. I glanced 'round, and knew that it came from the clock. Even as I looked, it marked off an hour. The minute hand was moving 'round the dial, faster than an ordinary second-hand. The hour hand moved quickly from space to space. I had a numb sense of astonishment. A moment later, so it seemed, the ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... in the thick of the great driving purpose of his life is turned aside or stopped by the biting or buzzing of a few insects. If even they can't be brushed aside, let them buzz and bite, but don't let the great passion of a life be affected by them. Indeed, they will be clean forgot, even while they are remembered, by the man who has been caught and swept ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... off and Mrs. Verplanck waved from the end of the float as the Streamline quickly shot out into the night, a buzzing, throbbing shape of mahogany and brass, with her exhausts sticking out like funnels and booming like a pipe organ. It took her only seconds ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... water-power, Blanchard—you and I—let's bring our business arguments into the open this year, in the committee-rooms and on the floor of the House and Senate, instead of in the buzzing-corners of the lobby or down in the hotel button-holing boudoirs! Now we'll get right down to cases! You have been leaving me out of your conferences ever since I refused to drop my coin into the usual pool to hire lobbyists. I take the stand ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... of howling jaguars, and snarling pumas, and buzzing mosquitoes, and the whole host of nocturnal abominations peculiar to those regions, our weary travellers lay peacefully in their hammocks, and slept like humming-tops. In regard to Quashy, we might more appropriately say ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... a clerkship in the House. The post to which he was assigned was that of attendant in the Vote Office, so that his days (and a great part of his nights) were spent in the two little rooms which open off the Members' Lobby, that buzzing centre of parliamentary gossip, activity and intrigue. Half a dozen steps only separated him from the door of the Chamber itself, and that door he was always privileged to pass and listen to the debates, standing by the entrance outside the magical strip of matting ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... been a monstrous flying thing like a giant blue-bottle fly that he had been battling in his sleep. Memory of the thing's high-pitched, droning buzz still rang in his ears. Then abruptly he realized that the peculiar buzzing was no mere echo of a nightmare. It was an actual sound that still vibrated from somewhere ...
— The Cavern of the Shining Ones • Hal K. Wells
... picture. They did not fit in with the rakish gray motor-car, labelled "Australia," I saw after dinner, nor the young infantryman I ran across on a street corner who had been in the fighting ever since Mons and was but down "for a rest" before jumping in again, nor the busy streets and buzzing cafes. But across them, for some reason, all evening, one couldn't help seeing Henriede Falk, twenty-seven years old, of Landenheissen, starting down toward Paris last August, singing "Deutschland uber Alles!" and wondering what he might be thinking about the great game ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... electricity. Our first attempts did not succeed. We threw over part of our ballast, and mounted up till the cold and the rarefaction of the air became very troublesome. During our experiments we experienced an illness throughout our whole system. Buzzing in the cars commenced, and went on increasing. The pain we felt was like that which one feels when he plunges his head in water. Our chests seemed to be dilated, and failed in elasticity. My pulse was quickened, ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... buzzing flies. Heat waves that sear, and quivering rise; The long white road, the plodding team, The deep, cool grass in which to dream; The distant cawing of the crows, Tall, waving grain, long orchard rows; The peaceful cattle ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... same window, and were grievously tormenting me, and I was too weak to disperse them. All my wounds were dressed and bandaged and I was laid comfortably enough upon a pallet, but I was all alone except for the flies which settled upon me blackly with such an insistence of buzzing that that minor grievance seemed verily the greatest in the world, and for the ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... Signori miei! Are you satisfied? Are you content? Have we done well?" said the little man, buzzing off to another group. "Che vi pare? Is she up to the mark, or ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... wrote, "may sound queer to the ear of the country. They may have visited me in my dreams; they may, indeed, have come to me betwixt the sherry and the champagne, but nevertheless I do aver that they are buzzing about here in the minds of many very serious ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... leading us past the body toward the cracking plant. I heard the flies buzzing loudly. I felt terrible. I wanted to be dead myself. Just walking along after Pop was an ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... to go back to the station and take the first train home? Or who again, as he gives his name to a servant in some brightly-lighted hall, and advances, with a hurried glance at his toilet, into a roomful of well-dressed people, buzzing with what Rossetti calls a "din of doubtful talk," would not prefer to sink into the earth like Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, and be reckoned ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... this piece of news was fairly in circulation in the town, could be compared to nothing but the buzz of a bee hive at swarming time. A letter which was received by the Littles, a few days later, from Dr. Williams himself, did not at first allay the buzzing. He wrote, simply: "You will be much surprised at the slip which I enclose" (it was the newspaper announcement of his marriage). "You can hardly be more surprised than I am myself; but the lady is one whom I knew and loved a great many years ago. We are going abroad, and shall probably remain ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... retires into a cave and places a rock at the entrance, so that darkness falls upon the "plain of high heaven" and upon the islands of Japan,** to the consternation of the Kami of evil, whose voices are heard like the buzzing of ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... sang all day long under it, while in every open space the green epeiras spread their geometric webs. Being rich in spiders, it was a favourite hunting-ground of those insect desperadoes, the mason-wasps, that flew about loudly buzzing in their splendid gold and scarlet uniform. There were also many little shy birds here, and my favourite was the wren, for in its appearance and its scolding, jerky, gesticulating ways it is precisely like our house-wren, though it has a richer and more powerful song than the English ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... talk kept buzzing abominably in my head. When the waiter brought me the evening paper, the first thing that caught my eye was a circumstantial account of the probable way the fellow did his murder. I say probable, for they never caught him; and, ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... She did not make friends readily, but the comradery of cooking induced her to more than tolerate me. "I don't say I kin cook—but my mother can," she often told me—smiling proudly the while, with the buzzing praises of gourmets sounding in her ears. She could never tell you how she made her ambrosial dishes—but if you had my luck to be persona gratis she could and did show ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... our dispositions, so were we in our studies. From the beginning Hobart has had a mania for screws, bolts, nuts, and pistons. He is practical; he likes mathematics; he can talk to you from the binomial theorem up into Calculus; he is never so happy as when the air is buzzing with a conversation charged with induction coils, alternating currents, or atomic energy. The whole swing and force of popular science is his kingdom. I will say for Hobart that he is just about in line to be king of it all. Today he is in ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... about as tall As a span-worm forming the letter O, What do you think I would do? I know! In the bell of the lily I'd rock and swing, Twitter and sing; And, taking the gold-dust under me, I'd splash the hips of the buzzing bee, That he might have meal to make his bread, With honey spread, For his thousand babies all in rows, Each in a bandbox up ...
— The Nursery, No. 165. September, 1880, Vol. 28 - A Monthly Magazine For Youngest Readers • Various
... a furtive apology at Molly Lessing, who had demonstrated greater discretion, and she returned his smile in the friendliest manner. His head was buzzing—and her eyes were kind. Neither spoke; but for an instant he experienced a breathless sense of sympathetic isolation with her, there on that crowded corner, elbowed and shouldered in the eddy caused by the junction of the ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... adjutants being admitted to his presence,—as, moreover, the count kept an open table every day, it made, in the moderately sized house, arranged only for a family, and with but one open staircase running from top to bottom, a movement and a buzzing like that in a beehive; although every thing was managed with ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... laid his right ear to the damp ground, listened a moment, and said, "What a fellow! He has gone to sleep under the windmill. I can hear him snoring. And there is a fly buzzing with its wings, perched on the windmill close above ...
— Old Peter's Russian Tales • Arthur Ransome
... valleys reecho with their melancholy lowings; even the Caffree, by whom they were led, threw himself upon the earth, in search of coolness; but the scorching sun had every where penetrated, and the stifling atmosphere resounded with the buzzing noise of insects, who sought to allay their thirst in the blood of ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... 'What is he buzzing in my ears? Now that I come to die, Do I view the world as a vale of tears? Ah, reverend sir, ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... down to rest and to consider the question. It was hard to think, though, with all that whirling and buzzing in his fever-stricken brain. ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... how very soon this silly little fly, Hearing his wily, flattering words, came slowly flitting by. With buzzing wings she hung aloft, then near and nearer drew, Thinking only of her brilliant eyes, her green and purple hue,— Thinking only of her crested head—poor foolish thing! At last, Up jumped the cunning spider, and fiercely held her fast! He ...
— The Little Mother Goose • Anonymous
... came up from the purple clusters of blueberries which our horses crushed under foot at every step. All things seemed to unite in tempting the tired traveller to stretch himself out on the warm fragrant grass, and spend the day in luxurious idleness, listening to the buzzing of the sleepy bees, inhaling the sweet smell of crushed blueberries, and watching the wreaths of curling smoke which rose lazily from the lofty crater of the great white volcano. I laughingly said to Dodd ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... "in the first place you ought to know that no rattlesnake ever jumps out at anybody. At the slightest sign of danger he coils up, and sounds his policeman's rattle, which is just as near like the buzzing of a big locust as you ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... did not have time to ignite in the gun. After firing the gun, "No. 4" could hardly get the "primer" in before the gun was loaded, and ready to fire again. So it went on! It was fast and furious work! And the bullets sounded like bees buzzing above our heads. ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame
... love of thee will set all notions right. Right save by love no thought can be or may; Only love's knowledge is the primal light. Questions keep camp along love's shining coast— Challenge my love and would my entrance stay: Across the buzzing, doubting, challenging host, I rush to thee, and ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald
... bed now, shrouded in blankets, a smile of content illuminating his face, while the buzzing little machine on the table at his side was grinding ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... like the absurd and ghastly contrast of a horrible dream. But among them were the stricken living in as varied an agony, of raw wounds stung by gnats, of pain cutting deep to vitality, of thirst, of the broiling sun, of a buzzing fly, or of an intolerable loneliness there with death. Groans rose over the plain, and guided the searchers. Driscoll had already found many of his men in this way. Once he heard his own name. The voice was weak, but there was something vaguely familiar to it, ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... to a town in Arizona called Los Perros I suggested that we once more try our luck on terra-cotta. That was the home of Montague Silver, my old instructor, now retired from business. I knew Monty would stake me to web money if I could show him a fly buzzing 'round the locality. Bill Bassett said all towns looked alike to him as he worked mainly in the dark. So we got off the train in Los Perros, a fine little ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... buzzing in my ears, and the sunlight on the river was dancing in ten thousand hideous curls and twists. The last of O'mie, until maybe, a bloated sodden body might be found half buried in some flood-wrought sand-bar. The May morning was a mockery, ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... never traveling, and my knowing that fact—and having been always sure that he would hate it—and then I glance helplessly round with a wild idea of flight. But at the same moment an arm of friendly strength comes round my shoulders—a friendly voice sounds in my buzzing ears. ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... the clerk, and he could not make the responses, and made so many mistakes that the vicar drew his attention to the matter. He replied, with much irritation, "How can I do the service with a lot of men and women a-buzzing and ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... Hall. Everybody buzzing about. What has happened? Has dynamite been found? Has some eminent vocalist "gone up to see," and can't come down again in time? Sir DRURIOLANUS is present, explaining matters to the critics, and repeating explanation ...
— Punch Volume 102, May 28, 1892 - or the London Charivari • Various
... night into day and of guiding the flight of hostile bombers, we were sitting smoking our cigars after dinner at the artillery headquarters in the La Targette road, when suddenly we heard the pulsating buzzing of a German plane. At once someone called out, "A Boche plane, put out the lights." In an instant the lights were out, but the fatal moonlight shone with clear and cruel lustre. There was a huge crash, then another, then another, then another, and someone said, "It has ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... was buzzing like a hive of bees, but I managed, aided by Weymouth, to struggle to my feet. Muffled sounds of shouting and scuffling reached me. Two men in the uniform of the Thames Police were carrying a limp body in at the low doorway communicating ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... Enemy, and, while endorsing all that had been said, asserted that "this enemy is among our own sex." "It is not the anti-suffragist," she said, "she is our unwilling ally, for when there is danger that we might fall asleep she arouses us by buzzing about our ears with her misrepresentations. It is not the indifferent suffragist, she can be galvanized into life. Our real enemy is the dead or dormant suffragist," and then she preached a stirring sermon on the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... and begged pardon each time their paths crossed. The same formality was continued now. There was no conversation, although both were talkers and their heads were buzzing with the things they would like ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird
... muffled electric bell that connected him to Mrs. Bilton in what Anna-Felicitas called a mystical union—Anna II. was really excessively tactless; she had said this to Mrs. Bilton in his presence, and then enlarged on unions, mystical and otherwise, with an embarrassing abundance of imagery—by buzzing gently against her knee from the leg of ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... a place and time it was for a combat—in the quietude of the summer afternoon, no sound anywhere breaking the still warmth and sweetness except the buzzing of bees in the clematis at the end of the porch—and all about the green countryside, woods and fields and old fences—and the brown road leading its venturesome way across a distant ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson
... been dazzled by these poses, that buzzing as of an empty spinning-wheel which is made by would-be important people; but to-day he found his own place, and fell in with the general note. Seated at the centre of the green table, his portfolio open before him, his elbows planted well forward upon it, he read the report drawn up by ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... only casualty was a hole shot through a hat. I write this little incident to show the difference in raw and seasoned troops. One year later such an incident would not have disturbed those men any more than the buzzing of a bee. Picket duty after this incident was much more stringent. Two men were made to stand on post all night, without relief, only such as they gave each other. Half of the company's reserve were kept awake all night. Orders were given that the utmost silence should prevail, ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... be suddenly shot up into the highest, ere we be well warm there, down we come unto the cold ground again. And then even there stick we still. And yet for the short while that we be upward and aloft—Lord, how lusty and how proud we be, buzzing above busily, as a bumblebee flieth about in summer, never aware that she shall die in winter! And so fare many of us, God help us. For in the short winter day of worldly wealth and prosperity, this flying arrow of the devil, this high spirit of pride, shot out of the devil's ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... alongside; but to our consternation there was no sign of the two flag-officers. Now, a dog who has lost his master is an unperturbed, torpid, contented creature compared with a flag-lieutenant who has lost his admiral, and there was a terrible to-do. All the telephones were buzzing and ringing, the dockyard police were eagerly interrogated, and there was already talk of despatching search-parties, when the two distinguished truants suddenly turned up, exceedingly hot, decidedly wet, and, if the ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... found himself sprawled on the floor, the wind half knocked out of him by shrewdly delivered cushions, his head buzzing from the buffeting, and, in one hand, a trailing, torn, and generally disrupted girdle of pale blue ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... positive information concerning them. Theirs it would be to summon the rain clouds and to terrify the people by their charms. The Chief Druid of Tara, decked out in golden ear-clasps and his torque of heavy gold, is shown us as a "leaping juggler" as he tosses swords and balls in the air, "and like the buzzing of bees on a beautiful day is the motion of each ...
— Stonehenge - Today and Yesterday • Frank Stevens
... stockings. Why he did so I do not know, for he never cycled and he never played cricket. It was a fortuitous concurrence of garments, arising I know not how. He gesticulated with his hands and arms, and jerked his head about and buzzed. He buzzed like something electric. You never heard such buzzing. And ever and again he cleared his throat with a most ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... though it be. We are always unconsciously forming lightning-like judgments by the use of our eyes, rejecting the improbable, and (as we consider) preposterous, and accepting and therefore "seeing" what our judgment approves even when it is not there! We accept as "a thing seen" a wheel buzzing round with something like fifty spokes—but we cannot accept a horse with eight or sixteen legs! The four-leggedness of a horse is too dominant a prejudice for us to accept a horse with several indistinct blurred legs as representing what we see when the horse gallops. The mind revolts ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... said John. "On busy mornings you could hear our brains buzzing in Madison Square Garden. ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... though he did know when another tore through the apples on the pommel. And he winced and ducked even lower when a third bullet, fired low, struck a stone between his horse's legs and ricochetted off through the air, buzzing and humming like ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... fact, ENDED WELL after the great last interview between Richard and Lucy - and the blind, illogical bullet which smashes all has no more to do between the boards than a fly has to do with the room into whose open window it comes buzzing. It MIGHT have so happened; it needed not; and unless needs must, we have no right to pain our readers. I have had a heavy case of conscience of the same kind about my Braxfield story. Braxfield - ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... pursued, tucking a friendly arm into hers. "No one need ever know. But I could kick myself for landing you into this mess. It's all my fault. If I hadn't gone fooling about at the top of that ravine and come to grief we should be buzzing comfortably homeward in ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... enrolled, and servants in all sorts of liveries, bringing and carrying messages between their masters and M. de Treville. In the antechamber, upon long circular benches, reposed the elect; that is to say, those who were called. In this apartment a continued buzzing prevailed from morning till night, while M. de Treville, in his office contiguous to this antechamber, received visits, listened to complaints, gave his orders, and like the king in his balcony at the Louvre, had only to place himself at the window to review ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... wasps to the orthodox, the orthodox were hornets to the infidels. Gibbon wrote (Misc. Works, i. 273):—'The freedom of my writings has indeed provoked an implacable tribe; but as I was safe from the stings, I was soon accustomed to the buzzing of ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... floor. But we rode past the mosque. It was full. I would not have liked a contract to crowd one more in there. Perhaps a New York Subway guard could have managed it. The babel coming through the open door was like the buzzing of flies on ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... but her own bounty. She was furious that his wife, whom she hated, was about to share in his honours. For the mischievous tongues of court-ladies had been collecting or fabricating many unpleasant rumours. A swarm of idle but piquant stories had been buzzing about the Queen's ears, and stinging her into a frenzy of jealousy. The Countess—it was said—was on the point of setting forth for the Netherlands, to join the Earl, with a train of courtiers and ladies, coaches and side-saddles, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... The spectacle had advanced far into passages of the highest thrill, and Denver's eyes were riveted upon a ship and some icebergs. The party found its seats during several beautiful lime-light effects, and that remarkable fly-buzzing of violins which is pronounced so helpful in times of peril and sentiment. The children of Captain Grant had been tracking their father all over the equator and other scenic spots, and now the north pole was about to impale them. ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... Colonel went back to the artillery lines and spent three hours talking to the Battery Major, and I looted a dozen three-pounder rockets of var-i-ous colours out of the stores. In the afternoon the Colonel called all his officers together, and kept the blighted motorcycle dispatch riders busy buzzing up and down the line with messages, till late in ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... fancied what bee I thus helped to keep buzzing in her pretty head, which she now carried with all the alternate imperiousness and graciousness of confident and proven beauty. Little I divined of feminine dreams of conquest in larger fields; or foresaw of dangerous fruit to grow from seed planted with thoughtlessness. To my mind, ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... the master spirit, took the tiller, quite as a matter of course, while Dick was perfectly content to tend the jib and main sheets; and away they went down the Hamoaze, with the water buzzing and foaming from the boat's lee bow and swirling giddily in her wake as she sped swiftly along under the impulse of a fresh westerly breeze, the full strength of which was however not yet felt, the lugger ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... months it appears to be immensely remote from the rest of the civilised world. From having been the prey of the inexpressible foreigner in his shooting season, it suddenly becomes, and remains during about five months, the happy hunting ground of the silent flea, the buzzing fly and the insinuating mosquito. The streets are, indeed, still full of people, and long lines of carriages may be seen towards sunset in the Villa Borghesa and in the narrow Corso. Rome and the Romans are not easily parted as ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... No. 8, who had spent three months in the house without paying a sou, and was daily suspected of attempting to abscond. All these, and a dozen similar stories, and half the gossip of the town, would come buzzing round Madelon's ears as she sat gravely balancing one card one the top of the other. She heard and comprehended them with such comprehension as was in her; and no doubt they modified in some degree her childish views of life, which in these early days was presented ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... (A great buzzing breaks out all over the church as Singletary mounts the pulpit. Clarke raps for order. Simms begins to turn the ...
— De Turkey and De Law - A Comedy in Three Acts • Zora Neale Hurston
... sir," he said, "and mount at once with your men and accompany me. In ten minutes we shall have the whole country buzzing round us like wasps; and now that the object of my ride is accomplished, I don't wish to ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... them into lengths; it is as if it were a stick of sealing-wax that is broken. The long iron bars rattle before your feet; iron plates are planed into shavings; before you rolls the large wheel, and above your head runs living wire—long heavy wire! There is a hammering and buzzing, and if you look around in the large open yard, amongst great up-turned copper boilers, for steam-boats and locomotives, Bloodless also here stretches out one of his fathom-long fingers, and hauls away. Everything ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... down to a sumptuous repast of turtle and venison, several varieties of fish, and land-crabs of exquisite flavour. Bottled beer and wine in abundance made them all very jolly, but there was a drawback. Flights of mosquitoes came buzzing and biting them, unmercifully revelling in the youngster's fresh blood, till some oakum set on fire, with fresh leaves thrown on it, put the miscreant insects to the rout. Cigars and pipes were produced, and the midshipmen thought ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... with much demonstration of friendly warmth, and wringing it hard two or three times over, "how delighted I am to see you restored to us alive and well once more. This is really too happy. What a marvellous escape! And what a romantic story! All the clubs are buzzing with it. A charming girl! You'll have to marry her, of course, that's the necessary climax. You and the young lady are the staple of news, I see, in very big print, in all the ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... Azores air-fleet," judged Bohannan. "The others couldn't have made so much westing, in this time. Faith, what a buzzing swarm of mosquitoes! I had no idea there were that many planes on the Azores International Air ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... valleys re-echo with their melancholy lowings: even the Caffre by whom they were led threw himself upon the earth, in search of some cooling moisture: but his hopes were vain; the scorching sun had penetrated the whole soil, and the stifling atmosphere everywhere resounded with the buzzing noise of insects, seeking to allay their thirst with the blood of men and ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... above three or four carriages were to be seen. Never did so great a change take place in the aspect of a city in so few hours! Yesterday the business of life flowed on in its usual current. The bees and the drones of this vast hive were buzzing about, and the butterflies of fashion were expanding their gay wings in the sunshine. To-day the industrious and orderly seem frightened from their usual occupations, and scarcely a person of those termed fashionable is to be seen. Where are all the household ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... It smelt of incense and wax; the pink cover of the coffin, edged with silver lace, stood in a corner, leaning against the wall. In one of the adjoining rooms, the dining-room, the monotonous muttering of the deacon droned like the buzzing of a bee. From the drawing-room peeped out the sleepy face of a servant girl, who murmured in a subdued voice, 'Come to do homage to the dead?' She indicated the door of the dining-room. I went in. The coffin stood with the head towards the door; the black hair ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... in his various reflections he happened to cast his eyes up to a neighbouring hollow tree, where, at some height from the ground, a number of bees were flying in and out a great hole, with all the bustle and buzzing usual to those busy people. Now, it is well known that bears are mightily fond of honey, and will run great risks in order to obtain this dainty, and Bruin was very far from being an exception to his tribe. He was ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... and for which he had always preserved a great predilection. Out of the twenty Musketeers sixteen, when this took place, rejoiced greatly at this relaxation; but the other four cursed it heartily. D'Artagnan, in particular, had a perpetual buzzing in his ears, which Porthos explained thus: "A very great lady has told me that this means that somebody is talking ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... and discloses the recherche joys of statecraft, is also described in the sprightly Memoirs of Princess Radziwill. She was present at a brilliant reception held on the evening of the day when the Cyprus Convention had come to light. Diplomatists and generals were buzzing eagerly and angrily when the Earl of Beaconsfield appeared. A slight hush came over the wasp-like clusters as he made his way among them, noting everything with his restless, inscrutable eyes. At last he came near the Princess, once a bitter enemy, but now ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... was in that buzzing and semi-active condition which to a trained eye is a sure indication that the ship is about to sail. Punctually at five minutes to 2 a.m. Weissman went to the bridge, and at 2 a.m. the wires were slipped and we started on a ten days' trip. As the dim lights on the mole disappeared and the ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... the restless tides of politics! These scenes of grandeur and glory soon dissolved from my view like a dream. I "saved the country" for only two short years. My competitor proved a lively corpse. He burst forth from the tomb like a locust from its shell, and came buzzing to the national capital with "war on his wings." I went buzzing back to the mountains to dream again under the sycamores; and there a new ambition was kindled in my soul. A new vision opened before me. I saw another capitol rise on the bank of the Cumberland, ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... next room was buzzing. Maybe that was Victor. He gulped the brandy left in the glass ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... for by this dear Night, 'tis Charity, care of your Reputation, Widow; and therefore I am resolv'd no body shall lie with you but my self. You have dangerous Wasps buzzing about your Hive, Widow—mark that—[She flings from him.] Nay, no parting but upon terms, which, in short, d'ye see, are these: Down on your Knees, and swear me heartily, as Gad shall judge your Soul, d'ye see, to marry ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn |
