"Cackling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the roof. They are for the domestic hens and are ungainly things, made ordinarily out of a piece of old matting. In these the hens lay their eggs, after meandering around the rafters and disturbing the inmates of the house with their cackling. After the eggs are laid, it is frequently necessary to drive the ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... to marry, is owre young to write; but it's the way o' these puir distractit times. Nae chick can find a grain o' corn, but oot he rins cackling wi' the shell on his head, to tell it to a' the warld, as if there was never barley grown on the face o' the earth before. I wonder whether Isaiah began to write before his beard was grown, or Dawvid either? He had mony a long year o' shepherding ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... White Linen Nurse's unprepared shoulder the Little Girl prodded a pallid finger-tip into the White Linen Nurse's vivid cheek. "Silly—Pink and White—Nursie!" she chuckled, "Don't you know there isn't any Marma?" Cackling with delight over her own superior knowledge she folded her little arms and began to rock herself convulsively to ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... to is the invasion of Rome by the Gauls in 390 B.C. They captured the whole of the city, except the Capitol, which was successfully defended by Manlius, who had been put on the alert by the cackling ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... much sweeter than by day; The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark, When neither is attuned; and I think The nightingale, if she should sing by day When every goose is cackling, would be thought No better a musician than the wren. How many things by season, seasoned are To their right praise and true perfection! Peace, there, the moon sleeps with Endymion And would not be awaked." (Music ceases ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... low-caste of both creeds share with beautiful impartiality. A solid line of blue, rising and falling like the back of a caterpillar in haste, would swing up through the quivering dust and trot past to a chorus of quick cackling. That was a gang of changars—the women who have taken all the embankments of all the Northern railways under their charge—a flat-footed, big-bosomed, strong-limbed, blue-petticoated clan of earth-carriers, ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... movement of the limbs; so that the Lady, that is, the Soul, which then, as has been said, shows herself, may appear modest, and not dissolute. Therefore the book on the Four Cardinal Virtues commands us thus: "Let thy smile be without loud laughter, that is, without cackling like a hen." ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... after him," Peter said, turning to the astounded Mrs. Pascoe. As he moved he saw a surprising sight, his grandfather's door was opened and his grandfather (who had not been on his feet for a great many years) was standing in the middle of it, cackling with laughter, dressed in a very ugly yellow dressing-gown, his old knotted hands clutching the sides of the door, his shrivelled body shaking, and his feet ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... little traits. In this age of great movements, great schemes and great combinations, our young people are disposed to ignore little things. A little thing in this great big age is too insignificant. Yet, we are told it was the cackling of a goose that saved Rome; the cry of a babe in the bull-rushes gave a law-giver to the Jews; the kick of a cow caused the great Chicago fire; the omission of a comma in preparing a bill that passed Congress cost this republic a half million dollars; ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... all going into the bathing-house, took off their clothes and went in, and then, sitting down on the bench, they all said to one another, 'Come, let us lay eggs: whosoever does not lay an egg shall pay the expenses of the bath'; after which they began to make a great noise, cackling like hens, and flinging the eggs which they had brought on the stone bench. Cogia Efendi, seeing what they were about, suddenly began to make a great noise and crow like a cock. 'What are you about, Cogia Efendi?' said the boys. 'Why,' said he, 'is not ...
— The Turkish Jester - or, The Pleasantries of Cogia Nasr Eddin Effendi • Nasreddin Hoca
... angry then and, flinging the dress on the floor, had risen haughtily. "I think he will marry me," she had announced, to be met with blank surprise, followed by cackling old laughter. ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the Collection of State Trials. A person who was present gives the following account of Somers's opening speech: "In the opening the evidence, there was no affected exaggeration of matters, nor ostentation of a putid eloquence, one after another, as in former trials, like so many geese cackling in a row. Here was nothing besides fair matter of fact, or natural and just reflections from thence arising." The pamphlet from which I quote these words is entitled, An Account of the late horrid Conspiracy by a Person who was present ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Sheriff-Substitute and Fountain of Justice at Lerwick or Tobermory. There is nothing required, you would say, but a little patience and a taste for exercise and bad air. To breathe dust and bombazine, to feed the mind on cackling gossip, to hear three parts of a case and drink a glass of sherry, to long with indescribable longings for the hour when a man may slip out of his travesty and devote himself to golf for the rest of the afternoon, and to do ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... its old fine tints of green and brown, and its old variety of inhabitants, horses, cows, sheep, pigs, and donkeys. The ponds are unfrozen, except where some melancholy piece of melting ice floats sullenly on the water; and cackling geese and gabbling ducks have replaced the lieutenant and Jack Rapley. The avenue is chill and dark, the hedges are dripping, the lanes knee-deep, and all nature is in a state of ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... the Ancient Mariner startled Daughtry by cackling shrilly. "Oodles and oodles of it, my gentlemen, in cask and chest, in cask and chest, ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... do. Your late father, if you'll excuse my saying so, was as nonsensical as he could be, but he did well in getting you that Swiss tutor. Do you remember the boxing matches you used to have with him? Gymnastics, wasn't it, you used to call them? But why should I go on cackling like this? I shall only prevent Monsieur Panshine (she never laid the accent on the first syllable of his name, as she ought to have done) from favoring us with his opinions. On the whole, we ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... springtime de flowers git be blooming, de hens to cackling, and de guineas to patarocking. Sam come along when I was out in de yard wid de baby. He fust talk to de baby, and I asked him if de baby wasn't pretty. He say, 'Yes, but not as pretty as you is, Louisa.' ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 1 • Various
... and then, returning to Cecilia, said, "Can you conjecture who was making those soft speeches? a Shylock! his knife all the while in his hand, and his design, doubtless, to cut as near the heart as possible! while the loud cackling from the other side is owing to the riotous merriment of a noisy Mentor! when next I hear a disturbance, I shall expect to see some simpering Pythagoras ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... a cheer from all the assembled company, the animals adding their roars and growls and barks and mewing and cackling to swell the glad tumult, and then all seated themselves at ...
— The Magic of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... taken separately, if you please. I myself will pay the fare. I won't travel with that cackling idiot.' ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... head. Moreover, the circumstance that the two old aunts, with still more extraordinary gowns and be-ribboned head-dresses than I had yet seen them wear, were sweeping along one on each side of her and cackling their welcomes in French, whilst the Baroness was looking about her in a way so gentle as to baffle all description, nodding graciously first to one and then to another, and then adding in her flute-like ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... aware of Betsy's cackling propensities; and long before he quitted Mrs Forster, it was generally believed throughout the good town of Overton that Mr Spinney, although he had not been killed outright, as reported in the first instance, had subsequently ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... story I return again: The trembling widow, and her daughters twain, This woful cackling cry with horror heard, Of those distracted damsels in the yard; And starting up beheld the heavy sight, 720 How Reynard to the forest took his flight, And 'cross his back, as in triumphant scorn, The hope and pillar of the ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... cackling laugh. He did not want to laugh, but laughed again and, stooping, reached for the bullets. He stared at his fingers, bewildered; they groped helplessly at a spot a foot from the place where lay the two bullets with their ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... the classical diffa. He did not bring us six thousand dozens of eggs, like the Tunis people; indeed they would have been hard to get, I think, in that little favoured spot, but he brought a very respectable contingent of cackling hens and of very sea-sick sheep. Our acceptance of these creatures, an earnest of our pacific intentions, gave him evident satisfaction, and I caused him to be told that I should ask for an interview with his ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... returned to her place not a thing was to be seen or heard. The horse had passed like a shot. But next day, there was hurrying and skurrying and cackling at a very early hour, all about the white house with the black beams, where Miss Jessamine lived. And when the sun was so low, and the shadows so long on the grass that the Grey Goose felt ready to run away at the sight of her own neck, little ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing
... to go cackling about it like an old hen, or a girl! Your own sister! I'm ashamed of you both. Mind, I shall thrash you if you ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... his eyes. There was the bridge and the ditch. He heard the ducks cackling from the distance. He saw his mills again. Yes, yes, there they were. But their name was no longer—what was ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... it was his own tail he was chasing! Often he would bark so loudly in his sleep that it would awaken him, but he would soon fall asleep again and go on dreaming. Sometimes he would be chasing cows, holding on to their long tails; at others, squawking, cackling chickens or anything else that happened ...
— Zip, the Adventures of a Frisky Fox Terrier • Frances Trego Montgomery
... crawled among thickets or lurked in sinister shadows. No bird poured out its heart in them; no lark soared out of them, breasting heaven. At rare intervals a note fell on the ear—the scream of hawk or eagle, the bitter cackling laugh of blue jay or woodpecker, the loon's ghostly cry—solitary notes, and unhappy, as though wrung by pain out of the choking silence; or away on the hillside a grouse began drumming, or a duck went whirring ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of the geese. There he stooped and caught one of them, but instead of a goose he had a huge hedgehog in his hands, which he dropped in dismay; whereupon it waddled away a goose as before, and the whole of them began cackling and hissing in a way that he could not mistake. For the turkey-cock, he gobbled and gabbled and choked himself and got right again in the most ridiculous manner. In fact, he seemed sometimes to forget that he was a ...
— Cross Purposes and The Shadows • George MacDonald
... other hated enemy, the big black Dog. An outer hedge delayed the Greyhound for a moment and gave Jack time to dash through the hen-hole into the yard, where he hid to one side. The Greyhound rushed around to the low gate, leaped over that among the Hens, and as they fled cackling and fluttering, some Lambs bleated loudly. Their natural guardian, the big black Dog, ran to the rescue, and Warhorse slipped out again by the hole at which he had entered. Horrible sounds of Dog hate and fury were heard behind him in ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... forlorn Hears Earth send up a foolish noise aloft.' 'And what'll he do? What'll he do?' scoff'd The Blackbird, standing, in an ancient thorn, Then spread his sooty wings and flitted to the croft With cackling laugh; Whom I, being half Enraged, called ...
— Sixteen Poems • William Allingham
... low and hoarse like a fit of coughing, and rose to the high cackling mirth of extreme age. At the sound both Anton and the monk took to praying. Presently it stopped, and her voice came full and strong as ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... of one faction—where he had never been, where the hostility against him was most bitter, and, that day, he knew he was "up against" Waterloo, the crossing of the Rubicon, holding the pass at Thermopylae, or any other historical crisis in the history of man. I was saddling the mules when the cackling of geese in the creek announced the coming of the Hon. Samuel Budd, coming with his chin on his breast-deep in thought. Still his eyes beamed cheerily, he lifted his slouched hat gallantly to the Blight and the little sister, and he would wait for us to jog along with him. I told him ...
— A Knight of the Cumberland • John Fox Jr.
... nothing to argue now whether those deeds were sins or virtues, nor would it have availed then. The child had grown up and was strong, and chose to go alone into the world. The young bird was fledged, and flew away. Poor George III. with his cackling was certainly not efficacious in restraining such a flight. But it is gratifying to see how this new people, when they had it in their power to change all their laws, to throw themselves upon any Utopian theory that ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... left the nest some five and twenty miles behind, when a miracle happened. The wooden goose of our stern-post suddenly clapped its wings and started cackling; Scintharus, who was bald, recovered his hair; most striking of all, the ship's mast came to life, putting forth branches sideways, and fruit at the top; this fruit was figs, and a bunch of black grapes, not yet ripe. These sights ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... The cackling challenge passed unheeded. Actually there was something about the strange little man to be afraid of. He took up the ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... her fret!" said Hazen. "I wanted to ask after my boy." His eyes expanded, he rubbed his hands a little, cackling. "A fine boy, ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... arms, and the sharer of my fortunes. Three loud cracks of the whip, and old Battle started off at a brisk pace, the major adding that if we made haste we would reach Barnstable by nightfall. As the wagon rolled over the road, a cackling noise was kept up, much to my surprise and annoyance; this I found was caused by a coop of disconsolate chickens, which the major had bought on speculation, and fastened to the back of his wagon, intending to make a good ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... plan began to ripen for execution, she was counter-plotted, or fancied herself to be, which led to the same denouement. Winnie Morris came to pass a vacation with her brother, Wayland, and the fore-doomed bachelor, Augustus Lester, most audaciously dared to fall in love with the cackling girl. So Miss Mary declared; and to remain in her brother's mansion, where she had hitherto exercised unlimited sway, under such a little minx of a mistress, was too much for human nature to endure; so, all on a sudden, she yielded in full to the majestic colonel's ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... really decent yet!" sighed Aveline, watching with envious eyes as Hermie exhibited her treasure to the admiring visitors. "The Sixth are cackling ever so hard." ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... The extraordinary cackling laughter of his lordship obliterated other sounds for a while; Rena Bonnesdel possessed herself of the drawing and held it up amid a shout of laughter. And, to his excessive annoyance, Siward saw that, unconsciously, he had caricatured Quarrier—Ferrall's malicious request for a Vandyke ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... the British were already here," Tim growled goodnaturedly. "If these merchants would stop cackling together like the hens in my father's poultry yard at home, and shoulder a gun, we'd drive Master George's tin soldiers and the Hessians back across the water so quick they'd hardly know they'd been here ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger
... point. His intentions with regard to the child, whom he cleansed and clothed, and taught, and formed with a care which was all the more remarkable because he was thought to be utterly devoid of tenderness, were interpreted in a variety of ways by the cackling society of the town, whose gossip often gave rise to fatal blunders, like those relating to the birth of Agathe and that of Max. It is not easy for the community of a country town to disentangle the truth from the mass of conjecture ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... one passing thought, but his triumphant withdrawal from the field had robbed the situation of not one bit of its decisiveness. Quiet followed his going, a stillness so profound that they heard him cackling to himself in insane glee as he went down the steps. And that hush had endured while they waited in a delicious state of tingling suspense for the first furious sentences which should preface his lifelong banishment ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... us the stillness of death, nothing astir unless it be the constant shimmering haze of heat which strikes our faces like the blast from a furnace. Rain falls, and within a few hours the air will be filled with the croaking of frogs and the cackling of ducks.* To my mind it is one of the most incomprehensible things in Nature that wildfowl (for not only ducks, but sometimes swans and geese are seen) know when and ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... Gauls under Brennus had scaled the Capitol without arousing even the sentinels or the watch-dogs, the sacred geese, kept in the court of the temple in honour of Juno, heard the approach of the enemy and commenced cackling. The patrician, Manlius, struck with the noise, roused his fellow-soldiers—the Gauls were discovered, attacked, and driven back. Thenceforth Roman geese were fattened, but not eaten. A golden image ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... time the chickens were cackling and screeching, as the house in the water lunged from one side to the other. It was a large new coop and built of strong material that made ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in the Country • Laura Lee Hope
... six bottles of claret between us afterwards, so I went to bed as cool as a cucumber, and slept soundly for several hours, until awakened by my old gander—now do be quiet, Cringle—by my old watchman of a gander, cackling like a hero. I struck my repeater—half past one so I turned myself, and was once more falling over into the arms of Morpheus, when I thought I saw some dark object flit silently across the open window that looks into the piazza, between me and the deep ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... but clean, and his own little girl was playing on the hearthrug with her cups and saucers. And before we were aware of it two little tongues were cackling and gobbling together, and the little back-parlour was rippling over with a merry twitter. The doctor stood and looked down at the children, and his eyes shone with a glassy light. 'You are very good, sir,' he said, 'but ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... hallowed by touching memories or historical reminiscences, or grand traditions, and then step aside and hold still for ten minutes and let you think, it would not be so bad. But they interrupt every dream, every pleasant train of thought, with their tiresome cackling. Sometimes when I have been standing before some cherished old idol of mine that I remembered years and years ago in pictures in the geography at school, I have thought I would give a whole world if the human parrot at my side would suddenly perish ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and then there was a cruel Scolding. However, in this Interim I did not leave off Feasting, Gaming, and other extravagant Diversions. And in short, my Father continuing to rate me, saying he would have no such cackling Gossips under his Roof, and ever and anon threatning to discard me, I march'd off, remov'd to another Place with my Pullet, and she brought ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... with me?" he asked himself. "I'm no coward; there hasn't been a coward in my family since the Crusade. No, it's the Colonel's eternal cackling that's got ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... one of his cackling, ironic laughs. "I guess I'm not worrying as much about science as I might. But as to their coming back—why, it stands to reason that they'll have just as much curiosity about us as we have about them. Curiosity's a woman's strong point, you know. ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... was the last of the seven, and he was nearly ninety when he died, outliving Tromp a scant two years. I well remember the pair of them, toward the last, worn and feeble, in beggars' rags, with beggars' bowls, sunning themselves side by side on the cliffs, telling old stories and cackling shrill-voiced like children. And Tromp would maunder over and over of how Johannes Maartens and the cunies robbed the kings on Tabong Mountain, each embalmed in his golden coffin with an embalmed maid on either side; and of how these ancient proud ones crumbled to dust within the hour while the ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... which, by how much the richer, has the thicker, the homelier, and the coarser coat, and whereof to a judicious palate the maggots are the best; it is a sack-posset, wherein the deeper you go you will find it the sweeter. Wisdom is a hen, whose cackling we must value and consider, because it is attended with an egg; but then, lastly, it is a nut, which, unless you choose with judgment, may cost you a tooth, and pay you with nothing ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... cock crowed in the yard, and a great uproar followed, with flapping of wings and cackling, grunting, and hoarse cries as if the whole yard were in a ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... again, still afoot, but now clad in her best. She came alone, and the men at the gates, instructed, let her in. She gazed around the courtyard with its burden of grain that had been crushed out of her people below, with its loitering soldiers and cackling fowls, and she shivered as ...
— The Truce of God • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... one climbs up among the stones, he sees at intervals actual clouds of fowl suddenly emerge from the ground either to swarm round in the air or else to fly out to sea, and at the same time those that remain make their presence underground known by an unceasing cackling and din, resembling, according to Friedrich Martens, the noise of a crowd of quarrelling women. Should this sound be stilled for a few moments, one need only attempt in some opening among the stones to imitate their cry (according to Martens: rott-tet-tet-tet-tet) ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... brings in the bundle of straw which was left standing outside. All the young children arrange themselves behind her in a row. She then walks slowly round the hall and the adjoining rooms, throwing handfuls of straw on the floor and imitating the cackling of a hen, while all the children follow her peeping with their lips as if they were chickens cheeping and waddling after the mother bird. When the floor is well strewn with straw, the father or the eldest member of the family throws ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... motion ceased, and the noise gradually died away in hollow echoes in the distance—whereupon ensued such a crowing of cocks, cackling of geese, barking of dogs, lowing of kine, neighing of horses, and shouting of men, women, and children amongst the negro and coloured domestics, as baffles all description, whilst the various white inmates of the house (the rooms, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... as his hand rested negligently in his coat pocket. And then, quite suddenly Ribiera began to chuckle. His rage vanished. He laughed, a monstrous, gross, cackling laughter. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... of Krooboys stood at the further end of it, cackling with talk, and at sight of him they called their friends on the main deck below, who began to come up as fast as they could get foot on the ladders. They showed inclinations for a rush, but Kettle held up his left hand for them ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... oh!" and as soon as one left off, another began, until it seemed as though they couldn't stop. They all said it was a splendid joke, and that they really must go and tell it to the whole bush. So they flew away, and far and near, for hours, the bush echoed with chuckling and cackling, and wild bursts of laughter, as the kookooburras told that grand ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... and was enfolding me, diffused in the air.... It was the flush of dawn. All at once I was conscious of extreme fatigue and turned homewards. As I passed the poultry-yard, I heard the first morning cackling of the geese (no birds wake earlier than they do); along the roof at the end of each beam sat a rook, and they were all busily and silently pluming themselves, standing out in sharp outline against the milky sky. From time to time they all rose at once, and after a ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... nursed than Rhoda was nursed. Aunt Priscilla watched over her day and night, hardly taking rest, and sleeping only a few minutes at a time. No noise was permitted about the farm that could disturb her; only the old, familiar sounds of cattle lowing, and sheep bleating, and the cackling of barn-door fowls, which were as soothing as pleasant music to her ears. Joan and the baby were always in sight; except when they were sleeping in a little bed on the floor, near at hand, that she might never feel any fear concerning them. Every morsel of food she ate ...
— The Christmas Child • Hesba Stretton
... and setting a goodly cheese on the table with a bang, "say free-trader, cock—t'other 'un's a cackling word and I don't ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... up at them as impersonally as if they were two cackling hens, rather than derisive humans, then bent his head over a stubborn knot and whistled La Paloma softly while he coaxed out ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... I won't tie 'em in front!" snapped Carr, his little eyes glittering. And then he gave a cackling laugh, and his eyes were as green as a cat's. "An' it won't be half so unpleasant as having something 'round ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... I will take no notice of ye, But if I do not fit ye, let me fry for't; Is all this Cackling for your egg? they are fair ones, Excellent rich no doubt too; and may stumble A good staid mind, but I can go thus by 'em; My honest friend; do you ...
— Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (2 of 10) - The Humourous Lieutenant • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... first five seconds, counted ten and threw up the sponge. The voice at the telephone became louder and more insistent. Flushed, hot and flurried, the G.S.O.3 thrust the receiver into the hands of the G.S.O.2, who handed it on to the General, who dropped it. Nobody spoke. Only the crackling and cackling voice could be heard from the receiver as it hung face downwards at the end of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 19, 1917 • Various
... short-faced gentleman might have spent his summer holidays after Sir Roger's death. It stands behind a high iron gate, surmounted by a handsome coat of arms; and before it there lies a pleasant patch of greensward, with a pond and a colony of cackling geese, which craned their necks and screamed at ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... whining moan, And thus was heard the feeble tone: 'Ah, sons, from evil ways depart; My crimes lie heavy on my heart. See, see, the murdered geese appear! Why are those bleeding turkeys there? Why all around this cackling train Who haunt my ears for chickens slain?' The hungry foxes round them star'd, And for the promised feast prepar'd. 'Where, sir, is all this dainty cheer? Nor turkey, goose, nor hen is here. These are the phantoms of your brain; And your sons ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... to sea, and old crutch escapement watches which Huygens himself had perhaps handled in Holland. The window was filled with trains of wheels and pinions, snails and racks, crystals, and faces and watches, cackling at each other. There were striking clocks which rung chimes or rocked like little vessels on apparent billows, or started off with notes like grasshoppers. A hundred of the most musical tree-frogs shut up in a piano might give a feeble notion of the tunes and thrummings assembled in this shop. ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... snorts. On the barnyard gate the old Shanghai was lustily challenging to mortal combat one of his kind three miles across country. From the river arose the strident scream of her blue gander jealously guarding his harem. In the poultry-yard the hens made a noisy cackling party, and the stable lot was filled with cattle bellowing for the freedom of the meadow pasture, as ...
— The Song of the Cardinal • Gene Stratton-Porter
... quiet. If any of O'Sullivan Og's party had saved themselves they were not to be seen, nor was there any indication that the accident was known on shore. It was still early, but little after six, the day Sunday; and apart from the cackling of poultry, and the grunting of hogs, no sound came from O'Sullivan's house or ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... teased and annoyed her. I heard their cawing and saw them pursuing the hawk, and then saw her swoop upon them or turn over in the air beneath them, as if to show them what feats she could do on the wing that were beyond their powers. The crows often made a peculiar guttural cawing and cackling as if they enjoyed the sport, but they were clumsy and awkward enough on the wing compared to the hawk. Time after time she came down upon them from a point high in the air, like a thunderbolt, but never seemed to touch them. ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... Mumpson was a little abashed by his manner, but when he resumed his breakfast she speedily recovered her complacency and volubility. "I've always heard," she said, with her little cackling laugh, "that men would be extravergant, especially in some things. There are some things they're fidgety about and will have just so. Well, well, who has a better right than a well-to-do, fore-handed man? Woman is to complement ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... had passed several fires. After waiting near an hour I was surprised to see Nelson's assistant come out of the wood: he had wandered thus far in search of plants and told me that he had met with some of the natives. Soon after we heard their voices like the cackling of geese, and twenty persons came out of the wood, twelve of whom went round to some rocks where the boat could get nearer to the shore than we then were. Those who ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... way ye might think. Big enough as it goes, but it ain't the size what counts," and he broke into a cackling laugh, wagging his head, as if he held the secret of a ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... shine 'gainst maple trees And drop by drop the sap doth flow, When days are warm, but still nights freeze, And deep in woods lie drifts of snow, When cattle low and fret in stall, Then morning brings the ph[oe]be's call, "Ph[oe]be, Ph[oe]be, ph[oe]be," a cheery note, While cackling hens make such ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... deceased father, excuse me, was cranky in some respects, but he did well when he hired a Swiss for thee; thou rememberest, how thou and he had fistfights; that's called gymnastics, isn't it?—But why have I been cackling thus? I have only been keeping Mr. Panshin" (she never called him Panshin, as she ought) "from arguing. But we had better drink tea; let us go and drink it on the terrace, my dear; our cream—is not like what you ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... into sly cackling laughter. The moment they were through the doorway Cranly seized him rudely by the neck and ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... was plain was overflowed by the river in times of flood. I hallooed for some minutes with all the strength of my lungs; but the only response was the rising of a few moorfowl from the marsh, which wheeled cackling above my head, as though wondering what my business might be, and then settled down again in the reedy pool from whence they had arisen at my cry. I sat down upon a stone, and feeling that I was fast going into a state of distraction, tried to collect my ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various
... apartments; which, long the object of desire, now set his teeth on edge. Nor need he have learned much of them then; for he had only to cross the lobby of the east wing, and was in view of the hall barely three seconds. But, unluckily, Lady Dunborough, cackling shrewishly with a kindred dowager, caught sight of him as he passed; and in a trice her old limbs bore her in pursuit. Mr. Fishwick heard his name called, had the weakness to turn, and too late found that he had fallen into the clutches of ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... in his sleep he suddenly awoke from a dreadful nightmare, during the horrors of which that cackling creature glared upon him in the enormity of his sin. Next morning he was up before the chickens' elderly friends, the cocks, began to crow, and ere they had completed their morning song, well—the stock of ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... sweet laugh, said, 'I give thee this staff, because thou art a sapling of Zeus, and in thee is no guile. For as I hate your builders that try to raise a house as high as the mountain summit of Oromedon, {40} so I hate all birds of the Muses that vainly toil with their cackling notes against the Minstrel of Chios! But come, Simichidas, without more ado let us begin the pastoral song. And I—nay, see friend—if it please thee at all, this ditty that I lately ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... too much for one at least on the other side of the partition. Rona broke into a loud, cackling laugh. One swift glance upwards and Stephanie realized that she was the victim of a practical joke. It took her exactly three seconds to reach the ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... cackling of bastardy under the Queen's own nose? I'll have you flogg'd and burnt too, by the ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... interest the description given by my companion of how these birds with magnificent snowy plumage would come flying in over the dark forest high in air and then volplane to the little pond where, in the heavily massed bushes, their nests were thickly clustered. With vivid distinctness he imitated the cackling notes of the {150} old birds as they settled on their nests, and the shrill cries of the little ones, as on unsteady legs they ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... Line, near where I was sitting in, my tent. At first it looked as if he had done this to secure the protection of the guard. The latter—a Twenty-Sixth Alabamian —ordered him out. Poll Parrot rose up on his one leg, put his back against the Dead Line, faced the guard, and said in his harsh, cackling voice: ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... him struggle up the ladder on deck, like a man whose every bone and muscle is racked by rheumatism. Attempting to speak, he could produce only an asthmatic, sibilant wheeze. On deck, he groaned, burst into a senseless, cackling laugh, and spread out his purple, frozen hands. His lips, too, were purple, and his sunken eyes glowed feverishly from a face crusted with dirt and brine. He seemed to want nothing so much as to ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... squawked, as the staff and the rejected, under Cheon's directions, chivied and danced and screamed between them and their desire, the lubras cheering to the echo every time one of the birds gave in, and stalked, cackling and indignant, up the ladder into the branches of the coolibar; or pursuing runaways that had outwitted them, in shrieking, pell-mell disorder, while Cheon, fat and perspiring, either shouted orders and cheered lustily, bounded wrathfully alter ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... with your Livy before you, and hear the geese cackling that saved the Capitol: and to see with your own eyes the Carthaginian sutlers gathering up the rings of the Roman knights after the battle of Cannae, and heaping them into bushels; and to be so intimately present at the ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... the old man, cackling his dry little laugh. "How in tarnation am I going to know which 'she' he's a-stewing about? There's a pair of 'em, and they both look like wimmin ez have been dragged hilter-skilter through the big woods for some better 'n a week. Natheless, they're fitting to ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... miles on her way to mill, she stopped at a farm-house to water her horse; and here something curious happened. A woman came to the door of the house, and the next moment a large boy, named Lorenzo, hopped out on one foot and two canes, and began stumping about the yard at a furious rate, cackling, ...
— Harper's Young People, February 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... my son? Whats happened to my son? Will you tell me that, and stop cackling about ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw
... covered three-quarters of the distance when the diligence was brought to a halt before a high stone wall and a solid barred gate. The nuns came back to the present with an excited cackling. Who would believe they had reached the convent so soon! They made their adieus and ponderously descended, their departure accelerated by Tony who had become of a sudden alertly helpful. As they started again he slid along into the ...
— Jerry • Jean Webster
... nearly always takes his nap during the day in the open fields, along the sides of the ridges, or under the mountain, where he can look down upon the busy farms beneath and hear their many sounds, the barking of dogs, the lowing of cattle, the cackling of hens, the voices of men and boys, or the sound of travel upon the highway. It is on that side, too, that he keeps the sharpest lookout, and the appearance of the hunter above and behind him is ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... prepared to embark. Clenk had an ill-savored story to tell of the apprehension of a malefactor through the coercion of hunger, constrained to stop and beg a meal as he fled from justice, and Drann had known a man whose neck was forfeited by the necessity of robbing a hen-roost, the cackling poultry in this instance as efficient in the cause of law and order as the geese that saved Rome. Copenny, listening sardonically, could not be thankful for such small favors. His venture as a moonshiner at all events was, so to speak, a side line of ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... brownish color. This species is larger than the Sand-hill Crane, the latter having a total length of from forty to forty-two inches. The Sand-hill species may be distinguished from the Whooping-crane by its slate-blue color. The cackling, whooping, and screaming voices of an assembled multitude of these birds cannot be described. They can be heard for miles upon the open plains. These birds are found in Florida and along the Gulf coast as well as over large areas of the northern states. They feed upon soft roots, which they ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... knows the recipe," cried the old lady, cackling aloud. "So, as I was saying, being all ready for the meeting, and no horse to ride on, I made up my mind to foot it; for they tell me there is a nice young man to be taken into communion to-night. But now your good worship will lend me your arm, and we shall be there ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... about two o'clock in the afternoon, and I suddenly heard a strange sound, that of our fowl cackling. Yesterday I heard her tell-tale note about noon, and the day before just as I was eating my breakfast. I knew that it would be so! The serpent has entered Eden. That fowl has laid before eight in the morning for three weeks without interruption, ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... working staff of a dozen hens were doing their duty, which, on that first night of the "brown angels' visit," consisted of silent slumber, when all at once the hens and the new hands were aroused by a clamorous cackling, which speedily stopped. It sounded like a hen falling in a bad dream, then regaining her perch to go to sleep again. But next morning the body of one of these highly esteemed branches of the egg-plant was found in the corner, partly devoured. ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... the chickens. Up from the direction of the barn and high over the roofs of the town I suddenly saw a bird soar, which I took to be a prairie chicken, or some sort of game bird, though where it came from I could not guess. Then, as it lit on the chimney of the blacksmith shop, and began a great cackling, I saw that it was only Crazy Jane. I could not help laughing, in spite of my troubles, and said out loud, "Ah, it takes somebody smarter than an Indian ...
— Track's End • Hayden Carruth
... patricians, who, in their robes of state, waited for the enemy. The Gauls, under Brennus, rushed in, and plundered and burned the city. In later times the story was told, that, when the Gauls were climbing up to the Capitol secretly by night, the cackling of the geese awoke Marcus Manlius, and so the enemy was repulsed. There was another story, that, when the Romans were paying the ransom required by Brennus, and complained of false weight, the insolent Gaul threw his sword into the scale, exclaiming, ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... cackling of the geese or the braying of the asses on Langborough Common prevent my crossing it, then, and not till then, will my course be determined by Mrs. Bingham ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... her advice, the barn-yard became a quiet, well-ordered barn-yard again, with only so much cackling and clucking, and so forth, as to give ...
— The Little Brown Hen Hears the Song of the Nightingale & The Golden Harvest • Jasmine Stone Van Dresser
... ranch house, a small lake and a cultivated field, the whole being apparently ten acres in area. I looked straight down on a man who was walking near the house and appeared no larger than a little doll and his dog seemed to be the size of a grasshopper, but we heard the dog bark and heard the cackling of hens quite plainly. On one side of this pit there was a break in the formation, which made this curious place ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... notice. I mean the sounds of the visible world, animate and inanimate. Winds blowing, waters flowing, trees stirring, insects whirring (dear me! I am quite unconsciously writing rhyme), with the various cries of birds and beasts,—lowing cattle, bleating sheep, grunting pigs, and cackling hens,—all the infinite discords that somehow or other make a ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik |
