"Cackle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tiger! And what a tiger it was! What with the treble of Sammy, which was of the thinnest description, and the treble of Martha, which was full and sure, and the treble of Jimmie, which dangerously bordered on a cracked bass, and what with Matilda's cackle and Skipper Jonas's croak and my own hoorays and the doctor's gutteral uproar (which might have been mistaken for a very double bass)—what with all this, as you may be sure, the shout of the wind was nowhere. Then ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... fallen. He went on vapouring pitifully, gazing with sufficient steadfastness to let me understand that his vision received something of my outline, though he would fix his eyes either to left or right of me, as though he was not able to see if he looked straight; and this and his mournful cackle and his nodding head, bowed form, propped hands, and diminished face made him as distressful and melancholy a picture of Time as ever mortal man viewed. He broke off in his rambling to ask for more brandy, taking it for granted that I was still in the cook-room, for I never spoke, and I ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... him in surprise. He continued to keep up the cuckoo sound, trying to laugh, and yet totally unable to accomplish even a cackle, as if some internal force clutched the diaphragm and mocked him, so that his efforts were reduced to a gurgling as in cynanche—like a dog choking with a rope round his craig, the sounds coming jerking out in barks, and dying away again in ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... ship and all the ocean Woke up in wild commotion. Then the wind set up a howling, And the poodle dog a yowling, And the cocks began a crowing, And the old cow raised a lowing, As she heard the tempest blowing; And fowls and geese did cackle, And the cordage and the tackle Began to shriek and crackle; And the spray dashed o'er the funnels, And down the deck in runnels; And the rushing water soaks all, From the seamen in the fo'ksal To the stokers whose black faces Peer out of their ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... with a cackle of laughter, "Why, there's nobody knows it, but I'm rich!" But immediately the sorry joke lost flavour. The old woman sighed, and into her wrinkled face and filmed eyes there came her usual look of patient and unintelligent endurance. ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... ever let anybody know it was hens! Never cackle about contrivances. Things mustn't be contrived; they must happen. Woman and her accidents,—mine ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... A loud cackle from Hugh, whose grin had been growing wider and wider, now interrupted the discussion: "Ho, ho, ho! One of you is talking about aunts—your Aunt Maria—and the other is talking about ants—the beasts that go to the ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... caterwaul, pule [cats]; baa[obs3], bleat [lamb]; low, moo [cow, cattle]; troat[obs3], croak, peep [frog]; coo [dove, pigeon]; gobble [turkeys]; quack [duck]; honk, gaggle, guggle [obs3][goose]; crow, caw, squawk, screech, [crow]; cackle, cluck, clack [hen, rooster, poultry]; chuck, chuckle; hoot, hoo [owl]; chirp, cheep, chirrup, twitter, cuckoo, warble, trill, tweet, pipe, whistle [small birds]; hum [insects, hummingbird]; buzz [flying insects, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... soon tiring of this, they fell to talking of other things and forgot the creature; till, suddenly, from within the temple came a crow that beat even Herbert's noisy ones. It was so loud and so sudden, and was so closely followed by a jubilant cackle, that all of them were a trifle startled while Wun Sing threw himself ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... was in sight around the ranch. Never had it appeared more peaceful and pastoral to Jean. The grazing cattle and horses in the foreground, the haystack half eaten away, the cows in the fenced pasture, the column of blue smoke lazily ascending, the cackle of hens, the solid, well-built cabins—all these seemed to repudiate Jean's haste and his darkness of mind. This place was, his father's farm. There was not a cloud in the ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... it up and relieved her of any share in it; and Will, seeing that she was suffering, told some funny stories which made the old people cackle ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... A slight cackle emanated from the ledger, but immediately died away. A dead silence reigned in the office, broken only by the distant sound of the sea, and by the hard breathing of Alphonso, who ...
— The Mission Of Mr. Eustace Greyne - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... group could be overheard by any one who listened. Altercations went on with clangorous fury. Almost every party was in division. Some enthusiastic individual had made a find, or had seen some one else who had. His cackle reached other groups, and out of the dark hulking figures loomed to listen or to throw in hot missiles of ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... the appearance of spring she showed signs of lonesomeness. With none of her kind to love, she turned to Rex and on him lavished all of her affection. When Rex was admitted to the house of a morning, she ran to meet him with a joyful cackle,—an utterance she did not use on any other occasion,—and with soft cooing sounds she followed him about the house. If Rex appeared bored with her attentions and walked away, she followed after, and persisted in tones that were surely scolding until ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... Church has failed dismally to keep before people the teaching of the Church in regard to Angels and Angelic intervention in the affairs of men. There I am in entire agreement with Mr. Machen. Soldiers tell their stories of angels and a few bishops cackle; but not one of them dares to speak of the fuller belief of the Church in angels and the soul-inspiring mystery of the Communion of Saints, the inter-relationship between those on the earth-plane and those who have passed to the higher life. The hardworking priest ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... "Don't cackle till you've laid your aig, Gentle Annie. When you've thrashed and sold your grain and got your money in the bank, then I'll help you. We'll git drunk if I have ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... course, were quite right; he had given her plenty of run and ignored her cackle, and now she had come home to roost. There is nothing like a knowledge of farming, and an acquaintance with the habits of domestic animals, to teach a man how to ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... most beautiful article of social upholstery in India. He sits in a large chair in the drawing-room. Heads and bodies sway vertically in passing him. He takes the oldest woman in to dinner; he gratifies her with his drowsy cackle. He says "Yes" and "No" to everyone with drowsy civility; everyone is conciliated. His stars dimly twinkle—twinkle; the host and hostess enjoy their light. After dinner he decants claret into his venerable person, and tells an old story; the company ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... The cackle of the apprentice rose above the whining voice. "Murder, too —don't forget the murder, master. The Connetable told the old Sieur de Mauprat what people were blabbing, and in half-hour dead ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... for your sake. Ay: there seemed some link 'Twixt your dead grannie and you, too strong for me To break; though it's been strained to the snapping-point, Times out of mind, whenever a hoolet's screech Sang through my blood; or poaching foxes barked On a shiny night to the cackle of wild geese, Travelling from sea to sea far overhead: Or whenever, waking in the quiet dark, The ghosts of horses whinneyed in my heart. Ghosts! Nay, I've been the mare between the limmers Who hears the hunters gallop gaily by; Or, rather, ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... droning old-world smell of ancestor, dry rot, and stale incense. As the clouds came and went, the grey-green, cobweb-chastened, light ebbed and flowed over the walls and ceiling; to watch the fitfulness of its streams was a sufficient occupation. A hen laid an egg outside and began to cackle—it was an event of magnitude; a peasant sharpening his scythe, a blacksmith hammering at his anvil, the clack of a wooden shoe upon the pavement, the boom of a bumble-bee, the dripping of the fountain, all these things, with such concert as they kept, invited the ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... see the effect of this announcement upon the three students. He had expected the crows and cackles of rather absurd merriment with which unbearded youth often greets, such news. But there was no crow or cackle. One young man blushed scarlet and looked guiltily at the floor. With a great effort he muttered: " Shes too good for him." Another student had turned ghastly pate and was staring. It was Peter Tounley ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... loud scraping of shovels, and the merry cackle of the old negro, happy because others toiled in the glad morning, while he did not. Cally Heth's white glove rested on Mr. Beirne's polished balustrade, ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... ventures, although most probably quite true, is also one which Mr. Galton has neglected to verify by the application to it of any test, scientific or other. Finally, if the disasters of the Royal British Bank are to be ascribed to its custom of opening business with prayer, not only ought the cackle of Convocation to be attributed to a similar cause, but also all the legislative botchery of the House of Commons, and the abolition of prayer before debate should be treated as the most urgently needed of those further parliamentary reforms ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... you bind them wrist to wrist— Foot to foot the truants shackle, From your toils away they twist Into air with giddy cackle. ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... of our first line, as it stepped from the shelter of the woods into the open exposure of the flat field, the woods opposite began to cackle and rattle with the enemy machine gun fire. Our men advanced in open order, ten and twelve feet between men. Sometimes a squad would run forward fifty feet and drop. And as its members flattened on the ground for safety another squad ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... pride of adolescence; but it was heightened in this case by the simplicity of life's problems in this narrow valley, and in the provincial little village which was the metropolis of this sparsely settled region. To him "the cackle of that bourg was the murmur of the world," and his theories of a life lacking the complexities of larger aggregations of men seemed adequate, because he had never seen them thoroughly tested, to meet every emergency arising for reflection or endeavor. In this mental attitude ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... stared at her, pursed his lips, and then read it again. Suddenly he burst into a cackle of laughter, slapping his thigh in ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... of birds had an incontestable and precise signification are numerous; let me refer to a few of the best known. The cackle of a hen, after having laid an egg and left her nest, is decidedly characteristic. Her clucking when she is impelled to sit on her eggs, or when she is calling her chicks, is no less demonstrative. There ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... pencil. Flanagan stood with his hands alternately kept to his nose, from which he flung away the blood, as it sprung out in a most copious stream. Two-thirds, indeed we might say three-fourths of his party, were convulsed with suppressed laughter, nor could they prevent an occasional cackle from being heard, when forcibly drawing in their breath, in an effort not to offend their leader. The discovery of the mistake was, in itself, extremely ludicrous, but when the home truths uttered by Biddy, and the indescribable bitterness'caused by the disappointment, joined ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... quoth Uncle John, "keeps a good while." Mr. S——— says his grandfather lived to be a hundred, and that his legs became covered with moss, like the trunk of an old tree. Uncle John would smile and cackle at a little jest, and what life there was in him seemed a good-natured and comfortable one enough. He can walk two or three miles, he says, "taking it moderate." I suppose his state is that of a drowsy man but partly conscious ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... ambitious among them set out with the deliberate purpose of becoming the beggars of men's votes; of winning an office the chief worth of which, in their eyes, lies in its emoluments?—when even the glorious and far-sounding voice of fame for them means only the gabble and cackle of notoriety? ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... interrupted by an uncontrollable cackle which issued from the mouth of Mr. Arp. The Colonel turned upon him with a frown, inquiring the cause ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... quick, decisive tones. I could hear the punchers discussing the raid, finally each of them telling exploits of his favorite heroes of outlawry. I could hear Herman, busy among his pots and pans. Then he mounted the tongue of the mess-wagon and called out, "We haf for breakfast cackle-berries, first vot iss come iss served, und those vot iss sleep late ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... icy blade was driven deep between his shoulders; he felt his blood slowly congeal; heard the senile cackle of the perennial Spaniard; saw the Plaza rise and reel till the zenith crashed into the horizon—and knew ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... has been out digging into the maple-trees with his jack-knife; at any rate, he is pretty sure to announce the discovery as he comes running into the house in a great state of excitement—as if he had heard a hen cackle ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... language,—after all, is but little better than the croak and cackle of fowls, and other utterances of brute nature, sometimes not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... a old hen called out of her spear, and unhenly, because she would fly out at a hawk, and cackle loud, and cluck, and try to lead her chickens off into safety. And while the rooster is a steppin' high, and struttin' round, and lookin' surprised and injured, it is the old hen that saves the chickens, nine times out ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... his book, The goose makes a long, long neck, to look, He opens his mouth, as if to cough, When, snippety-snap! her head flies off. Now, cackle loudly her sisters fond, Who are watching proudly from the pond, While off to the town that lies beyond, The whole of the ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... sit here and cackle like Asian birds, Commodus renames Rome the City of Commodus and still ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... she heard the cackle of laughter. Guns cracked. Still the doomed man pushed forward. He went down, struck in the body, but dragged himself to his ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... needs; Poets—the best of them—are birds Of passage; where their instinct leads They range abroad for thoughts and words, And from all climes bring home the seeds That germinate in flowers or weeds. They are not fowls in barnyards born To cackle o'er a grain of corn; And, if you shut the horizon down To the small limits of their town, What do you but degrade your bard Till he at last becomes as one Who thinks the all-encircling sun Rises and sets in his ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... is this, upon my word! Great Juno's geese saved Rome her citadel. Another drowsy Manlius may be stirred And the State saved, if I but cackle well. ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... form a pleasing contrast, then, to King Stephen, whose riding-breeches, as we know, 'cost him but a crown.' . . . Very well, I will 'cut the cackle and come to the hosses.' And you, Mr. Isidore? Do I read in your eye that you desire a similar literary restraint in your Episode ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... thing that met his own approval Sol Rollin would cackle most cheerfully and then crack a knuckle by twisting a finger. His laugh was mostly out of register also. It had a sad lack of relevancy. He laughed on principle rather than provocation. Some sort of secret comedy of which ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... funny about the picture when Doc started laughing, but I figure it's a man's own business when he wants to laugh, so I didn't say anything. The show was one of these scientific things, and when Doc began to cackle it was showing some men getting out of a rocket ship on Mars and running over to ...
— Trees Are Where You Find Them • Arthur Dekker Savage
... be satisfied with my disguise,—if such it could be called. Captain Selover at first failed to recognise me. Then he burst into his shrill cackle. ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... he began to cackle. "Praise be to Allah you are come! I was persuaded to bring the young ladies here. They would make me do it. Yes, sir. It is not my fault. They pay me. I have to obey. Then we get caught, like we was some rats. No fair to punish me. The ladies all right. ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... man, who makes false starts, interrupts in order to show his sympathy, and then apologises for his misapprehension; but this is an unknown species in a College Hall. What one does weary of more and more every year is the sort of surface cackle that has to be indulged in in general society, simply to fill ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... for Brown." Mrs. Angus called Angus excitedly. Everybody talked at once; somebody laughed; one or two swore. Mrs. Porter told Milt Kennedy's wife she'd caught her eavesdropping this time sure. She'd know her cackle any place, and Milt's wife told Mrs. Porter to shut up—she needn't talk about eavesdroppers,—good land! and Mrs. Porter told Mrs. Milt she should try something for that voice of hers, and recommended machine oil, ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... astonishment, she laughed. It was a wild-sounding cackle, and quickly turned into ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... thin, derisive cackle, drowned hurriedly in a clatter of tea-cups as her husband turned and looked angrily ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... two stalwart old peasants Were chuckling together; They'd two hundred roubles In notes, the old rascals! 260 Safe hidden away In the end of their coat-tails. They both had been yelling, ''We're beggars! We're beggars!'' So carried them home. ''Well, well, you may cackle!'' I thought to myself, ''But the next time, be certain, You won't laugh at me!'' The others were also 270 Ashamed of their weakness, And so by the ikons We swore all together That next time we rather Would die of the beating Than feebly give way. It seems the Pomyeshchick Had taken a fancy At once ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... well, the Governor was one of those men that takes a bit of trouble and considers over a thing before he says yes or no. When he says a thing he sticks to it. When he goes forward a step he puts his foot down, and all the blowing, and cackle, and yelping in the world ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... surefooted mountaineers he could find, and at night, two and two, they crept up the crag, so silently that no alarm was given, till just as they came to the top, some geese that were kept as sacred to Juno, and for that reason had been spared in spite of the scarcity, began to scream and cackle, and thus brought to the spot a brave officer called Marcus Manlius, who found two Gauls in the act of setting foot on the level ground on the top. With a sweep of his sword he struck off the hand of one, and with his buckler smote the other on the head, tumbling them both headlong ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... laughingly freed herself, "suppose we cut the cackle and get to the bosses. I think I've been patient ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... sparrow-hawk Has little time for idle questioners." Whereat Geraint flash'd into sudden spleen: "A thousand pips eat up your sparrow-hawk! Tits, wrens, and all wing'd nothings peck him dead! Ye think the rustic cackle of your bourg The murmur of the world! What is it to me? O wretched set of sparrows, one and all, Who pipe of nothing but of sparrow-hawks! Speak, if ye be not like the rest, hawk-mad, Where can I get me harborage for the night? ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... closed his eyes and nodded. "You cackle like an old woman, Galitsin; you would talk a cricket dumb. Send me up Bobo, if you see him, ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... that gets a painful livelihood by spinning, if chance her geese be scattered o'er the common, she courses round the plain from side to side, compelling here and there the stragglers to the flock; they cackle loud, and flutter o'er the champaign; so Boyle pursued, so fled this pair of friends: finding at length their flight was vain, they bravely joined, and drew themselves in phalanx. First Bentley threw a spear ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... beyond tier they grin And cackle at the Show, while prancing ranks Of harlots shrill the chorus, drunk with din; "We're sure the Kaiser loves the ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon
... been made of the bright side of child-life among the lower races. But from even the most primitive of tribes all traces of the golden age of childhood are not absent. Powers, speaking of the Yurok Indians of California, notes "the happy cackle of brown babies tumbling on their heads with the puppies" (519. 51), and of the Wintun, in the wild-clover season, "their little ones frolicked and tumbled on their heads in the soft sunshine, or cropped the clover on all-fours like a tender calf" (519. ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... been decided on, the question of a single-page or double-page engraving sometimes comes up; and then the legend has to be settled. This (irreverently known as "cackle" by those who produce it) is largely the work of Mr. E. J. Milliken, who nowadays occupies a good deal of Shirley Brooks's old position of "suggestor," and who, like him, is living testimony of the truth of John Seddon's saying that "wit and wisdom are born with a man." For ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... When the cackle of females strikes my ear, I jest vamose, for they make me skeered, And I sorter suspicion I skeer them too, with my hulking form, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 18, 1891 • Various
... until life should end. Despite his harshness of appearance—and neither of the two could ever afterward explain it—there was something about the grim old man which commended him to Ab from the very first. There was an occasional twinkle in the fierce old fellow's eye and sometimes a certain cackle in his clucking talk, which betokened not unkindliness toward a healthy youngster, and the two soon grew together, as often the young ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... the strange sight and talked in low voices, and in those few minutes it was manifest to all that the waves were increasing in size. It was uncanny, this rising sea in a dead calm, and their voices unconsciously sank lower. Old Parlay shocked them with his abrupt cackle. ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... the shallow sea in a high cart. The day, which had opened in sunshine, was now become grey, very still and depressing. An intense and brooding silence reigned, broken by the splashing of the horse's hoofs in the scarcely ruffled water, and by the occasional peevish cackle of a gull hovering, on purposeless wings, between the waters and the mists. The low island lay in the dull distance ahead, wan and deprecatory of aspect, like a thing desiring to be left alone in the morose embrace of solitude. Uniacke, gazing towards it out of the midst of the sea, longed ardently ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... his appearance. He said, just as though I could hear him at this moment: "A bird, when it is on its nest, spreads its wings to cover the nest and eggs and protect them. It cannot use its wings for defense, but it can cackle and try to drive away the enemy. We are here to protect our wives and children, and we must not let the soldiers get them." He was on a buckskin horse, and he rode from one end of the line to the other, calling out: "Make a brave ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... men under Quinnox stood their ground; a solid, defiant line that fired with telling accuracy into the struggling horde. On the walls two Gatling guns began to cackle their laugh of death. And still the mercenaries poured through the gap, forming in haphazard lines under the direction ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... yet unfinished; there are roads for commerce yet to be made; the trade of the African interior yet waits to be admitted into the capacious harbour of Sierra Leone for the enrichment of the fond nursing-mother of races who sits dreamily teaching her children how to cackle ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... mayhap afterwards we were all soundly punished for it. But at least it was on the level of their soldiers' wit—though I own, at the most, no great matter to cackle of. ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... conventions; they cannot even express admiration in fitting language; they may giggle or cackle so that every ripple of laughter and every turn of a phrase sounds nauseously insincere. Marion Dearsley durst not talk frankly with this fine ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... his face became distorted. "I am so chock full of eggs now that everything looks yellow. I dream of them. I cackle in my sleep. My whole interior is egg. I breathe and think egg. I gag when ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... barley and discussing the fitness of the oats, were startled by a most outrageous clatter among the hens. Horrid murder evidently was stalking abroad, and, hastening to the rescue, Rolf heard loud, angry barks; then a savage beast with a defunct "cackle party" appeared, but dropped the victim to bark and bound upon the "relief party" with ecstatic expressions of joy, in spite of Rolf's—"Skookum! ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... in the blood of every man of our kin to take to the sea. They are like hen-bred ducklings now, and they do but want a duck to lead them pondwards. Then may hen cackle ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... although both had noticed the new ornament instantly, wild horses could not have drawn the question from them; her desire to be asked was too obvious. With her gay plumage, her "nods and becks and wreathed smiles," and her cheerful cackle, Huldah closely resembled ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... and his wickedness may come upon us; what with one thing and another, indeed, a maiden may be pleased to find even a plebeian protector.' Thus she rambled on in her sharp voice, yet there was cause for her anxiety, and truth lay beneath her cackle, but the wisdom of age is ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... home comes our laboring man and kicks up Ricks, and calls us to the streak of bright moonlight shining in the cabin door. Then he spreads out five packages of one thousand dollars each on the floor, and begins to cackle over the ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... the fame of her doing what she may.) About the yard she cackling now doth go, To tell what 'twas she at her nest did do. Just thus it is with some professing men, If they do ought that good is, like our hen They can but cackle on't where e'er they go, What their right hand doth their left hand ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... able to reach the deer, and tired of shouting at him, started off into the field for a famous long stick which had served him for a steed the day before. As he looked for it among the corn, he saw something flutter, then heard a curious cackle. It was a prairie hen, whose wings had been broken by shot from Tom's gun. The bird moved painfully away, trying to hide behind the leafy stalks. But Bub's bright eyes could not be eluded, and he followed ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... new bird I saw in Maine was the pileated woodpecker, or black "log cock," called by Uncle Nathan "wood cock." I had never before seen or heard this bird, and its loud cackle in the woods about Moxie was a new sound to me. It is the wildest and largest of our northern woodpeckers, and the rarest. Its voice and the sound of its hammer are heard only in the depths of the northern woods. It is about as large as a crow, ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... wide and breezy; geese cackle over its grass, and you may see more than one cricket match being played on holiday afternoons. Once, in 1877, eleven Mitchells played eleven Heaths on the common; the Heaths were all of the same family, but the ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... good. If I were a Legislator, I would order every man, once a week or so, to lock his lips together, and utter no vocable at all for four-and-twenty hours: it would do him an immense benefit, poor fellow. Such racket, and cackle of mere hearsay and sincere-cant, grows at last entirely deafening, enough to drive one mad, —like the voice of mere infinite rookeries answering your voice! Silence, silence! Sterling sent you a Letter from Clifton, ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... is a dodge of vested pelf, And, rich or poor, a man can't rob himself. It is the poor who suffer from temptation, And drink's detestable adulteration, That crying ill which no one dares to tackle! Whilst Witlers howl, and Water-zealots cackle. The poor are poisoned, not by honest drink, But lethal stuff that might scour out a sink. The Poor Man's Beer, quotha! Who'll keep it pure? Not rich monopolists, nor prigs demure, Those shriek for freedom, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various
... they brood from January to April according to locality, laying from eight to twelve creamy white eggs under a bamboo clump or some dense thicket where a few leaves have been scratched together for a nest. The hen announces the laying of an egg by means of a proud cackle, and the chicks themselves have the characteristic "peep, peep, peep" of the domestic birds. After the breeding season the beautiful red and gold neck hackles of the male sometimes are molted and replaced by ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... was the hideous, unearthly cry of the laughing-jackass, called often the bushman's clock; the screaming cry of thousands of parrots flying here and there through the forest; there was the cackle of the wattle-bird, the clear notes of the magpie, and the confused chattering of thousands of leather-heads; while many other birds added their notes to the discordant chorus, and speedily banished sleep from the eyes of their ...
— The Gilpins and their Fortunes - A Story of Early Days in Australia • William H. G. Kingston
... and "peep, peep" of young sparrows, the harsh "caw, caw" of the crow, and the song of the bobolink, poised on the swaying branch of a tall tree, the happiest bird of Spring; the dozy, drowsy hum of bees; the answering call of lusty young chanticleers, and the satisfied cackle of laying hens and motherly old biddies, surrounded by broods of downy, greedy little newly-hatched chicks. The shrill whistle of a distant locomotive startles one with its clear, resonant intonation, which on a less quiet day would pass unnoticed. Mary, ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... a hedge, there is only here and there one; and when these rare men talk together upon a discourse, it is good for the ears to hear them; but the bragging wiseacres I am speaking of are vainly puffed up by their fleshly minds, and their quibbling is as senseless as the cackle of geese on a common. Nothing comes out of a sack but what was in it, and, as their bag is empty, they shake nothing but wind out of it. It is very likely that neither ministers nor their sermons are perfect—the ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... of wild geese or a laughing loon on the pond, and a fox to bark in the night. Not even a lark or an oriole, those mild plantation birds, ever visited my clearing. No cockerels to crow nor hens to cackle in the yard. No yard! but unfenced nature reaching up to your very sills. A young forest growing up under your meadows, and wild sumachs and blackberry vines breaking through into your cellar; sturdy ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... for his little speech of welcome but the first sound died with a cackle in his throat, leaving his mouth agape. He stared at the little creature and beyond her at Cornelius Allendyce, who was superintending the unloading of several ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... more and more at his ease, without ceasing to indulge in his little laugh, whilst continuing his perambulation about the room. "You may be right. God has given me a face which only arouses comical thoughts in others. I'm a buffoon. But excuse an old man's cackle. You, Rodion Romanovitch, you are in your prime, and, like all young people, you appreciate, above all things, human intelligence. Intellectual smartness and abstract rational deductions entice you. But, to return to the SPECIAL CASE we were ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... the garden walks where all the flowers are blowing, Out about the golden fields where tall the wheat is growing, Through the barn and up the road, they cackle and they clatter; Cry the children, "Hear the hens! Why, what can ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... Ranger Fisk asked me quite seriously if I would have some cackle berries. I looked around, couldn't see any sort of fruit on the table, and, remembering the cook's injunction to eat what he set before me, I answered: "No, thank you; but I'll have an egg, please." After the laughter had subsided, ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... great routes for the migration of birds. Yesterday and several times to-day I saw flocks of geese flying over our heads and steering south, likely on their way to the Nile and great African lakes. During last night they kept up a constant cackle as they ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... betide the lubras who had neglected to wash hands, and pail and cow, before sitting down to their milking. The very fowls that laid out-bush gained nothing by their subtlety. At the faintest sound of a cackle, a dosing lubra was roused by the point of Cheon's toe, as he shouted excitedly above her: "Fowl sing out! That way! Catch 'im egg! Go on!" pointing out the direction with much pantomime; and as the egg-basket filled to overflowing, he either chuckled ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... I was careful of that dollar and a half. Don't you see?—I was a prisoner sawing my way out with a tiny steel saw. And I sawed out!" His voice rose in a shrill cackle of ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... she had personality—that hen: you couldn't keep her down; she never went in when it rained, and she could cackle louder than any hen on the ground; and above all, she took things as they came. I always admired her. I liked the way she died, too. Of course I let her live as long as she could—she wouldn't have been any good to eat, anyway, for she was all brains, and I never could bear to make ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... tragically humorous in this. It would never know of the consuming purity of his worship for little children, and old people—and women. It would laugh at the religion he had built up for himself, and it would cackle tauntingly if he dared to say he was not wholly bad. For it believed he was bad, and it believed he had killed Jed Hawkins, and he knew that seven hundred men were anxious to get him, ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... your gizzard. You're my goose, and no other man's; And you know, all my geese are swans: Only one scurvy thing I find, Swans sing when dying, geese when blind. But now I smoke where lies the slander,— I call'd you goose instead of gander; For that, dear Tom, ne'er fret and vex, I'm sure you cackle like the sex. I know the gander always goes With a quill stuck across his nose: So your eternal pen is still Or in your claw, or in your bill. But whether you can tread or hatch, I've something else to do ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... them coming, heard the growing murmur of many voices, the cackle of occasional laughter, and took especial note of "War Eagle" Ivus Niles, who led the parade. A fuzzy and ancient silk hat topped his head, a rusty frock-coat flapped about his legs, and he tugged along at the end of a cord a dirty buck sheep. A big ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... with a dry cackle, nursing his feet, which were wrapped in rags. "True as gospel. Kings we were, with crowns upon our heads—me and Dravot—poor Dan—oh, poor, poor Dan, that would never take advice, not though I begged ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... the driver's encouraging, "Pop-pop! Dih-dih-dih! Ho-ho-ho! children of jungle swine; brothers to buffalo!" addressed to the horses lagging in the climb, fluttered away with his silly little cackle. ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... isn't a horn you buy, but an ear; Only think, and you'll find on reflection You're bargaining, ma'am, for the Voice of Affection; For the language of Wisdom, and Virtue, and Truth, And the sweet little innocent prattle of Youth: Not to mention the striking of clocks - Cackle of hens—crowing of cocks - Lowing of cow, and bull, and ox - Bleating of pretty pastoral flocks - Murmur of waterfall over the rocks - Every sound that Echo mocks - Vocals, fiddles, and musical-box - And zounds! to call such a concert dear! But I mustn't 'swear with my horn in ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... (male goose); gosling (young goose); graylag, ganza (wild goose); goslet; pl. geese; Anseres, Anseriformes. Associated Words: anserene, anserous, gosherd, yang, honk, gaggle, cackle. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... talking about?" said Stella impatiently. "I never saw such provoking boys. You say such strange things, then cackle over it as though there was a joke in it, which nobody seems ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... hens cackle, and thought we were blest, You flew to the hayloft, and found a full nest, Then caught up the treasure, and smiled as you run, With a hat full of eggs, and a head ...
— The Snow-Drop • Sarah S. Mower
... bells have a kind of dry ring to them, the flies are sticky, and the hens cackle. I meant to go fishing, but I couldn't find any worms. Don't you ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... for his first private view. Mrs. Robert had towed him down special. He's a reg'lar friend, though, Mr. Robert is. I can't say how much of a struggle he had to keep his face straight, but after the first spasm has worn off he don't show any more signs of wantin' to cackle. And he don't ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... who had laughed broke again into a high cackle. "What we'd oughta do," he chortled, "is send 'em word to hereafter turn in lead ropes with every hoss we take off 'n their hands. And by rights we'd oughta stip-ilate that all hosses must be broke to lead. It ain't right—them a gentlin' down everything ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... which she took hold of herself with a grip of iron, scrubbed her face with his handkerchief, dabbed it thickly with powder from a small silver box, threw back her head and went up two stairs at a time. On the second floor there was a cackle of laughter, but doors were shut. On the third all was quiet. But on the fourth the tall, thin, Raphael-headed man was drunk again, arguing thickly in the usual cloud of smoke, which drifted sullenly into the passage through ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... new Burgrave of Ghent, and the escapades of Count Baldwin. He had lived much among gentlefolk and kept his ears open.... She felt stronger and cheerfuller than she had been for days. That rat-hunt had warmed her blood. She was a long way from death in spite of the cackle of idiot chirurgeons, and there was much savour still in the world. There was her son, too, the young Philip.... Her eye saw clearer, and she noted the sombre magnificence of the great room, the glory of the brocade, the gleam of silver. Was she not the ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... monotone above all the talk and the cackle of laughter; ears were dinned everlastingly by the thunder of the cataract near the village. The Noda waters break their winter fetters first of all at Adonia, where the river leaps from the cliffs ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... The cackle of a hen when she lays an egg, says a scientist, is akin to laughter. And with some of the eggs we have met we can easily guess what ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 17, 1920 • Various
... brains are lighter, and that therefore we must not be taught too much. But why not educate us to the limit of our capacity, and leave it there? Why, if we are inferior, should there be any fear of making us superior? We must stop when we cannot go any further, and all this old-womanish cackle on the subject, the everlasting trying to prove what is already said to be proved—the looking for the square in space after laying it down as a law that only the circle exists—is a curious way of showing us how to control the 'exuberance of our own verbosity.' They say we shall ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... cowbird, and the red-shouldered starling, are not songsters, even in the latitude allowable to poets; neither are they whistlers, unless we credit them with a "split-whistle," as Thoreau does. The two first named have a sort of musical cackle and gurgle in spring (as at times both our crow and jay have), which is very pleasing, and to which Emerson aptly refers in these lines ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... Carnehan, with a dry cackle, nursing his feet which were wrapped in rags. True as gospel. Kings we were, with crowns upon our headsme and Dravot poor Danoh, poor, poor Dan, that would never take advice, not though I ...
— The Man Who Would Be King • Rudyard Kipling
... awakened a little after midnight, as I lay in my little cabin, by a heavy blow struck at the sides of the canoe close to my head, which was succeeded by the sound of a weighty body plunging into the water. I got up; but all was again quiet, except the cackle of fowls in our hen-coop, which hung over the side of the vessel about three feet from the cabin door. I could find no explanation of the circumstance, and, my men being all ashore, I turned in again and slept until morning. I then found ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... ye ken hoo to fush for the salmon? If ye'll listen I'll tell ye. Dinna trust to the books and their gammon, They're but trying to sell ye. Leave professors to read their ain cackle And fush their ain style; Come awa', sir, we'll oot wi' oor tackle ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... going to get an egg," Aggie replied, with gentle obstinacy. "I am starving, Tish, and I am certain I heard a hen cackle. Probably one ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... really over, over at last, and still a little bewildered, she turned. The butler and the maid were leaving the room, which they must have entered when the ceremony first over-whelmed her. From the hall a slight cackle floated back. ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... sounds in the manly words: "What shall I do? I cannot recant. In our century full of intellect and beauty, which might put Cicero into a corner, I am only an unlearned, limited, poorly educated man! But the goose must needs cackle among ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... the gasp of that noble fish towed deftly into the shallows at last, afforded him a natural and unmixed pleasure. He loved the heather dearly, the wild hillside, the keen pure air, the steady setters, the flap and cackle of the rising grouse, the ringing shot that laid him low, born in the purple, and fated there to die. Nor, when corn-fields were cleared, and partridges, almost as swift as bullets and as numerous as locusts, were driven to and fro across ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... intermingled with lakes and ponds of all sizes, which filled the hollows for miles round—temporary sheets of water these, formed by the melting snow, that told of winter now past and gone. Additional animation and life was given to the scene by flocks of water-fowl, whose busy cry and cackle in the water, or whirring motion in the air, gave such an idea of joyousness in the brute creation as could not but strike a chord of sympathy in the heart of a man, and create a feeling of gratitude to the Maker of man and beast. Although brilliant and warm, the sun, at ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... hour the light went out, but this time there was no mocking laughter—at least not upon the part of my tormentors; but I, to be at quits with them, gave a low laugh that none might mistake for the cackle ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... escaped lunatic? Have you made your will, hey?' 'Oh,' I retorted, 'If you've bought the road, or the earth, I'll get off it, of course. I should have said you were the escaped lunatic going along at that pace.' He laughed, a high, reedy cackle that seemed familiar, rose stiffly out of his place and stepped down as though he had cramp. 'Ouch!' he said, bending and straightening to unlimber himself. 'Where are we, hey? Barnet? Taking an evening stroll after the office?' And he took off his goggles ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... echoed Joe Clausin. "I've got that spot marked with a red cross in my mind, and if this boat ever gets close to it again, you'll hear this chicken cackle right smart. It's been photographed on my brain so that I'll see it lots of times when I ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... the young Cabyle seemed to be dusty and warm with walking. He even seemed fatigued, for, when about to pass the group of slaves, he stopped to rest and flung down his load. The shock of the fall must have snapped a number of legs, for a tremendous cackle burst from the bundles as they struck ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... the old woman. "I'd 'a' killed mine if I could 'a' got at him—forty years ago." She nodded vigorously and cackled. Her cackle rose into a laugh, the laugh into a maudlin howl, the howl changing ...
— The Fortune Hunter • David Graham Phillips
... devil's cackle that passed with him for a laugh, and stepping close to my side, spoke directly ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... my man," answered the ancient mariner, "get your leg aboard, for we're going to sail right away. Hi, you, Sylvanus there, give another haul on them halliards afore you're too mighty ready to belay, with your stupid cackle." ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... was drownded, sure enough," spoke a woman's shrill voice, high above the cackle of the hens and the quack-quack of the ducks—"drownded dead, an' more's the pity; an' their ma dead, too, an' their pa in Africa, an' their aunties takin' on terrible ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... reached us. We also know that the plays were popular; but the audiences have not rushed to pen and ink to record their satisfaction. With them, as with all audiences, the actors and the SPECTACLE, much more than the "cackle," were the attractions. When Dr. Ingleby says that "the bard of our admiration was unknown to the men of that age," he uses hyperbole, and means, I presume, that he was unknown, as all authors are, to the great majority; and that those who knew him in part made no ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... drubbing that it was enough to make one weep for pity. When the poor hen escaped from the old woman's hands it fled to the highway. While walking along it found a bead, swallowed it, hurried back home as fast as possible, and began to cackle at the gate. The old woman welcomed it joyfully. The hen ran quickly in at the gate, passed its mistress, and went to its nest—at the end of an hour it jumped off, cackling loudly. The old woman hastened to see what the hen had laid. But when she glanced into the nest what did she ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various
... control, In thy saloons the Lord of War Muffles the wheels of his wild car, And drops his thirsty lance at thy command. Smoothed by a snowy hand, Aquila's self, the fierce and feathered king, With sleek-pruned plumes, and close-furled wing Will calmly cackle, and put by The terrors of his beak, the lightnings of his eye. Thine the voice, the dance obey; Tempered to thy pleasant sway, Blue and Buff, Orange and Green, In polychromatic harmony are seen, As on a bright Jeune ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 14, 1891. • Various
... Messidor 7, year II.—Rodolphe Reuss, "Seligman Alexandre, sur les Tribulations d'un Israelite Strasbourgeois Pendant la Terreur," p. 37. Order issued by General Dieche to Coppin, in command of the "Seminaire" prison. "Strive with the utmost zeal to suppress the cackle of aristocrats." Such is the sum of the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... mind to suffer" was not a point by which he, "more an antique Roman than a Dane," was at all troubled. Never had he given ear to that cackle which is called Public Opinion. The judgment of his peers—this, he had often told himself, was the sole arbitrage he could submit to; but then, who was to be on the bench? Peerless, he was irresponsible—the captain ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... running in from the kitchen. She stopped dead with surprise when she saw my companion, and could not even cackle on about the jack. ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... have ridiculed from the very beginning the argument that it could have been anything else than a dream. But what that incident was he would not tell me. His object, as he explained, was not to dwell upon the business, but to try and forget it. Speaking as a friend, he advised me, likewise, not to cackle about the matter any more than I could help, lest trouble should arise with regard to my director's fees. His way of putting things is ...
— The Philosopher's Joke • Jerome K. Jerome
... old saying: "For the wide world old Miriam grieves, and at home without bread her children she leaves." He's sorry for the girl, but not sorry for his own son! Sling her round your neck and carry her about with you! That's enough of such empty cackle! ...
— The Power of Darkness • Leo Tolstoy
... cackle, and continued: "Ah, those wasps—they have a sting so nasty!" He paused an instant, then he added in a lower voice, and not quite so gaily: "Yon is the way ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... first, but had clearly no pride in them. Before long she laid them aside altogether, and they had passed from our thoughts, when one day we heard her mellow note of laughter and her daughter's harsher cackle outside our door, and, opening it, beheld Mrs. Johnson in gold-bowed spectacles of massive frame. We then learned that their purchase was in fulfillment of a vow made long ago, in the life-time of Mr. Johnson, that, if ever she wore glasses, they should be gold-bowed; and I hope the manes of the ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... Nicky White I dare say I was the only party in Little Silver that didn't raise an upstore and cackle about it, because to the common mind it was a proper shock, while to me, in my far-seeing way, I knew that, just because it was the last thing on earth you might have thought Jenny would do, it might ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... like a bad case of bee bite with me at the wrong end of the stinger. Still, I was just mulish enough to stick around. I had nearly three hours left before I'd have to listen to the major's mirthsome cackle, and I might as well spend part of it thinkin' up fool schemes. So I walks around that cluster of cement-set spools some more. I even climbs on top of one and gazes ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... my love," answers the gentleman, behind whom we have been in imagination walking out from Charles Honeyman's church on a Sunday in June: as the whole pavement blooms with artificial flowers and fresh bonnets; as there is a buzz and cackle all around regarding the sermon; as carriages drive off; as lady-dowagers walk home; as prayer-books and footmen's sticks gleam in the sun; as little boys with baked mutton and potatoes pass from the courts; as children issue from the public-houses with ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray |
