"Tinkling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... horses travelled in lines, with the bales or panniers strapped across their backs. The foremost horse bore a bell or a collar of bells, and was hence called the "bell-horse." He was selected because of his sagacity; and by the tinkling of the bells he carried, the movements of his followers were regulated. The bells also gave notice of the approach of the convoy to those who might be advancing from the opposite direction. This was a matter of some importance, as in many parts of ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... among these signs were the almost forgotten sounds of dropping water, and tinkling rills. One day in April the thermometer suddenly rose to eighteen above the freezing-point of Fahrenheit. Captain Vane came from the observatory, his face blazing with excitement and oily with heat, to announce ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... except when they dropped for a wink at a neighbour. Joanna waltzing with Socknersh to the trills of Mr. Elphick, the Brodnyx schoolmaster, seated at the tinkling, ancient Collard, Joanna in her pink gown, close fitting to her waist and then abnormally bunchy, with her hair piled high and twisted with a strand of ribbon, with her face flushed, her lips parted and her eyes bright, was a sight from which no man and few women ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... their company, or for those that cannot keep private ones. Let stately and sumptuous houses be erected, so that night and day each one according to his liking or his means may gamble and drink and revel and vomit. Let the rhythmed tinkling of dances be ordinary, the cries, the uncontrolled delights, the uproar of all pleasures, even the bloodiest and most shameful in the theatres. He who shall assay to dissuade from these pleasures, let him be condemned as a ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... had sufficiently enjoyed claret and politics below-stairs, the gentlemen went to the drawing-room to partake of coffee and the ladies' delightful conversation. We had heard previously the tinkling of the piano above, and the well-known sound of a couple of Miss Rosey's five songs. The two young ladies were engaged over an album at a side-table, when the males of the party arrived. The book contained a number ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... A jingle of tinkling bells mingled with the squeak of a viola; the guffaws of a rompish company blended with the tuneless chanting of discordant minstrels, and the gray parrot in its golden cage, suspended from one of the oaken beams of the ceiling, shook its feathers ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... troubled time had sanctified the Strangers almost into an angelic character; and when the little kirk-bells were again heard tinkling through the air of peace (the number of the martyrs being complete), the beauty with which their living foreheads had been invested, reappeared to the eyes of imagination, as the Poets whom Nature kept to herself walked along the moonlight ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... on the path, close by him, walketh she, Bright as the blossom of hibiscus tree, And fair her face; and when around they flit, Her girdle gems a tinkling sound emit. Among the Keang she has distinguished place, For virtuous ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... and went off into a mirthful tinkling laugh, as though he had just taken someone in ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... coming over the snow. He crouched eagerly down at the edge of the road and said to himself: 'I wonder what would happen if I were to pretend to be dead! This is a man driving a reindeer sledge, I know the tinkling of the harness. And at any rate I shall have an adventure, and that ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... day the garden-scenes of Watteau became vivid and real; every evening Venice was made possible, when shadowy barks slipped down dusk tides, freighted with song and laughter, and snatches of guitar-tinkling; and when some sudden torch, that for an instant had summoned with its red fire all fierce lights and strong glooms, dipped, hissed, and quenched below, and, a fantastic flotilla, they passed on into the broad brilliance of a rising moon, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... the steamer bringing the deer. The whole three hundred were landed on the ice in Cremailliere, some three miles to the southward of St. Anthony Hospital, and though many fell through into the sea, they proved hardy and resourceful enough to reach the land, where they gathered around the tinkling bells of the old deer without a single loss from ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... they advance with flutter, with grace, To the dance Moving on with a dainty pace, As blossoms mince it on river swells. Over their heads their cymbals shine, Round each ankle gleams a twine Of twinkling bells - Tune twirled golden from their cells. Every step was a tinkling sound, As they glanced in their dancing-ground, Clouds in cluster with such a sailing Float o'er the light of the wasting moon, As the cloud of their gliding veiling Swung in the sway of the dancing-tune. There was the clash of their cymbals clanging, Ringing of swinging bells clinging their feet; ...
— Sister Songs • Francis Thompson
... surrounded it with flowers. It formed the one bright spot of colour in the village; and at night time, when all other sounds were hushed, the iron wreaths upon its little crosses, swaying against one another in the wind, would make a low, clear, tinkling music. Joan would sometimes lie awake listening to it. In some way she could not explain it always brought the thought ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... unlike to the conventional shepherd-shepherdess mincing, intolerable dialogue as could well be imagined. For, among all the groups of verse, in which, for sacred order's sake, we arrange English literature, pastoral poetry easily takes first place in empty, tinkling artificiality. In Stonefolds, we have six tiny plays, never containing more than four characters, and usually less, which represent, in a rasping style, the unending daily struggle of generation after generation with the relentless ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... and arms of Schwytz, lying in the clear sunshine. On the left are observed the peaks of the Hacken, surrounded with clouds; to the right, and in the remote distance, appear the Glaciers. The Ranz des Vaches, and the tinkling of cattle-bells, continue for some time after the rising ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... consequences. So it was a fortunate thing that they did not require much herding. He had only to drive them to the pastures on the mountain in the morning, and home again in the evening, and the young ones followed the old ones, round whose necks the tinkling ...
— Brave and True - Short stories for children by G. M. Fenn and Others • George Manville Fenn
... a perfect hell; and, that dreadful Mabel waltz seemed to be continually running through my brain, tinkling the death knell of all ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... solemn bells! whose consecrated masses Recall the faith of old; O tinkling bells! that lulled with twilight music ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... and every now and again you will glance up from your work at her and draw inspiration from her sweet presence. So pull yourself together, man; your troubles are over, and life henceforth one long blissful dream. Come, burn me that tinkling, inglorious comic opera, and let the whole sordid past ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... the trees to the brook-side and stood listening to the tinkling of the cowbells in the wood lot beyond. The light faded early on these September evenings, and the smoky mist had begun to rise from the water when they turned back again. The kitchen windows were already growing yellow, and through them the faithful Millicent ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the thousand and one faint rustlings, creepings, murmurings, tappings, which animate the mystery of the forest. How dull indeed appeared the printed page in comparison with the book of life, how shut-in its atmosphere, how tinkling and distant the sound of its voices. Suddenly I shut ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... tents, placed to the right and left of the Duke's pavilion, there came a sweet tinkling sound, as of deep silver bells. At that note there was an evident and universal commotion throughout the armament. The roar of the hammers ceased; and from every green hut and every grey tent, swarmed the host. Now, rows of living men lined the camp-streets, leaving still ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... chance of merriment until the virgin morning seemed filled with song. Higgins' hair-trigger laughter rumbled deep accompaniment; and, as always, the engineer's merriment forced itself upon Roger, and he joined in, while the silver of the girl's tones pealed above both, tinkling in the sun-kissed palms above, rolling out over the purple water, out to the ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... at the windows of the chapel. Broken words of prayers, of muttered verses and responses, reached her like the tinkling of far-off chimes, like the rustling of invisible wings. The blue sisters, behind those walls, were ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... bull towards him by waving the muleta or red flag, and, standing in front of the animal, to inflict the death-wound by plunging his sword between the left shoulder and the blade. "The teams of mules now enter, glittering with flags and tinkling with bells, whose gay decorations contrast with the stern cruelty and blood; the dead bull is carried off at a rapid gallop, which always delights the populace."—Handbook for Spain, by Richard ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... very courteous old man, elaborate in greeting and leave-taking, and with a quicker sense than usual. It was accounted delicacy in him, that, when he had bidden us a final adieu, he should never come near us again, though the date of his departure was postponed some weeks, and we heard him tinkling down the street, and stopping at the neighbors' houses. He was a keen-faced, thoughtful-looking man; and he wore a blouse of blue cotton, from the pocket of which always dangled the leaves of some wild salad culled from our wasteful vacant ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... have as yet seen only rocks barren of verdure as a billiard ball, vales amidst the domed hills of Hudson Straits, dank with muskeg, and silent as the very realms of death itself, but for the flacker of wild fowl, the roaring of the floundering {385} walrus herds, or the lonely tinkling of mountain streams running from the ice fields to the mossy valleys bordering the northern sea. It needed a robust hope, or the blind faith of an almost religious zeal, to penetrate the future and see beyond these sterile shores the Promised Land, where homes were to be built, and ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... Ceremonies at the Consistory; delivery of the cardinals' hats. At nine o'clock went to the Vatican; two large fantails with ostrich feathers; ladies penned up; Pope; cardinals kiss his hand in rotation; address in Latin, tinkling, like water gurgling from a bottle. The English cardinal first appeared, went up and was embraced and kissed on each cheek by the Pope; then followed the others in the same manner; then each new cardinal embraced in succession all the other cardinals; after this, beginning with the English cardinal, ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... strange names given to the different modes of applauding in the theatre, the first was derived from the humming of bees; the second from the rattling of rain or hail on the roofs; and the third from the tinkling of ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... pass where some modest little interval, opening among these stupendous scenes, yet retreating as it were for protection into the embraces of the neighboring mountains, displayed a rural paradise, fraught with sweet and pastoral beauties; the velvet-tufted lawn, the bushy copse, the tinkling rivulet, stealing through the fresh and vivid verdure, on whose banks was situated some little Indian village, or, peradventure, the rude ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... lights abroad at this hour in the quiet street. They sent their own red path before them as they softly travelled; and round it the stars flickered and swam, deep down. Peter could have sworn he heard their thin, tinkling, submerged, funny song, somewhere above or beneath the soft and melodious "Cherie Birri-Bim," that someone (not Lord Evelyn's beautifully trained and taciturn poppe) was crooning ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... of bare skin. The dark, bronze-coloured waists of these well-shaped Women were boldly presented to any one's examination and reflected the lights of the room. Their beautiful arms and their ankles were covered with bracelets. At the least of their movements they all set up a tinkling silvery sound, and the little sister-in-law, who might easily be mistaken for an automaton doll, could hardly move under her load of ornaments. The young grandmother, our hostess, had a ring in her left ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... stop—if she would only go away!" she found herself murmuring, over and over. Even the thought of Bob waiting in Hyde Park in the chill east wind became dim beside that horrible piano, banging and tinkling in her ear. She dusted mechanically, picking up one cheap ornament after another—leaving the collection upon the piano until the last, in the hope that by the time she reached it the thirst for music ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... was not one tick too soon for him. My pistol was not cocked before the crash came that I was counting on, and with it a shower of small glass driving across the six-foot sill and tinkling on the flags. Next came a black and bloody face, at which I could not fire. I had to wait till I saw his legs, when I promptly shattered one of them at disgracefully short range. The report was as deafening as one upon the stage; the hall filled with ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... the soft tinkling of ceramic bells as the herd of milk goats came down off the hills. Two children were following and six prowlers walked with them, to ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... pursue thy way;— Though thou art poor, the world around is gay! Thou hast no bread; but on thy aching sight Proud luxury's pavilions glitter bright; In thy cold ear the song of gladness swells, Whilst vacant folly chimes her tinkling bells: The careless crowd prolong their hollow glee, Nor one relenting bosom thinks of thee. Will not the indignant spirit then rebel, And the dark tide of passions fearful swell! 80 Will not despight, perhaps, or bitter need, Urge then thy temper to some direful deed! Pale Guilt shall call thee ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... outer temple the noise, confusion, and perpetual motion, are bewildering. Crowds on clattering clogs pass in and out; pigeons, of which hundreds live in the porch, fly over your head, and the whirring of their wings mingles with the tinkling of bells, the beating of drums and gongs, the high-pitched drone of the priests, the low murmur of prayers, the rippling laughter of girls, the harsh voices of men, and the general buzz of a multitude. There is very much that is highly grotesque at ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... crystal face," And I take outside the diligence for Chamonix my place. Still my fond imagination views, in memory's mirror clear, Purple rock, and snowy mountain, pine-wood black, and glassy mere; Foaming torrents hoarsely raving; tinkling cowbells in the glade; Meadows green, and maidens mowing in the pleasant twilight shade: The crimson crown of sun-set on Mont Blanc's majestic head, And each lesser peak beneath him pale and ghastly ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... four of them I get about 800 pounds of butter a year. The price of this butter varies from 50 cents to $1.00 per pound. There's my dog. When it's milking time, the hired man says to the dog, 'Shep, go after the cows,' and away he goes, and in a little while the herd come tinkling up. Why send a man to do a boy's work, or a boy to do that which a shepherd dog can do just as well? The cows understand him, and readily come when they are sent after. Well, so much for the milk department. Now, as to the garden; I don't sell much from that. Still, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... France a hundred years before, which had tolled for D'Artaguette, and made jubilee over weddings and christenings, and almost lived the life of the people, sent out the alarm cry of smitten metal; and a tinkling appeal from the convent ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... horses, had disappeared from sight, and the pony-carriage, drawn by the pretty Shetlands with their tinkling bells, was about to emerge through the park-gates, when there came a sudden interruption. This was caused by Collins, the head keeper, who stepped across the road, and touched his hat to the whole party, and to ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... to gaze at the slowly advancing cortege, but his mind was far away from the glittering, tinkling company. He was turning in fancy the pages of his past, as he might have turned the pages of some painted manuscript, and reading therein the record of his strange life. He saw himself in his boyhood, the son of the hereditary executioner, aiding his father's ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... that call themselves planters and trample the vineyard of the Lord; against their sons and their daughters who are haughty, and walk with stretched-forth neck and wanton eyes, walking and mincing and making a tinkling with their feet. Cursed be they all! Surely they shall be as Sodom and Gomorrah, even the breeding of salt-pits and a ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... with brown chalets; then below them rock again, and wood, but this time with more deciduous trees; and then the valley itself, with emerald meadows, interspersed with alder copses, threaded together by a silver stream; and I almost fancy I can hear the tinkling of distant cowbells coming down from the alp, and the delicious murmur of the rushing water. The endless variety, the sense of repose and yet of power, the dignity of age, the energy of youth, the play of colour, the beauty of form, the mystery of their origin, all combine to invest ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... and looking as if it had grown of its own sweet will into its present comeliness. But the garden conjured up before Cara's mental vision was a very different one—a stately, formal garden entered through an arch of jessamine, with a fountain playing in its centre, tinkling coolly into a marble basin, and a high-backed, carved stone bench set beneath the shade of scented trees. Above all pulsated the deep, sapphire ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... his audience a moment gaugingly; he held the balance as to measure his resources. He wished to do justice to his theme. With the long finger-nails of his left hand nervously playing against the tinkling crystal of his wineglass and his conscious eyes betraying that, small and strange as he sat there, he knew himself, to his pleasure and advantage, remarkably impressive, he dropped into our untutored minds the sombre legend of his house. "Mr. Clement Searle, from all I gather, was a young ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... each other! Like the star-dust of Saturn they belt our fourteen-acre planet, not with three rings, nor four, but with twelve, a ring for every month, a girdle of twelve shining circles running round the year—the tinkling ice of February in the goblet of October!—the apples of October red and ripe on what might ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... and seek with the shadows along the bank. And we stop to rest and listen with pleasure to the music of its woodland melody. A song sparrow joins in the chorus with his quaint sweet lullaby, like the tinkling of Venetian glass, his notes as clear and delicate as a silver bell. He evidently believes that singing lightens his labors, for he is industriously gathering material for the new home he is building close ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... been unsaddled, and were picketed in an open glade at a little distance: in recurrent pauses in the talk, the sound of their grazing on the scanty grass came to the ear; all else was silence save the tinkling of a mountain rill,—a keen detached appoggiatura rising occasionally above the monody of its murmurous flow,—and the melancholy chiming of some lingering cicada, the latest ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... Sherman and his aids were carrying the two sacks into the back of the cage, depositing them on a marble shelf. "See!" The teller turned one over and a tinkling flood of shining ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... to resort to arms, and without the guiding military genius of Washington, the Declaration of Independence would be naught in history but the vision of doctrinaires, a mockery of sounding brass and tinkling cymbal. Let us never forget that it was that resolution and that genius which made it the vitalizing force of a great nation. It takes service and sacrifice ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge
... rested on her hands, and she began to feel drowsy. The twittering of the snow-birds sounded like the faint tinkling silver sleigh-bells far away; the bear loomed up before her, assuming gigantic proportions, his features at the same time taking a human semblance that somehow reminded her of the face of Pepin Quesnelle, then ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... the tiny, airy voice, like a trill of birdsong, like a tinkling from some distant star. He could imagine her standing at the phone in the back of the shadowy bookshop, and seemed to see her as though through an inverted telescope, very minute and very perfect. How brave ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... The opening fountain of compassion may be shut up, or turned aside from its natural course, by a wrong habit of the will; and hence, with all our weeping tenderness of feeling, we may be destitute of any true humanity. We may be merely as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. "Whoso hath this world's goods, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?" It is this loving in work, and not in feeling merely, which the word of God requires of us; and when, at the last day, ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... the water-seller passing down the street with his barrel cart, drawn by three or four horses with tinkling bells, dispensing water to customers at five cents a pail. The poorer classes have no other means of procuring this precious liquid. The water is kept in a corner of the house in large sun-baked jars. A peculiarity of these pots is ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... his guide had brought him to the gate of a lofty hall, before which a silver lamp, filled with naphtha, "yielded light as from a sky."—From within loud sounds of merriment were ringing; and it was evident, from the jocular harmony and the tinkling of glasses, that some subterraneous catch-club were not idly employed over the bottle. "Who's there?" said a porter, roughly responding to the knock of Saint Colman. "Be so good," said the Saint, mildly, "my very good fellow, as to open the door without further questions, or I'll break your head. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 342, November 22, 1828 • Various
... incitement to hilarity; it could now paint the passions in all their various attitudes; and those tones which said nothing intelligible to the heart began to be thought as; insipid as those of 'sounding brass or tinkling cymbals.'" These words of Burney make one realise that Handel's London operas must have affected their audiences almost in the way in which the operas of Wagner startled the audiences of the nineteenth century. Handel himself, like Wagner, was steadily developing his own ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent
... the sounding brass and tinkling cymbal of sparkling oratory, may command a hearing, may succeed in breathing a new life into this modern Mohammedanism, and make the name of the martyred Joseph ring as loud, and stir the souls of men as much, as the ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... felt this; and his heart was filled with delight at the thought that to that harmony of the world he had added one note which had not been in it hitherto, but without which the whole earth was like sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... never please Or fill my craving ear; Its chords should ring as blows the breeze, Free, peremptory, clear. No jingling serenader's art Nor tinkling of piano-strings Can make the wild blood start In its mystic springs; The kingly bard Must smite the chords rudely and hard, As with hammer or with mace; That they may render back Artful thunder, which conveys Secrets of the solar track, ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... light insolence. "Drink with me," runs the Greek song, "be young with me; love with me, wear garlands with me; be mad with me in my madness; I will be serious with you in your seriousness."[13] And so behind the flutes and flowers change comes and the shadow of fate stands waiting, and through the tinkling of the rose-hung river is heard in undertone the grave murmur ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... with a grain of salt, with a touch of ugliness. It has a sting like the sting of bitter ale; you acquire the love of it as men acquire a taste for olives. And the wonderful clear, pure air wells into your lungs the while by voluptuous inhalations, and makes the eyes bright, and sets the heart tinkling to a new tune—or, rather, to an old tune; for you remember in your boyhood something akin to this spirit of adventure, this thirst for exploration, that now takes you masterfully by the hand, plunges you into many a deep grove, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... attention on pink and yellow calico, and cut out colored royal families, and foreign birds, with a good grace. Happily Mrs. Alwynn, though always requiring attention, was quite content with the half of what she required; and, with the "Buffalo Girls" and the "Danube River" tinkling on the ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... Bumsteadville, and her one eye to be seen in profile, the moon, glared upon the helpless place with something of a cat's nocturnal stare of glassy vision for a stupefied mouse. Midnight had come with its twelve tinkling drops more of opiate, to deepen the stupor of all things almost unto death, and still the light shone luridly through the window-curtains of Mr. BUMSTEAD'S room, and still the lonely musician sat stiffly ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., Issue 31, October 29, 1870 • Various
... city seemed those nights. The street outside was quiet. The motor 'bus, that pest of Paris, had not yet appeared. Only an occasional cab would come tinkling on its way. Our street was absurdly short. At one end was a gay cluster of lights from the crowded cafes of the "Boul' Mich'," at the other were the low lighted arches at the back of the Odeon, from which when ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... standing silently beside Hawkins, watching the preparations for leaving. The moonlight was streaming down in a silvery flood through the trees and the bit of green meadow glowed like a fairy ring. There were silvery ripples on the water of the little stream that slipped off with a tinkling chatter into the deep gloom of the shadow. Somewhere near a wild honeysuckle bloomed and the fragrance of its blooming came drifting to them. Hawkins spoke. He stood with eyes fixed on the stooping figures near the tablecloth and his ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... brick chimney that came up through the attic, and mounted a decrepit chair. She scratched and pried at a certain brick with her scissors, then removed it quietly. Reaching in, she drew out a black bag, whence came a sound of tinkling metal. Rosemary, peering around the corner of the trunk, could scarcely believe the evidence of ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... enough to believe in the need of—er—the saving power of the gospel. Full pews without that would make our church the sounding of brass and the tinkling of cymbal. We must have the old-time power in our churches ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... this particular house-wall is the common brick, burnt earth, and but one step from the handfuls of clay of the ancestral mud hut, small in size and permeable to damp. Slowly, day by day, the walls grew tediously up, to a melody of tinkling trowels. These bricks are joined by mortar, which is mixed in small quantities, and must vary very greatly in its quality and properties throughout the house. In order to prevent the obvious evils of a wall of porous and irregular baked clay and lime ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... the faded sign "WOMAN'S EXCHANGE AND EMPLOYMENT AGENCY" she smiled. For that at least was exactly as it had been save that it looked tinier and dingier than it had in the old days. She opened the iron-grilled door, her eager heart anticipating the tinkling jangle of the spring bell at the rear, and when the shadowy curtains parted and a grizzled head, surmounted by gold-rimmed spectacles tucked above a worried forehead appeared, Felicia could have cried out ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... with the poppies gleaming red and the cornflowers blue through the yellow fields of grain beside the roads! They cheered me, do you ken—those tired and dusty heroes of Britain along the French roads! They cheered as they squatted down in a circle about us, me in my kilt, and Johnson tinkling away as if his very life depended upon it, at his wee piano! Ah, those wonderful, wonderful soldiers! The tears come into my eyes, and my heart is sore and heavy within me when I think that mine was the last voice many of them ever heard ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... worth its weight in gold! One washing-eve, the Dame, to rise at four, Sought early rest, and, capped and gowned, did droop Fast as a church, to judge from nasal snore, That broke the silence with a hoarse hor-hoop: When all at once with fitful start she woke; For that same tinkling Dutchman on the stair Had told the hour of four with clattering stroke, And waked the sleeper ere she was aware. "Odd drat the clock!" she sighed; but, knowing well The cackling thing struck two at least a-head, She turned; and back to such deep slumber fell, ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... scowling of foes' faces, and new curses unknown yet. Lo, they dight the feast in Godhome, and fair are the tables spread, Late come, but well-beloved is every war-worn head, And the God-folk and the Fathers, as these cross the tinkling bridge, Crowd round and crave for stories of the Battle ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... them said, "Hark! I believe it is raining; I certainly hear the falling drops." The others laughed, and told him that it seldom rained when the sun was shining; but as they listened they plainly heard the tinkling of many drops falling through the forest, and sliding from leaf to leaf until they reached the bramble-bushes beside them, when, to their great dismay, they found that the RAIN-DROPS were MELTED RUBIES, ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... coolness. Faint airs carried the smell of midsummer flowers, and bees droned around the flat tombstones sunk in honeysuckle. The congregation gathered slowly, the masculine portion of it lingering, as was the custom, in the wide old churchyard until the second tinkling of the bell should call them indoors. They had thus the double advantage of talk and observation of the Progress of Women. These traversed the path to the church door like a drift of blossoms in the summer air, saluted on either hand by the lowest of bows, the most ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... the price of some anklets with bells on them and bought a pair, and whenever the Raja passed by the house in which the Rani lived, the maidservant made her mistress rattle the anklets, and then went outside and told the Raja to listen to the anklets tinkling as his son ran about the house. The Raja would tell the maidservant not to let the boy run about too much, lest he should fall and hurt himself; then she would hurry inside and tell the Rani to stop the jingling, ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... strength to move came an overwhelming wave of nausea. She crept up to her own room and lay motionless and soundless for hour after hour, until presently it was noon, and the pleasant tinkling of gongs announced ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... goeth walking in his garden Around his tinkling feet the sunbeams play; The posies they are good to him And bow them as they should to him As he fareth upon his kingly way: The birdlings of the wood to him Make music, gentle music, all the day When our babe he ...
— Stories of Birds • Lenore Elizabeth Mulets
... of sleigh-bells Tinkling through the snow; Mother knitting stockings (Pussy's got the ball),— Don't you think that winter's Pleasanter than all? Thomas ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... approach, the laughter and whispering ceased; and the four boys endured with impassive politeness the mysterious rite of introduction. The tinkling album gave Quita her cue. She insisted on hearing its entire repertoire, which was mercifully limited; and her natural ease of manner, her knack of plunging whole-heartedly into the subject of the moment, soon put Govind ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... reply, but stood staring out across the spring-scented desert, her thoughts on the tinkling streams of Mendocino and the big, kind, sheltering trees. The rhododendrons were beginning to blossom there now. Soon the redwood lilies would be scenting the air with their delicate fragrance. Gray squirrels ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... and lent distance to the farther peaks. The hush of the wilderness, which is far different from the hush of death, brooded over the scene, and like faint music came the sound of a distant scytheswing, and the tinkling whisper which is the flow ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... she had read so far as that, when all my faculties were aching to know what came next—whether this were but the idle scribbling of a vacuous fool, or something else—there rose the sound of soft flutes and tinkling bells in the corridors, as seneschals wandered piping round the palace to call folk to meals, a smell of roast meat and grilling fish as that procession lifted the curtains between the ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... bell thrice; and the sparrows, scared by the sudden tinkling, flew off with such a mighty buzz of wings that La Teuse, who had just gone back into the sacristy, came out again, grumbling; 'The little rascals! they will mess everything. I'll bet that Mademoiselle Desiree has ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... the wild sea-weeds and crimson lichens drifted and crawled with their thousand colours and fine branches over its decay, and the black, clogging, accumulated limpets hung in ropy clusters from the dripping and tinkling stone. What has Canaletti given us for this?" Alas, neither a crawling lichen, nor clogging limpets, nor a tinkling stone, but "one square, red mass, composed of—let me count—five-and-fifty—no, six-and-fifty—no, I was right at first, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... dear soul knew that music was a very sovereign balm; She had sprinkled it over Sorrow and seen its brow grow calm, In the days of slender harpsichords with tapping tinkling quills, Or carolling to her spinet ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... with the greatest tenderness and care, she passed her hands lightly over the spinet's worn and yellow ivory keys and evoked a faint fairy-like tinkling. ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... the gate of the stockade, and there Pembroke stood for a moment in surprise and perplexity. He was not prepared to meet this dark-haired, wide-eyed girl, clad in native dress of skin, with tinkling metals at wrist and ankle, and on her feet the tiny, beaded shoes. For her part, Mary Connynge, filled with woman's curiosity, was yet less prepared for that which appeared before her—an apparition, as ran her first thought, come to ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... clear and soft As a raindrop's silvery patter, Or a tinkling fairy-bell, heard aloft, In the midst of the merry chatter Of robin and linnet and wren and jay, One syllable, oft-repeated: He has but a word to say, And of that he will ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... know—while thus the quiet-coloured eve Smiles to leave 50 To their folding, all our many-tinkling fleece In such peace, And the slopes and rills in undistinguished gray Melt away— That a girl with eager eyes and yellow hair Waits me there In the turret whence the charioteers caught soul For the goal, ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... and frozen into eternal stillness. Around in the shadows at the foot of the Cathedral the lights of the great gay city twinkled and danced and veered and fluttered like fire-flies in the damp, dewy shadows of some moist meadow in summer. The sound of clattering hoofs and rumbling wheels, of tinkling guitars and gay roundelays, rose out of that obscure distance, seeming far off and plaintive like the dream of a life that is past. The great church seemed a vast world; the long aisles of statued pinnacles with their pure floorings of white marble appeared ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... no further invitation. As I passed the dining-room door I could hear Miss Darrell's little tinkling laugh and Mr. Hamilton's deep voice answering her. The next moment Thornton came out of the room, and I had only time to whisk round the corner. I confess this narrow escape very much alarmed me, and my heart beat a little quickly as I tapped at Gladys's door; then, as I heard her weak 'Come in,' ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the discovery that it was really bed-time, ceased its chirping; the loon no longer mocked the wolf, but still the man sat behind his smoke-smudge, tireless, unsleeping, waiting. Another half-hour crept by with leaden feet, then a new sound broke the stillness of the wild, the tinkling of a piano, sadly out of tune, followed by a chorus of voices lifted ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... this information. The door of the studio was very near that of the house, but before she had reached the street the visitors' bell was set ringing. The passage was narrow and she kept in advance of Nick, anticipating his motion to open the street-door. The bell was tinkling still when, by the action of her own hand, a gentleman on ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... disappointed rage behind us; these and the spitting crackle of a dozen rifles fired at random in the darkness. But afterward all sounds, save the rhythmic dip and drip of Jennifer's paddle, faded on the sense of hearing till, as it would seem, this gentle monody of dipping blade and tinkling drops became a crooning lullaby to blot out all the years that lay between, and make me once again a little child sinking asleep in my ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... a strange goblinesque charm in Gipsydom—something of nature, and green leaves, and silent nights—but it is ever strangely commingled with the forbidden; and as among the Greeks of old with Mercury amid the singing of leafy brooks, there is a tinkling of, at least, petty larceny. Witness the following, which came forth one day from a Gipsy, in my presence, as an entirely voluntary utterance. He meant it for something like poetry—it certainly was suggested by nothing, and as fast as he spoke I ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... name Venus and her revellers vanish, and Tannhaeuser finds himself in a meadow, hears the tinkling herd-bells, ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... coaches;) amused by the sign-boards of the shops, on which all the articles sold within are painted, and that too very exactly, though in a grotesque confusion, (a useful substitute for language in this great mart of nations;) amused with the incessant tinkling of the shop and house door bells, the bell hanging over each door and struck with a small iron rod at every entrance and exit;—and finally, amused by looking in at the windows, as I passed along; the ladies and gentlemen drinking coffee or playing cards, and the gentlemen all smoking. I wished ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Itself out there in the black fog? A cold air rushed across the summer heat of the fog; air foul as if issued from the opened door of a vault. As once before, a tremor quivered through the house. The hanging chains of the lamps swung with a faint tinkling sound. ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... lonely, silent mockery of a meal. And back the question came, booming over the soft tinkling of glass and silver. He realized, with his salad, that four nights out of seven, Nellie dined like this, alone. His lower lip protruded, and lines of conscience fell in ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... better than to hustle the institutions of the East; so we waited with what patience we had, listening to the intermittent tinkling of the little bell. At the end of fully fifteen minutes the devotee appeared. He proved to be a mild, deprecating little man, very eager to help, but without resources. He was a Hindu, and lived mainly on tea and rice. The rice was ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... within the shack—there was a tinkling sound as if a speeding bullet had bored a hole through a pane of glass and down fell his helmet. Jack picked it up and chuckled to find he could poke an investigating finger through a hole that had certainly not been there before. What great luck his head had not been inside that helmet, he ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... May is the best Sunday of all. In May not only is the whole valley knee-deep in grass and ferns and flowers and bluebells. There is something still better! In May the burial-ground is all singing and tinkling silently with fairy spires of columbines. Garden flowers in most other places, they are quite wild here. Purple and deep-blue and pale-pink columbines are growing up everywhere; each flower with its own little pairs of twin turtle-doves hidden ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... bunk-house rose the tinkling notes of a mandolin; after a few preliminary chords, the player, a Mexican, began a love-song in Spanish. The distant chimes of Mission bells sounded softly ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... first rode from side to side, and then by degrees to and fro, with the result that when nearest, I made a dash with one hand to tap on the window opposite to me; but being unable to govern the force exercised, my hand went right through the pane, and the glass fell tinkling to ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... comes to music I am as safe as houses, and I assure you, Tibby, I am by no means pleased by everything. There was a thing—something about a faun in French—which Helen went into ecstasies over, but I thought it most tinkling and superficial, and said so, and I held to my ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... down the tiny stream. Now and then birds moved in the undergrowth, and the man, who was struggling all the time with a deadly faintness, felt the silence grow more and more oppressive. He began even to wonder where he was. He closed his eyes. Was that really the tinkling of a guitar, the perfume of almond and cherry blossom, floating to him down the warm wind? He began to lose himself in dreams until he realized that actual unconsciousness was close upon him. Then he set his teeth tight and clenched his hands. ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and slid along the strings of the violin with bewildering swiftness. The little instrument jetted and effervesced its melody. The continuous and resounding noise poured out of it in tuneful bubbles. The air was filled with tinkling fragments of sound. The Lad's body swayed to and fro. His face glowed. His eyes flashed. The sweat stood in drops on his forehead, but still the bow snapped and crinkled, and the instrument continued to burst ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... was not just the young trees at the edge of the road that made music now, but the whole forest. There were organs and drums and trumpets; there were little thrush flutes and bullfinch pipes; there were gurgling brooks and singing water-sprites, tinkling bluebells ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof |
