"Tinkling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 mud, a damp course ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... picturesque city it was! The cries of the hawkers, the importunities of the guides, the venders and cabmen, the whining beggars; the clatter of horses and carriages and carts; strolling singers, goats with tinkling bells, the barking of outcast dogs, and the brawling and bawling of children, hundreds upon hundreds of children! Merrihew grew dizzy trying to absorb the whole canvas at once. How the sturdy little campagna ponies ran up and ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... but it seemed to her that she had come in at the second act of the play. Bruce went off with Miss Crowe's promise to drive with him in the afternoon. In the afternoon he swept up to the door in a prancing, tinkling sleigh. After some minutes of hoarse jesting and silvery laughter in the keen wintry air, he swept away again with Lizzie curled up in the buffalo-robe beside him, like a kitten in a rug. It was dark when they returned. When Lizzie ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... avenues so closely with all their fineries and embroideries that not the slightest space remained vacant among them. Not so much as the caw of a crow struck the ear. All that was audible was the report of jingling and tinkling, and the sound of the gold bells and jade ornaments slightly rocked to and fro. Besides these, the creaking noise made by the shoes of the inmates, while getting up ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... topic silence is golden; while speech reaches not even the dignity of sounding brass or tinkling cymbal, and is but the weary clatter of an endless logomachy. One can but suspect that Hume also had reached this conviction; and that his shadowy and inconsistent theism was the expression of his desire to rest in a state of mind, which distinctly excluded ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... would hear Sis coming softly up the stairs, accompanied by a tinkling of china and glass. I would face her, ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... I walked home. Better so, perhaps, after all, than in the lively sleigh, with the tinkling bells. ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... March afternoon, I had passed in quiet reflection before the library fire. How vividly it all rose up before me. My sudden awakening from a stupid slumber, my firm conviction that some one else was in the room, my timid whispering question, the tinkling sound of something falling upon the floor, and my subsequent surprise on finding this queer, unfamiliar trinket lying at my feet. Now that it was proven to be Ernest Dalton's, the mystery was thicker than ever. How had it come there? I asked myself this perplexing ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... knew a God: "Whether there be prophecies they shall fail, whether there be tongues they shall cease, whether there be knowledge it shall vanish away. Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am become as sounding brass and tinkling cymbal,..." ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... repeated the girl, but Caleb Parish looked suddenly away. His ear had caught a distant sound of tinkling pony bells drifting down wind and he said devoutly, "Thank God, the pack train ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... till the whole front of the church seemed filled with them. He looked up at the chandelier and began to count the prisms, and watch for the times that the breeze swept across them and set them to tinkling. ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... had just gone tinkling along the line of the Japanese ships, informing those whom it might concern that the hour was ten o'clock in the morning, when a fresh wireless message came from our blockading squadron, informing us that at last the Russian fleet was actually steaming out of Port Arthur harbour, with battle-flags ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... suppose that Aladdin often waded through the brook and noticed the shining pebbles and heard the tinkling music of the water as it rippled over stones in the stream. He noticed the pebbles, but did not look at them. He heard the murmur of the waters, but he did not listen. But when the magician uttered his magic words, and the earth opened, and Aladdin ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... must be delicately "balanced" as well as stresses and slides and final clauses; it is the elevation of ideas, the nobility and beauty of feeling, as discerned by the trained literary sense, which makes the final difference between enduring prose harmonies and the mere tinkling of the "musical glasses." [Footnote: This point is suggestively discussed by C. E. Andrews, The Writing and Reading of Verse, chap. 5. New York, 1918.] The student of verse may very profitably continue to exercise himself with the rhythms of prose. He should learn to share the unwearied ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... voice, and see his waving, outstretched arms. In his right hand he held the looped sceptre which, by his express wish I send to you with the drawings. I could see the flash of the jewels strung upon the wires, and in the great stillness, hear the tinkling of its golden bells. ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... "Love is the greatest thing in the world." Read what Paul says about it in I Cor., xiii: "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... call upon father and daughter. These calls are both welcome and distasteful. Thereby opportunities are brought to their notice, but tinkling notoriety jars upon refined benevolent sense. Overzealous would-be almoners of desired bounties press special claims with ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... then, as 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 ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... the spectators, two vaqueros, dressed in black velvet short-clothes, dazzling linen, and stiff black sombreros, tinkling bells attached to their trappings, jingling spurs on their heels, galloped into the plaza, driving a large aggressive bull. They chased him about in a circle, swinging their reatas, dodging his onslaughts, then rode out, and four others entered, dragging an unwilling bear by a reata ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... never have got out of the field, for every time he chased the sheep away they followed him up again; and it was all the fault of one great, black-faced, chuckle-headed wether, who was so stupid that he couldn't keep quiet, and of course all the sheep kept following him, for he had a tinkling copper bell attached to his neck, which seemed to be an especial abhorrence to Dick, from the way he barked at it. But at last the dog heard a summons that he could not disobey, namely, a long whistle from his ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... babblings of fifty-year-old Barry Miles disconcerted him. They sounded like little Charlie O'Neill's strange semi-connected jabber, but Westinghouse's Dr. O'Connor said that it seemed to represent another phenomenon entirely. William Logan's blank face was a memory of horror, but the constant tinkling giggles of Ardith Parker, the studied and concentrated way that Gordon Macklin wove meaningless patterns in the air with his waving fingers, and the rhythmless, melodyless humming that seemed to be all there was to the personality of Robert ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)
... and a complete acknowledgment of experience. 'Give us the whole,' we cry, 'give us the truth.' Unless we can catch the undertone of this acknowledgment, a poet's voice is in our ears hardly more than sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... of the school; Your phrases reek, but not with Attic scent, Tarquitius' and Selius' and Varro's drool: A witless crew, with learning temulent. And ye begone, ye tinkling cymbals vain, That call the youths to ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... was as bad, because they were not sermons.... either kind was bad and ought not to be allowed... a homily... sermons... homilies... a quiet homily might be something rather nice... and have not Charity—sounding brass and tinkling cymbal.... Caritas... I have none I am sure.... Fraulein Pfaff would listen. She would smile afterwards and talk about a "schone Predigt"—certainly.... If she should ask about the sermon? ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... hurricane of followers, drunk with the cup of abominations, all shouting with revelry, and glorying in her triumph, treading down in their career those precious pearls, the saints and martyrs, into the mire beneath their swinish feet. "Before her you may behold Wantonness playing the tinkling cymbal, Insolence beating the drum, and Pride blowing the trumpet. Every vice is there with his emblems; and the seller of pardons, with his crucifix and triple crown, is distributing his largess of perdition. The voices of men shout ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... she said, and she did not say it to them. She disregarded them all, and yet by some magic, through the medium of the jerky, empty sentences she made them see the vulgar, gaudy thing as she was seeing it. The subdued music, the tinkling of plates and glasses, they themselves made a background for her swift picture. They watched it—the old third-rate circus—trail its cheap glitter and flare and bang out of darkness and across the stage and into darkness again—tawdry and sordid, and yet kindly ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... after the music had stopped and everybody gone home. Then Tommie fell asleep, full length under a tree. Cogan tried to stand watch but he was tired, too, and after a while, with his back against the same tree, and the water-play of the fountain still tinkling in his ears, he ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly
... rather doubt his skill upon this point; we never perceived anything more than a sound and a jog, something similar to what you hear in the cabin of a fourpenny steam-boat, and especially mistrusted the "metallic tinkling," and the noise resembling a blacksmith's bellows blowing into an empty quart-pot, which is called the bruit de soufflet. Take our word, when medicine arrives at such a pitch that the secrets of the human heart can be probed, it need not go any further, and will have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... Lloyd is tinkling below me on the typewriter; my wife has just left the room; she asks me to say she would have written had she been well enough, and hopes to do it still. - Accept the best wishes ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... warning sense told him of her presence, and then above Jeekie's snores (for on these occasions Jeekie always snored his loudest) he would hear a soft footfall, as cat-like, she crept towards him, or the sweep of her spangled robe, or the tinkling of the scales of her golden breastplate. For a long while she would stand there, examining him greedily and even the few little belongings that remained to him, and then with a hungry sigh glide away and vanish in the shadows. How she came or how she vanished ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... lovingly. He left the little skiff and trod the terraced ascent. A meandering brooklet, tributary of the larger stream, was spanned by fairy-like bridges. He hesitated among the intersecting ways, mazy, enchanting, and flower-bordered. The living air was full of subdued sound. Bubbling water, tinkling bells, and the mingling of many voices made music which was borne on perfumed winds. This was the fairest spot in all sunny Kashmir, where the nightingale sings perpetually in groves of ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... one's head and ears feel numb with the continuous tinkling of the bells and the loud rattling of the windows, what a charming sensation it is to see your pretty neighbor open her eyes, startled, glance around her, arrange her rebellious hair with her slender fingers, adjust her hat, feel with sure hand whether her corset is still in place, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... goes on, and the masters of the word might just as well have hushed their sweet or thunderous voices. For, though they speak with the tongue of men and angels, and have not action, what are they but sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal? ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... appointments, which were of the most elaborate description. Rising, Patty examined some of the pictures and ornaments, and became so engrossed, that the minutes flew by unnoticed. On the dressing-table was a silver-framed clock, and a tinkling chime rang out from it, before Patty had given a thought to the hour. Quarter-past seven! And the performance was scheduled for half-past eight. She had waited there for Ray nearly fifteen minutes. It was very queer. ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... heard the tinkling of the parlor pianoforte. Music has soothing charms for me, though I have not a savage breast. I drew near, and found Miss Tarlingford trifling with the keys,—those keys which lock together so many chains of human sympathy. She ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... lamenting seemed all lost, And from my land no answer came again, It was because of that your care and pain A house was building, and your bitter sighs Came hither as toil-helping melodies, And in the mortar of our gem-built wall Your tears were mingled mid the rise and fall Of golden trowels tinkling in the hands Of builders gathered wide from all the lands.— —Is the house finished? Nay, come help to build Walls that the sun of sorrow once did gild Through many a bitter morn and hopeless eve, That ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... spring flowing at His feet, and round Him the cattle of the Campagna in which they had dug their church, the very self-same goats which this morning have been trotting past my window through the most populous streets of Rome, innocently following their shepherd, tinkling their bells, and shaking their long spiral horns and white beards; the very same dew-lapped cattle which were that Sunday morning feeding on the hillside above, carved on the tomb-marbles sixteen hundred ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... Wonderland, though she knew she had but to open them again, and all would change to dull reality—the grass would be only rustling in the wind, and the pool rippling to the waving of the reeds—the rattling teacups would change to tinkling sheep bells, and the Queen's shrill cries to the voice of the shepherd-boy—and the sneeze of the baby, the shriek of the Gryphon, and all the other queer noises, would change (she knew) to the confused clamor of the busy farm-yard—while the lowing of the cattle in the distance would take ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... than a dozen were in the group; all were lovely in appearance and clothed in the same gauzy robes as Merla and the Princess. These attendants did not join in the conversation but darted here and there in sportive play, and often Trot heard the tinkling chorus of their laughter. Whatever doubts might have arisen in the child's mind through the ignorant tales of her sailor friend, she now found the mermaids to be light-hearted, joyous and gay, and from the first ...
— The Sea Fairies • L. Frank Baum
... feet children and young girls wear the paijan or hollow anklet with tinkling balls inside. But when a married woman has had two or three children she leaves off the paijan and wears a solid anklet like the tora or kasa. It is now said that the reason why girls wear sounding anklets is that their ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... The tinkling of a bell sounded down the street. Father and son quickly doffed their hats and knelt on the pavement, while a priest, mounted on a mule, rode swiftly past on his way to the bedside of a dying communicant, the ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... silent night, With my lantern and my light And the tinkling of my bell, Thus I walk, and this I tell: —Death and dreadfulness call on To the general session; To whose dismal bar, we there All accounts must come to clear: Scores of sins we've made here many; ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... was carried back and the tolling stopped, in that moment of silence a tinkling of little bells was heard near at hand coming from the river road. Then of a sudden the crowd rushed in that ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various
... of the cellar turned into a complex odour of grilled meats, savoury sauces, rich wine, and spring fruits, which the companions snuffed and breathed in with greedy delight; sounds of laughing voices were heard, the stairs were better lighted, and now and then the idle tinkling of a lute or of a deep-voiced, double-stringed guitar made an improvised accompaniment to ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... the dawn and softly blows Beneath the lintel, where is hung My little bell with winged tongue; Steals from the dawn, that it may be An oracle of peace to me; For hark! athwart my fitful dreams There mingles with the Orient beams A wakening psalm of tinkling bell: "God brings the ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... uncommon in the middle rank of society in England, whose sterling excellences are more widely felt than openly appreciated. She was not one of those active ladies who carry little bells on the skirts of their good deeds, so as to make a loud tinkling in the ears of the world. Hers was a quiet and unobtrusive work. Her views of usefulness and duty were, in the eyes of some of her acquaintance, old-fashioned and behind the age. Standing on one side, as it were, out of the whirl of good excitement, she could mark ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... of our stay began in country quiet. In fact we did not wake up until eight; everything was snowbound, and even the occasional horse cars that pass the front of the house had ceased their primitive tinkling. The milkman did not come, neither did the long crispy French rolls, a New York breakfast institution for which the commuters confessedly have no substitute, and it was after nine before breakfast ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... beneath the Almond blossoms, And see the white snow melting on the hills Till Khorassan is gay with water-courses, Glad with the tinkling sound ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... a charming companion, and her dancing and laughter—for she laughed at times like the tinkling of a silver bell—did much to enliven their journey ...
— The Road to Oz • L. Frank Baum
... of the cavity with no lining; they are creamy or yellowish buff in color, sprinkled, spotted or blotched in endless variety, with reddish brown. Size 1.35 x 1.10. These birds are very noisy, especially when the young are learning to fly, uttering a loud, tinkling, "killy, killy, killy." They have a very amiable disposition, and frequently nest harmoniously in the same tree with other birds, such ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... syllabic flow, such little ripples of pronunciation and musical interludes, that you are attracted and held without the smallest regard to what they are saying. I could sit for hours and hear two of them chattering over a checker-board for the pleasure of the silvery, tinkling music of their voices. But woe is me for the voices, male and female, that you so often hear in New England,—the harsh, strident voices, the monotonous, cranky, yanky, filing, rasping voices, without modulation, all rise and no fall, a monotonous discord, no soul, ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... are filmed in his reeling mind while he listens, over the tinkling wire, to the enumeration of rooms, baths, pantries, mortgages, commuting schedules, commodious closets, open fireplaces, and what not. In the flash and coruscation of thought he has transported his helpless family to Yonkers, or to Manhasset, ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... What a story of our gladness their enticing music tells As it chimes and it rhymes with the song! Such a rollicking delight Bubbles out upon the night As their joy-creating burthen over hill and valley swells. Every voice must join the tune As we skim beneath the moon To the tinkling and the twinkling of ...
— Funny Big Socks - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow
... Immediately below, the Moscow Gazette, in the person of its celebrated chief, M. Katkoff, is playing in a reckless, haphazard fashion upon an enormous bass fiddle. Close by are the two leading comic journals, the one tinkling a triangle, the other blowing the pandean pipes. Farther on the Voice (Golos) is bawling through a speaking-trumpet, and the Bourse Gazette flourishing a tambourine, a host of minor performers being loosely sketched ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... been blown there came the strong sweet sound of an evening hymn, all joining together, while there arose distant echoes of others farther away. When it was over, one shout of "Jodel" echoed from each point, and then all was still except for the tinkling of a little cow-bell. "That's the way we wish each other good night," said the little girl, as the shadows mounted high on the tops of the mountains, leaving them only peaks of rosy light. "Now come to the chalet, and sister Rose will ...
— Little Lucy's Wonderful Globe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... skirt, which hung down perfectly straight and innocent of fulness, and allowed a pair of white pyjamas to appear beneath. These were fastened tightly round the ancles, which were encircled by little bunches of the tinkling bells, which the ladies make such use of in the dance. Round the shoulders comes a filmy scarf of various colours, which also plays a prominent part in all their movements, and answers in its way to the fan of more accomplished ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... 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 ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... distant thicket came a robin's cheery call, a glimmer of blue wings flashed across the desolate garden, a south wind stirred the bending, icy branches to a tinkling music, and she knew that Spring had ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... 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 a curtain ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... long after she was out of sight stood looking vacantly down the darkened street. There was little light or sound there now, except in the Upton Arms, where the windows glistened brightly, and the merry tinkling of a violin sounded through the open door. Her brother was there, she knew, and would not be home before midnight. He had been less manageable since Mr. Chantrey ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton
... A cab came tinkling up behind her, and Rachel half thought of hailing it, and driving through the lighted town after all; but the hansom was occupied, and the impulse passed. She put down her veil and turned into the stream without catching a suspicious eye. Why should they suspect her? And again, what did it ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... lentil, and the lower hollowed like a little cup or pipkin. It is probable also, that, even in the oldest ages, it was a practice amongst them to suspend gold and silver rings, not merely from the lower, but also from the upper end of the ear, which was perforated like a sieve. The tinkling sound, with which, upon the slightest motion, two or three tiers of rings would be set a-dancing about the cheeks, was very agreeable to the baby ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... 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 ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... the cadence of his lyre! What melody of words! They strike a pulse within the heart, Like songs of forest birds, Or tinkling of the shepherd's bell Among the ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... childhood's prayer: 'Lord, receive me, receive me!' he felt not merely at ease, but thrilled and joyful. He crossed himself and lay down on the bedding on his narrow bench, tucking his summer cassock under his head. He fell asleep at once, and in his light slumber he seemed to hear the tinkling of sledge bells. He did not know whether he was dreaming or awake, but a knock at the door aroused him. He sat up, distrusting his senses, but the knock was repeated. Yes, it was a knock close at hand, at his door, and with it the ...
— Father Sergius • Leo Tolstoy
... Lord Derby's translation is distinguished for its prosaic accuracy. The recent version of our venerable poet, Wm. C. Bryant, is acknowledged to be at once scholarly, accurate, and harmonious, and will be of permanent value and reputation. But the exquisite tinkling of Pope's lines, the pleasant refrain they leave in the memory, like the chiming of silver bells, will cause them to last, with undiminished favor, unaffected by more correct rivals, as long as the language itself. "A very pretty poem, Mr. Pope," said the great Bentley; "but ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... down the valley below Calistoga, we turned sharply to the south and plunged into the thick of the wood. A rude trail rapidly mounting; a little stream tinkling by on the one hand, big enough perhaps after the rains, but already yielding up its life; overhead and on all sides, a bower of green and tangled thicket, still fragrant and still flower-bespangled by the early season, where thimble-berry played the part of our English hawthorn, and the buck-eyes ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... instrument case, unlocked it, and handed up a crook-necked mandolin and its small ivory plectrum to her tyrant. At once the hall was full of tinkling melody. The dwarf's threadlike fingers ran along the neck of the mandolin, and as she made the ivory disk quiver among its strings her head swayed ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... before daybreak, bidding him rise and put on the clothes which he has brought. 'I followed him out of the house before anybody else was awake, and he took me across the fields towards the high road. At this place we waited till we heard the tinkling of the bells of a team of horses. "Here comes the waggon," said he, "in which you are to go. So fare you well, Jervas. I shall hear how you go on; and I only hope you will serve your next master, whoever he may be, as faithfully as you have served me." "I ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... oversprinkle All the heavens, seem to twinkle With a crystalline delight; Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells From the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells— From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... 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, When the king looked, where ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... 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 of Clive's drawings made in the time of his very early ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and hilarious. Indeed, she seems disagreeably serious and indisposed to any fun or jollity, scurrying away at his approach, and apparently annoyed at every endearing word and look. It is surprising that all this parade of plumage and tinkling of cymbals should be gone through with and persisted in to please a creature so coldly indifferent as she really seems ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... 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
... walk up and down the Kandersteg valley, in the soft gloaming, with the spectacle of the dying lights of day playing about the crests and pinnacles of the still and solemn upper realm for contrast, and text for talk. There were no sounds but the dulled complaining of the torrent and the occasional tinkling of a distant bell. The spirit of the place was a sense of deep, pervading peace; one might dream his life tranquilly away there, and not miss it or mind it ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... show unto you yet a more excellent way,"(22) and then sings the praises of charity:(23) "If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And if I should have prophecy and should know all the mysteries, and all knowledge, and if I should have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, I am nothing, etc."(24) Charity is a gratia gratum faciens. Hence, since the gratia gratis data is treated elsewhere (Apologetics, ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... athwart the wild, and while young Day his anthem swells, Sad falls upon my yearning ear the tinkling of the Camel-bells: ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... marigolds about the door. Adjoining was an equally tidy barn, and in front one of the best-kept, most luxuriant gardens I had ever seen in Canada. Farther away was an acre of ripening oats and another of potatoes. A Jersey cow with her tinkling bell was feeding at the borders of the clearing. Such evidences of care and thrift were so unusual in that northerly region that I spoke ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... tumult and the beat Of hurrying feet, Those whom the god loves hear Pan's pipe, insistent, clear; Echoes of elfin laughter, high and sweet; Catch in the sparrows' cries Those tinkling melodies That sing where brooklets meet, And the wood's glamour colours ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 20, 1917 • Various
... a benevolent countenance, then the streams are at their lowest ebb, with scarce a memory left of their wild spring floods. The small tributaries that do not reach back to the lasting snow fountains of the summit peaks shrink to whispering, tinkling currents. After the snow is gone from the basins, excepting occasional thundershowers, they are now fed only by small springs whose waters are mostly evaporated in passing over miles of warm pavements, and in feeling their way slowly from pool to pool through the midst of boulders ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... the wood, then the house with its courtyard, then a large deserted garden, and then immense meadows extending along the skirt of the hill as far as the river and even to the opposite bank. Sheep graze in these meadows, and the tinkling of their bells with the barking of the dogs are heard. It is easy to imagine that you are in the bosom of solitary nature, so profound is the peace, only broken by the song of a bird or ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... was ever in Piora there was a brilliant moon, and the unruffled surface of the lake took the reflection of the mountains. I could see the cattle a mile off, and hear the tinkling of their bells which danced multitudinously before the ear as fire-flies come and go before the eyes; for all through a fine summer's night the cattle will feed as though it were day. A little above the lake I came upon a man in a cave before ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... by the time he got back to Ratcliff Highway, and the flaring gas-lamps were lighted. The bar of the tavern was crowded, and the tinkling notes of the old piano sounded feebly from ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... Reginald Clarke's intonation captivated every ear. Voluptuously, in measured cadence, it rose and fell; now full and strong like the sound of an organ, now soft and clear like the tinkling of bells. His voice detracted by its very tunefulness from what he said. The powerful spell charmed even Ernest's accustomed ear. The first page gracefully glided from Reginald's hand to the carpet before the boy dimly realised that he was intimately familiar with every word ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... of the door and peered around at the deserted cabaret. He had hardly succeeded in identifying the head as Hermia's because it wore a scarlet cap embroidered with small bells which explained the bedlam of tinkling. When the rest of her body emerged upon the scene Markham noted that Hermia's transformation was in other respects complete; for she wore a zouave jacket of red, a white blouse and a blue skirt. Upon her back was a round object which upon close inspection turned out to be a drum, ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... millions in the person of old Peter Pomeroy; now people were beginning to say that Jeanette Vanderwall might soon be expected to follow suit with Peter's nephew George. The big, beautifully decorated reception-room hummed with gay gossip, with the tinkling laughter of women and ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... of Stonehenge was upon me. As I reclined under the great transverse stone, in the middle of the gateway of giants, I heard the tinkling of bells, and presently a large flock of sheep came browsing along, and several entered the circle. Soon a man also came up. In a friendly talk, the young shepherd told me that the people of the plain believed that thousands of men had brought ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... over my visitor lent wings to my corkscrew, and in five minutes I was back with the tempting beverages in the tall glasses, the lemon curl giving it the vertebrate appearance that all stiff drinks should have, and the ice tinkling refreshingly ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... but made a grievous wound: And never wounded, but death followed it; And yet no peril, hurt or harm he found, No weapon on his hardened helmet bit, No puissant stroke his senses once astound, Yet like a bell his tinkling helmet rung, And thence flew flames of fire and ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... reminded of the merry sleigh rides she had enjoyed in the more northern home of her childhood, was eager to renew the pleasure. Some antiquated sledges were found in the stables. New ones, gay and graceful, were constructed. The horses, with nodding plumes, and gorgeous caparisons, and tinkling bells, dazzled the eyes of the Parisians as they swept through the Champs Elysees, drawing their loads of lords and ladies enveloped in furs. It was a new amusement—an innovation. Envious and angry lips declared that "the Austrian, with an Austrian heart, was ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... unto them, I never knew you, depart from me you that work iniquity;" and on these of St. Paul: "If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal." "I chastise my body, and bring it into subjection, lest, perhaps, when I have preached to others, I myself ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... thus the quiet-colored eve Smiles to leave 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, When the king looked, where ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... of war had so far taken effect that he of the yellow kid gloves was studying the position of every piece, however insignificant, upon the board; and it so happened that at the mention of that 'nice old man,' an ominous tinkling sounded in his ears. One evening, therefore, Maxime seated himself among the book-shelves in the dimly lighted back room, reconnoitred the seven or eight customers through the chink between the green curtains, and took the little coach-builder's ...
— A Man of Business • Honore de Balzac
... given by eight little girls provided with wands. At the top of each wand are tacked three streamers of red, white, and blue ribbon or cambric. At the end of each streamer a little tinkling bell is sewed. The children sing, and wave wands in time to the music. The words may be sung to the tune ...
— Christmas Entertainments • Alice Maude Kellogg
... we have to school ourselves into greater conformity to the likeness of our Master, to conquer selfishness, and to purify our souls, or else all this talk about Christian unity is no better than sounding brass, and more discordant than tinkling cymbals. Let us learn the lesson. 'The unfeigned love of the brethren' is not such an easy thing as some people fancy, and it is not to be attained at all on the road by which some people would seek it. Cleanse yourselves, and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... the hand was all the good-bye I could make; and I was soon rattling away to meet the coach for Edinburgh and London. Seated on the top, I was soon buried in a reverie, from which I was suddenly startled by the sound of tinkling iron. Could it be that my adversary was riding unseen alongside of the coach? Was that the clank of the ominous shoe? But I soon discovered the cause of the sound, and laughed at my own apprehensiveness. For I observed that the ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... Captain McCoy, he was smiling, and the butler who followed, bearing a tray and tinkling glasses, ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... that minion ride, With either India's glittering spoils oppress'd; So moves the sumpter-mule in harness'd pride, That bears the treasure which he cannot taste. For him let venal bards disgrace the bay, And hireling minstrels wake the tinkling string; Her sensual snares let faithless Pleasure lay; And jingling bells fantastic Folly ring; 100 Disquiet, doubt, and dread shall intervene, And Nature, still to all her feelings just, In vengeance hang a damp on every scene, Shook from the baneful ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... table steams a huge bowl of punch, which the chosen head of the party, perhaps Johann's late master, ladles into the tiny glasses. He proclaims the toast, "The Health of the Wanderer!" The little crowd are on their feet, and amid a pretty tinkling of glasses, an irregular shout arises, a small hurricane of voices, ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... the silence, Teddy heard a faint tinkling as though of icicles struck lightly together, and at the same moment he saw that a woman all in white had entered the forge down at the other end. Her dress shone with all different colors, just as icicles ...
— The Counterpane Fairy • Katharine Pyle
... speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. (2)And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing. (3)And though ...
— The New Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. • Various
... was setting, they came in sight of the humble wooden edifice which was dignified with the name of Harley College. A golden ray rested upon the spire of the little chapel, the bell of which sent its tinkling murmur down the valley to summon ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... dirtiest and coldest corner of the one large room of the inn. We were just about to begin on our meagre supper of horse-beans and wild garlic cooked into a stew with a scrap of bullock that must have died of old age, when there was a tinkling of bronze pony bells and the stamp of hoofs without. The doors opened, and entered Chong Mong-ju, the personification of well-being, prosperity and power, shaking the snow from his priceless Mongolian ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... rye. She loves to describe the long still summer nights and the gray dawn when the birds begin to sing, the sweet scents of the forest, and the soft freshness of the western breeze. The smallest details of the living picture do not escape her notice. She records the musical tinkling of distant cow-bells and the mournful cry of the bittern. She even tells how she sometimes, when she is out in her boat, lays down her oars that she may examine the purple masses of jelly-fish floating in the water. Truly, her ways were not ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... weekly scribbler who had called my good identity in question, (see P.S. to my 'Chapter on Ears,') I profess myself a native of some spot near Cavendish Square, deducing my remoter origin from Italy. But who does not see, except this tinkling cymbal, that in that idle fiction of Genoese ancestry I was answering a fool according to his folly—that Elia there expresseth himself ironically, as to an approved slanderer, who hath no right to the truth, and can be no fit recipient of it? Such a one it is ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... she crooned. "Thyself alone, of those who came in this ship, may return. If I am desirable, see to it that I can be pleased with thee." Dolores stood up, bent upon him a dazzling smile, leaned as if to kiss his lips, then with a tinkling little ripple of mirth blew a kiss instead and ran up the companion-stairs to ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... 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 my book with ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... the table and began making tea with nervous hands. She was apparently in the highest spirits, and while she fumbled noisily with the cups and saucers she rambled on in her expressionless voice with tinkling interludes of her shrill, falsetto laughter. As he watched her in shamed silence he remembered with astonishment that it had taken him almost ten years to find out that Connie was vulgar. Now at last his eyes were opened—he had achieved a standard of comparison and he felt her commonness with ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... vivid emerald lawn they group themselves, and Margarita, a pearl in pearly trailing laces, sits on a stone bench, defaced and mossy, in the centre, at the back; the lads adore at her feet, the banjo drops tinkling handfuls of chords at intervals, the birds flutter through the ivy overhead, the watered turf smells strong and sweet in the fanlike rays of the slow sun; bright pencils of yellow light fall like stained glass among the immemorial ivy; ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... humid fern might be seen cattle sent to graze at will, in the hope of being cured of some malady, their tinkling bells indicating where they wandered. Parties of old men, women, and children, dispersed here and there, were eating cakes prepared for the occasion; while young men and girls danced in circles beneath ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... 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
... under the trees of the Alameda. Horsemen spurred through, shouting; groups of sombreros set level on heads against the vertical sun were drifting away into the streets, where the open doors of pulperias revealed an enticing gloom resounding with the gentle tinkling of guitars. The National Guards were thinking of siesta, and the eloquence of Gamacho, their chief, was exhausted. Later on, when, in the cooler hours of the afternoon, they tried to assemble again for further consideration of public affairs, detachments of Montero's cavalry camped on the Alameda ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... back upon his pillow as if he had been shot, while the same look of horror came over his face which I had observed when I first entered the room. At the same instant there came, apparently from the air immediately above his bed, a sharp, ringing, tinkling sound, which I can only compare with the noise made by a bicycle alarm, though it differed from this in having a distinctly throbbing character. I have never, before or since, heard any sound which could ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and pulled out the bath of sand where the Psammead slept. 'You don't know everything, though you ARE a Divine Father of the Temple of Amen,' said the Psammead shaking itself till the sand fell tinkling on the bath edge. 'There IS a secret, sacred name beneath the altar of Amen-Ra. Shall I call ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... hand and at once the tinkling of bells was heard, playing sweet music. Yet, look where she would, Dorothy could discover no bells at all in the great ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... against the glass door of the cabinet. A light tinkling crash of a broken pane. She could see slantwise as she went on playing. Dan was standing up. He swayed, feeling for the ledge of the cabinet. Then he started to come down the room, his head lowered, thrust forward, his eyes heavy with some ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... don't forget that you live in a parsonage, where 'sounding brass or tinkling cymbals' are not tolerated. All kinds of sorrow come here to be cured, and I fear that lady is in distress. Did you notice ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... like the essentially unmethodical little woman she was, Mrs. Egremont still had all her beautiful silky brown hair about her shoulders when the bell of St. Ambrose's was heard giving its thin tinkling summons to matins at half-past seven. She was disappointed; she meant to have gone for this last time, but there was no help for it, and Nuttie set off ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... his wares, while drivers of vehicles are incessant in their cries of warning to foot-passengers. All the sounds are not unmusical, however, for from the minarets comes the "muezzin's" sweet call to prayer, to mingle with the jingling bells and the tinkling of the cups of ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly
... to her ears the sound of the double whistle for a hansom. She stood silently there listening to the driving up of the vehicle—she even heard the sound of the closing of the apron and then the tinkling of the horse's bells dwindling into ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... never heard such a voice from a woman's mouth since the days of Malibran; and if there is a man who knows one voice from another, it is Barytone. He can taste the richness of the instrument down to its lowest tinkling sound." ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... seized before he could get farther, and his spectacles came tinkling down to McMurdo's feet. There was a thud and a groan. He was on his face, and half a dozen sticks were clattering together as they fell upon him. He writhed, and his long, thin limbs quivered under the blows. ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... Communion on deck, Amyas sate below in the cabin sharpening his sword, and after it, called for a boat and went on board Drake's ship to ask news of the Sta. Catharina, and listened scowling to the loud chants and tinkling bells, which came across the water from the Spanish fleet. At last, Drake was summoned by the lord admiral, and returned with a secret commission, which ought to bear fruit that night; and Amyas, who had gone with him, helped him till nightfall, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... 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 as if they ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... superiority of the past to the present. Those friends of hers in London, solid persons of her own age, knew the same past that she knew, could talk about it with her, could compare it as she did with the tinkling present, and in remembering great men forget for a moment the trivial and barren young people who still, in spite of the war, seemed to litter the world in such numbers. She had not come away from these friends, these conversable ripe friends, in order to spend her time ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... me; Quickly before me runs the quail, Her chickens skulk behind the rail; High up the lone wood-pigeon sits, And the woodpecker pecks and flits. Sweet woodland music sinks and swells, The brooklet rings its tinkling bells, The swarming insects drone and hum, The partridge beats its throbbing drum. The squirrel leaps among the boughs, And chatters in his leafy house. The oriole flashes by; and, look! Into the mirror of ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... bystander as he entered, the stranger thrust the male dancer aside, faced the woman and began a series of saturnalian antics, compared with which all that had gone before was tame and sluggish; and as he finally leaped, with tinkling heels, clean over his bewildered partner's head, the ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... man may, in the first place, be able to talk of all the mysteries of the Gospel, and that like an angel of God, and yet be no more in God's account than the sounding of a drum, brass, or the tinkling of a cymbal, which are things that, notwithstanding their sound and great noise, are absolutely void of life and motion, and so are accounted with God as nothing—that is, no Christians, no believers, not under the Covenant of Grace for all that (1 Cor 13:1-4). ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... 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 ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... that her friend was so accomplished. It wasn't "cuckooing" at all; it was real singing, like that of the nightingale or the thrush, or like something prettier than either. It made Griselda think of woods in summer, and of tinkling brooks flowing through them, with the pretty brown pebbles sparkling up through the water; and then it made her think of something sad—she didn't know what; perhaps it was of the babes in the wood and the robins covering them up with leaves—and ...
— The Cuckoo Clock • Mrs. Molesworth
... of pleasure. Father, beautiful paintings and grand buildings are nothing to him; nothing at all; and music might be the tinkling of tin kettles for all the meaning he finds in it. Father, dear, do ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... isolated emerald lamp on the crest of the intermittent waves, when 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, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... over the ground very swiftly, and he carried with him the bird-cage containing Polychrome the Rainbow's Daughter. Also the Tin Owl could skip and fly along at a good rate of speed, his feathers rattling against one another with a tinkling sound as he moved. But the little Brown Bear, being stuffed with straw, was a clumsy traveler and the others had to wait ...
— The Tin Woodman of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... Longfellow, Hawthorne, Lowell, Holmes, were in part created by Bowdoin and Harvard. Among the most efficient officers of the late war were the graduates of the colleges. Without the college the ministry would become a "sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal" indeed, and without a learned ministry the church would languish. In the early years of the century, Mr. John Norris, of Salem, proposed to give a large sum of money to the cause of foreign missions. He was persuaded, however, to ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... the Pearl Empress. She received him with the ceremony due to her sovereign in the porcelain pavilion of the Eastern Gardens, with the lotos fish ponds before them, and a faint breeze occasionally tinkling the crystal wind-bells that decorated the shrubs on the cloud and dragon-wrought slopes of the marble approach. A bird of brilliant plumage uttered a cry of reverence from its gold cage as the Son of Heaven entered. As was his occasional custom, and after suitable inquiries as to his parent's ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... so was Enoch. For a long hour the two sat in the breathless heat of the July night while the Mexican answered Enoch's terse questions with a flow of dramatic speech, accentuated by wild gestures. Shortly after eleven-thirty Jonas appeared in the doorway with two tinkling glasses. ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... pause between the dances; Without, somewhere, a tinkling fountain played. The dusky path was lit by ardent glances As forth they fared, a lover and a maid. He chose a nook, from curious eyes well hidden - All redolent with sweet midsummer charm, And by the great primeval instinct bidden, He drew her in the ...
— Poems of Cheer • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... and tinkling cymbal, He that made me sealed my ears, And the pomp of gorgeous noises, Waves ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... "ll-l-luk" of the tree-toad (Hyla versicolor); and from the aquatic plants, that lined the spring close by, came the merry chirrup of the Hylodes gryllus, or "Savanna cricket." Far up among the leaves of the oaks the little green tree-frog repeated his tinkling bell-like note that fell with a pleasant sound upon the ear. But all these were the usual voices of the night—the voices of the southern forest—and they produced no strange impression upon the listening hunters. The call ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... taste of the wearer. It is without sleeves, but has straps; the hair plaited in two behind, and the plaits turned up and fastened together by a diamond ring; long earrings, and all sorts of chains and medals and tinkling things worn round the neck. A long, broad, coloured sash, something like an officer's belt, tied behind after going twice or thrice round the waist, into which is stuck a silver cigar-case. A small coloured handkerchief like a broad ribbon, crossing over the neck, is ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... relied upon as high and noble. His faults are as honest as he himself, the inherent defects of his genius. No writer of our day stands more sturdily for the idea that, whereas art is precious, personality is more precious still; without which art is a tinkling cymbal and with which even a defective art can conquer Time, like a garment not all-seemly, that yet cannot ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... snow-white but her face is fresh and almost girlish, and she has the sweetest brown eyes . . . such a pretty shade of wood-brown with little golden glints in them . . . and her voice makes you think of white satin and tinkling water and fairy bells all mixed ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... sleigh-bells suddenly ceased their tinkling, and the long covered van, with its four horses, drew up in front of our "House of Many Gables," in Lake City. Watty, then a tall lad of eighteen, over-coated, fur-capped, and gloved, went quickly out, banging the front door after him, ...
— The Making of Mary • Jean Forsyth
... stunsail-booms out to airs that died in their struggles to reach us. However, here was a draught at last, and the old gurgling and moaning sounds of the breathless, sluggish swell washing heavily like liquid lead to the sides were replaced by the tinkling noises of waters parting at the bows with a pretty little seething of expiring foam, and the hiss of exploding froth-bells. At eleven o'clock the light breeze was still holding, and the ship was floating softly ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various
... The tinkling brook the only sound - Wearied with all his toils and feats, The traveller dines on potted meats; On potted meats and princely wines, Not wisely but too ...
— Moral Emblems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the cure's sabots was the response that answered to the bell we pulled, a bell attached to a diminutive brick house lying at the foot of the churchyard. The tinkling of the cracked-voiced bell had hardly ceased when the ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... learning. Of all the definitions enumerated, we must give to the word learning the broadest signification. It is safe to accept the statement of the great poet, that a man may be acquainted with many languages, and yet not be learned; even as the apostle said he should become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal, if he had not charity, though he spoke with the tongues of men and angels. Learning includes, no doubt, a knowledge of the languages, the sciences, and all literature; but it includes also ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... stay. As the night advances, the Blackfellows' songs die away; the chatting tongue of Murphy ceases, after having lulled Mr. Gilbert to sleep; and at last even Mr. Calvert is silent, as Roper's short answers became few and far between. The neighing of the tethered horse, the distant tinkling of the bell, or the occasional cry of night birds, alone interrupt the silence of our camp. The fire, which was bright as long as the corroborri songster kept it stirred, gradually gets dull, and smoulders slowly under the large pot in which our meat is simmering; ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... in the air, the constellations which shone in the south; every object seemed to tell us how far we were from our native land. If amidst this exotic nature we heard from the depth of the valley the tinkling of a bell, or the lowing of herds, the remembrance of our country was awakened suddenly. The sounds were like distant voices resounding from beyond the ocean, and with magical power transporting us from one hemisphere to the other. Strange mobility of the imagination ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... was incessant, till the tinkling of the prompter's bell, and the rising of the curtain, put an end to his remarks on persons, and turned them all on the piece. I cannot but own the author opened an ample field for the effluvia of critic gall. I know not whether Glibly might influence the tone of my mind, but I think ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... their growing gladness. The spring was coming. The river began to fall, and Courant's eyes dwelt longingly on the expanding line of mud that waited for his pick. April came with a procession of cloudless days, with the tinkling of streams shrinking under the triumphant sun, with the pines exhaling scented breaths, and a first, faint sprouting of new green. The great refreshed landscape unveiled itself, serenely brooding in a vast, internal energy of germination. The earth was ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... Burney, "was no longer regarded as a mere soother of affliction, or 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 ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent
... path beside the river where the horses dragged deep-laden barges down to the town and thence again; and these barges were all painted in bright colors, and the horses were bedight with gay harness and hung with tinkling bells. ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... city was preparing for sleep. In the Place a few lovers loitered, standing close, and the faint tinkling of a bell told of the Blessed Sacrament being carried through the streets to some bedside of the dying. Soon the priest came into view, walking rapidly, with his skirts flapping around his legs. Before him marched a boy, ringing a bell and carrying a lighted lamp. The priest ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... stumpy evergreens loomed up ahead of them, and they crashed through. For several hundred yards they tore their way and found their pace slowed by the difficult going. The trees began to thin out. Then they heard a spring tinkling down among the red rocks, and the cedars began to thicken again, as the little canyon ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens |
