"Twittering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was opened. Counsel on both sides brought forward and disposed of a minor point or two, then, amid a silence so great that the twittering of the martins outside the windows seemed importunate and shrill, proclamation was made, the prisoner stood up, and the ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... than four hundred years old, but seems scarcely affected by the wearing of the centuries. The whole of the ponderous and complicated upper structure is sustained upon an open-work of round, plain pillars and cross-beams; the vast eaves are full of bird-nests; and the storm of twittering from the roofs is like a rushing of water. Immense the work is, and imposing in its aspect of settled power; but, in its way, it has great severity: there are no carvings, no gargoyles, no dragons; and yet the maze of projecting timbers ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... was not buried in Westminster Abbey was because he had promised these two women that even death should not separate them from him. So there under the spreading elms, in this out-of-the-way country place, they rest—these three, side by side, and the sighing breeze tells and tells again to the twittering birds in the branches, of this triple love, strange as fate, strong as destiny, warm as life, pure as snow, and unselfish as the kiss of the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... she clasped her hands round her knees, and sat now gossiping, now silent, in the pale autumnal beauty. There was a bird wistfully twittering in the branches overhead, and ever and again a withered leaf would slip circling down from the motionless beech boughs arched in their stillness above their heads beneath the thin ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... for a minute, only the soft sound of brushing. Then Red began that pretty little twittering which bore to their laughter when in full force the same relation that the first faint chit, chit, chit of a bird bears ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... advance of the carriage, the servants would know that their master was coming, in time to have the rooms ready for him. And when the gentleman drove up to the door he would generally see his little gold-finch sitting on the finger of a cook or a chamber-maid, and twittering away as if he was endeavoring to inform the good people of all the incidents ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... day when the cart is loaded with the buckets, and the procession starts into the woods. The sun shines brightly; the snow is soft and beginning to sink down; the snow-birds are twittering about, and the noise of shouting and of the blows of the axe echoes far ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... farmhouse was a vast barn, that might have served for a church; every window and crevice of which seemed bursting forth with the treasures of the farm; the flail was busily resounding within it from morning to night; swallows and martins skimmed twittering about the eaves; and rows of pigeons, some with one eye turned up, as if watching the weather, some with their heads under their wings or buried in their bosoms, and others swelling, and cooing, and bowing about their dames, were enjoying the sunshine on the roof. Sleek unwieldy porkers ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving
... least fearsome of mortals, while an awkward limp upon his left toe deepened the impression of timidity. So abstract was his manner, so hesitant his gait, that he would hug the wall as he went, nervously stroking its grimy surface with his long, twittering fingers. But Ralph, as justice and the Jug knew too well, was neither fool nor coward. His character belied his outward seeming. A large soul had crept into the case of his wizened body, and if a poltroon among his ancestors had gifted him with an alien type, he had inherited ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... over the trees and the twittering birds fell silent. When the menace had passed they broke forth anew in triumphant song, once more absorbed ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... the sunrise. The grass is green, the flowers are all in bloom, Spring is here. The faint gray streaks of the dawn are in the sky and soon the whole East is suffused with a roseate flush. There is a hush of expectancy in the air, the breeze is soft, the birds are twittering drowsily in the tree-tops, and then in a flood of golden splendor "the morning sun comes peeping over the hills." Instantly all nature is alive, the birds pour forth their sweet melodies, the drowsy hum of the ...
— Silver Links • Various
... with the silver river gliding by, birds twittering, piping, screaming, and cooing all around, and monkeys chattering and screeching excitedly at having their sanctuary invaded; but they were quite tame enough to drop down from the trees and pick up a piece of biscuit, banana, or orange when ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... town was a very large and ancient church, called the cathedral. It was a solemn-looking pile of buildings, standing by itself in a green yard, back from the road, and thousands of swallows were twittering and chirping high up among the pinnacles and cornices of the roof. Although it was in the midst of a crowded city, the whole structure wore an expression of great seclusion ...
— Rollo in Scotland • Jacob Abbott
... breezy call of incense-breathing morn, The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed, The cock's shrill clarion,[362-7] or the echoing horn, No more shall rouse them from ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... only he could have been allowed to see Mrs Grantly's letter, and the lady's answer, and the lord's present! But no such seeing was vouchsafed to him, and he was carried off in his brougham to Lady de Courcy's house, twittering with expectant love, and trembling with expectant ruin. To this conclusion he had come at any rate, that if anything was to be done, it should be done now. He would speak a word of love, and prepare his future in accordance with the ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... went in the rain, And twittering, tottering sideways he ne'er got straight again. He stooped to get a worm, and looked up to get a fly, And then he flew away ere his feathers they ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... of the orchard, until fall, when he found it housed a pair of fine thrushes; for the song of the thrush delighted him almost as much as that of the lark. He left a hollow limb on the old red pearmain apple-tree, because when he came to cut it there was a pair of bluebirds twittering around, ...
— The Song of the Cardinal • Gene Stratton-Porter
... dropped over his face with the words. And nobody knows why the sunshine grew dull and the birds' songs dropped to busy twittering about unimportant things. ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... for a long while. The birds were twittering under the windows and the mist had disappeared from the garden. Everything was lighted up by the spring sunshine as by a smile. Soon the whole garden, warm and caressed by the sun, returned to life, and dewdrops ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... expanse of water seemed to possess a new beauty in the early morning sunlight, and the white Casino, of which the minarets were reflected in its blue depths, might have been a dream palace. Nothing broke the intense stillness but the loud, sweet twittering of the birds in the ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... thing with his bill to see if it is good to eat, and then perching on it to see if it good to sit upon. He mistakes his own reflection in the looking- glass for another canary, and sits on the pin-cushion twittering and making love to himself for half an hour at a time. To watch him is one of my greatest amusements, especially just now when I am in bed so much. Sometimes he hides and keeps so still that I have not the least idea where he is. but the moment I call, 'Ben, Ben,' ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... otherwise," Terrence censured. "But as I was saying, 'tis a bird-like sensuousness—oh, not the little, hoppy, wagtail kind, nor yet the sleek and solemn dove, but a merry sort of bird, like the wild canaries you see bathing in the fountains, always twittering and singing, flinging the water in the sun, and glowing the golden hearts of them on their happy breasts. 'Tis like that the Little Lady is. I have observed ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... 1862. (Mornex sur Saleve).—I was awakened by the twittering of the birds at a quarter to five, and saw, as I threw open my windows, the yellowing crescent of the moon looking in upon me, while the east was just faintly whitening. An hour later it was delicious out of doors. The anemones were still closed, ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of the singing of her own heart the poor girl was unconscious of the music. If it was to the evening's nightingale she listened or to the twittering of the inferior songstresses of the grove who lifted up their voices when the queen was silent she could hardly have said; the melody her heart was chanting triumphantly drowned every ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... In spite of her weariness, her long walk and her afternoon in the open air had done her good. She was asleep before any lonely or home-sick thoughts had time to visit her, and she slept as she had not slept for weeks, without waking till the twittering of the birds in the pear-tree roused her to ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... Kani came voices crying out of the heart strings of the gods, all sighing still for the things that might not be. And the dirge and the voices crying, go drifting away from the Path of Stars, away from the Midst of Things, till they come twittering among the Worlds, like a great host of birds that are lost by night. And every note is a life, and many notes become caught up among the worlds to be entangled with flesh for a little while before they pass ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... Bankey, twittering with glee; "two nice dogs. One big and buff and bushy, with a much finer tail than the proudest fox you ever saw; and the other small and white with some dark spots, and as quick as a squirrel. This one has a short tail that sticks up like a Wren's and a nose like ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... glory of the sun and the heavens. To his eyes there was nothing poetic in the flash of the distant church-spires against the billowy cloudbanks. The gray doves, circling about the chimneys, did not inspire him, nor the twittering of the sparrows on the window ledge. There was nothing at all in the world but a long stretch of barren, lonely years. And he wondered how, without her at his side, he ever could traverse them. He was driftwood again. He had built upon sands as usual, and the tide had come in; ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... bald head of Thunder Mountain. The scent of the harvest in the meadows blended with the odor of burning pine that came from the ranch house, where Flick built the fire for supper. On the hill the pines were still, but the brook babbled on, and there was an incessant low twittering ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... whispered, throwing an arm about the mare's neck. "We'll stick to each other and pull through somehow." Then plucking a handful of dried grass, he gave the animal a brisk rubbing that warmed them both. By the time it was finished, birds were twittering in the dense growth behind them, and the eastern sky was suffused with the glow ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... the farm he could tell by the feeling—an intangible thing, but infallible. He could gauge the very quality of the blackness that comes just before dawn. The crowing of the cocks, the stamping of the cattle, the twittering of the birds in the old elm whose branches were etched eerily against his window in the ghostly light—these things he had never needed. He had known. But here in the un-sylvan section of Chicago ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... and pensively smoking his expensive cigars, planning and plotting all sorts of things to the accompaniment of bewitching strains of twittering waltz music and peals of merry laughter from within. He became distracted now and then in spite of himself, wandering away from his important mental problems to yield to the influence of association and remembrance which stole over him in a sad sort of pleasant way. Here was just the kind ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... fine, she laughed continually, and emitted low cries which might be compared to the twittering of birds; when it rained she cried and moaned in a mournful, terrifying manner, which sounded like the howling of a dog before a death ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... of fatigue Ford woke with the twittering of birds that announces the dawn. His first thought before opening his eyes, that he was still in his cell, was dispelled by the silky touch of the Sorrento rugs on which he lay. He fingered them again and again in a kind of wonder, ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... up from her stocking. "As Boswell said to Dr. Johnson, 'What of death, Sir?' and the great man was so angry that the little twittering genius should ask lightly of such a terrifying thing that he barked at him and frightened him out of the room! I suppose the ordinary thing is never to think about death at all, to keep the thought pushed away. But that makes people so afraid ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... men poured on. They halted close to the high barricade. It was a formidable structure at least fifteen feet high and many feet in thickness. The gray of dawn had turned into red, and a pale, clear light spread over all nature. I heard some sparrows, just awakened, twittering and conversing in a tall tree near me. They, too, wondered, doubtless, what it all meant, and talked it over in ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... exception; short and extremely tight clothes; a quick walk and a mobility of body, involving ungraceful positions either sitting or standing; and with an additional feature which the artist could not portray—an unintelligible language resembling the twittering of birds. Small wonder that little children are terrified at these strange beings, and rush shrieking into their cottages as the foreigner passes by. It is perhaps not quite so easy to understand why the Mongolian pony has such a dread of the foreigner and usually ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... the first to the middle of April. They come twittering along in the way so familiar to every New England boy. The barn swallow is heard first, followed in a day or two by the squeaking of the cliff swallow. The chimney swallows, or swifts, are not far behind, and remain here in large ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... only light came through a small window shaded with shrubs and ivy, which stood open, and let in the scents of bud and blossom, weaving a net of sweetness in the gloom, through which, like a silver thread, shot the twittering song of a bird, which had inherited the gathered carelessness and bliss of a ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... and Service and how we oughta give. Give! Jesus!—we ain't got anything left to give. They ain't anything to give our wives or our children,—no, nor there ain't enough left to feed our own faces or pay for a patch on our pants! Give? Hell! The interests took it. And you stand there twittering about Love and Service! We oughta serve 'em a brick on the neck and love 'em with ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... The thought of the festal morning and the due salutations reawakened his desire for his friend, and he began to call for him by name. As the sound of his voice died away, he was aware of the greatness of the silence that environed him. But for the twittering of the sparrows and the crunching of his own feet upon the frozen snow, the whole windless world of air hung over him entranced, and the stillness weighed upon his mind with a ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... thought I heard birds twittering, and sometimes I thought there was something black at my elbow, and in the night-time faces at my window. Paul, ...
— Giles Corey, Yeoman - A Play • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... built the castle. Mary had sat by twittering and clapping her hands for glee as higher and higher it rose. He knew for a fact, he told her, that his uncle had not expended upon his education much more than half the money left him for the purpose. He was convinced that by hook or by crook he could obtain the 400 pounds that would buy ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... before dawn by a squeaking and twittering noise. They threw on fresh logs, and as these blazed up they could see a cloud of bats flying overhead. They kept on going to the doorway, and when they found they could not get through they retired with angry squeaks. The light was gradually breaking, and in ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... when Vesta was four years old, they started on one of their walks. Everywhere nature was budding and bourgeoning; the birds twittering their arrival from the south; the insects making the best of their brief span of life. Sparrows chirped in the road; robins strutted upon the grass; bluebirds built in the eaves of the cottages. Gerhardt took a keen delight in pointing out the wonders of nature ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... dull beacon fires on the near hill tops, and, far in the East, roses over the Sierran snow. Birds twittering in the alder fringes a mile below, and the creaking of wagon wheels,—the wagon itself a mere cloud of dust in the distant road,—were heard distinctly. Then the melting pot was solemnly broken by Don Jose, and the glowing incandescent ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... doors or windows at the house, terror mastered her again, and she hurried on to hide herself from the dawning light, which was beginning to increase, as she crossed the park, on turf dank with Maydew, and plunged deep into the thick woods beyond, causing many a twittering cry of wondering birds. ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... breakfast in her own room. It was ten o'clock, and a glorious September morning, and the sparrows were twittering on the terrace outside as though they considered it highly improper for any one to have breakfast between four walls when Nature had provided such a splendid ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... bosco, or grove, that fills the deep hollow space formed by the sheltering cliffs behind. It was mid-winter, as we have said, yet pink cyclamens and strong-scented double narcissi were blooming freely, whilst from the dark boughs of the ilex trees overhead there fell upon the ear the pleasant twittering of innumerable birds, for happily the cruel snare and the gun are strictly forbidden in this sacred spot, so that his "little sisters, the birds," that the gentle Saint of Assisi loved so tenderly, can still sing their songs of innocence and build their nests in peace amidst the trees that no ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... whitish or ruddy below. Sexes similar. Bills small; mouths large. - Long and pointed wings, generally reaching the tip of the tail or beyond. Tail more or less forked. Feet small and weak from disuse. Song a twittering warble without power. Gregarious birds. Barn Swallow. Bank Swallow. Cliff (or Eaves) Swallow. Tree Swallow. ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... the fact that, no matter when they came in from their wanderings, the pretty captives were always there in the bureau, smiling welcome, puzzling stupid little brains and puckering pale brows over enormous ledgers, twittering borrowed facetiousness from rosy mouths, and smoothing out seductive toilettes with long thin hands that were made for ring and bracelet and rudder-lines, and not a bit for the pen and ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... wrong would go wrong. Lillian used a word; it was not a ladylike word at all. The Svants looked at them as though wondering what could possibly be the matter. Then they went into a huddle, arguing vehemently. The argument spread, like a ripple in a pool; soon everybody was twittering vocally or blowing on flutes and Panpipes. Then the big horn started blaring. Immediately, Gofredo snatched the hand-phone of his belt radio and began speaking urgently ...
— Naudsonce • H. Beam Piper
... For, you know, the birds when they say their prayers speak the common language, but when they chat together in private they use a twittering dialect, wholly onomatopoetic. ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... found. Nothing, save the bouquet that the lady had dropped, and which lay half-buried in the grass, from having been trodden upon, indicated that any one had been there that evening. The stillness of death reigned over the place; even the little birds, that had before been twittering and flying about, had ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... regulation short skirt and bloomers, but the third girl wore trousers, poked into the top of her high boots. This proved, by far, the most satisfactory dress before the day's tramping was done. We got started at four-thirty. The first awakened birds were twittering. The shadows of the moraine lay reflected in the unruffled surface of the Bay. Gradually rosy flushes showed in the east. By the time we reached the meadow the sun rose suddenly above the Nevada mountains and some of the chill went out of ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... seems always going on amongst these Blue Tits. If one was in the basket and remaining perfectly still, I knew two or three others were meditating a sudden combined assault, but it seemed as if the steady gaze of the titmouse in possession kept them at bay for a time. At length a twittering scrimmage ensued, and the combatants disappeared. I once coaxed a Blue Tit to live in the dining-room for a few days, and he made himself very happy, constantly flitting about in search of insects, running up and down the curtains ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... still caressing Tartar, who slobbered with exceeding affection. A faint twittering commenced among the trees round. Something fluttered down as light as leaves. They were little birds, which, lighting on the sward at shy distance, hopped ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... respect; and for good Unitarian Christians I have a great respect; and for sincere, sad seekers, who can find no rest for the sole of their foot, I have a great respect; but for these Border State men, who are neither here nor there, on whom you never can lay your hand, because they are twittering everywhere, I have a profound contempt. I wish people to be either one thing or another. I desire them to believe something, and know what it is, and stick to it. I have no patience with this modern outcry against creeds. You hear people inveigh against them, without for a moment thinking ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... but fatal, they tell me, is this reflected tint. The shade of the alders and the velvet pile of the mosses induce a fit of idleness; it is only the flycatchers, in great numbers, that are busy in the heat and glare, twittering as they hawk for insects, in notes that suggest robin redbreast on a winter day. By and by the clouds obscure the sun and we tackle our pools, with the result, for myself, of sea trout of 7 1/2 lb. and 3 1/2 lb., and a miscellaneous lot of a dozen ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... little delay as possible, a fire gave forth its exhilarating flame. Butterflies, dragon-flies, and birds fluttered round the flowering shrubs. There was a perfect concert of buzzing and twittering, and a gentle breeze agitated the foliage and cooled the air. Nothing seemed wanting for our comfort but game for our dinner. Fortunately, Providence rarely does things by halves. We had scarcely sat down to take breath, ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... and the flower-scented silence, broken only by the twittering of birds nesting in the ivy, her Grace lay soft asleep, her son resting on her arm, when Anne stole to look at her and her child. Through the night she had knelt praying in her chamber, and now she knelt again. She kissed the new-born thing's curled rose-leaf ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... inhuman than the worst creations of a nightmare, it would be possible for me to eat in utter forgetfulness of all these things. They stood about us watching us, and ever and again making a slight elusive twittering that stood the suppose, in the stead of speech. I did not even shiver at their touch. And when the first zeal of my feeding was over, I could note that Cavor, too, had been eating with ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... it is to awaken, on a fresh glorious morning, and find the rising sun staring into your face with dazzling brilliancy! to see the birds twittering in the bushes, and to hear the murmuring of a rill, or the soft hissing ripples as they fall upon the seashore! At any time and in any place such sights and sounds are most charming, but more especially are they ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... satisfaction; everything was so bright and fresh and comfortable, and there were actually easy-chairs! From the window she could see far-stretching peaceful green fields, where the grass was getting tall and thick. Cowslips would grow there, without doubt. The only sounds were the twittering evening song of the birds, the cooing of the pigeons in the stable-yard, and far off a distant cry of someone calling home the cows to be milked. How Iris loved it all! How different it was to Albert Street! If ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton
... with hearts uplifted, and one shouted joyously to another as some pretty dark birds flew twittering toward them, a sign of the neighborhood ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... affect, and she had spread her mantle over the shoulders of a girl of fourteen, sick, with face of the purest alabaster, and of features as fine as were ever traced for Venus Anadyomene, with large, solemn, dreamy eyes, watching a robin that was perched on the proscenium and was twittering. ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... alone in her little castle, or rather the Liberty Realty Company's little castle. She wanted to be alone. It was very quiet. Outside the birds could be heard twittering in the vine on the ramshackle little porch. The kettle sang cheerily in the kitchen. There was that musty indoor odor of the country homestead, the odor which soldier boys remembered and longed for in trenches and dugouts. ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... Modder River, deep and still, just beneath my feet. It is a lovely, cloudless morning, and going to be a very hot day. I am writing my letter on the banks of the river in the shade of green trees and shrubs, with birds singing and twittering, and building their nests round me; it is spring-time here, you know, or early summer. Here and there, sauntering or sitting, are groups of our khaki soldiers enjoying mightily a good rest after the hard work, marching ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... Bird, with comma-less inquiries as to how she had spent the night after her journey, and the twins came in through the long window to wish her good morning. She replied composedly to the old starling's twittering, and cast her eye over the attire of the twins, which was sometimes known to require adjustment. Then she took her seat in one of the big easy-chairs which stood on either side of the fireplace, while Porter, the butler, placed a Bible and a volume of ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... she was very polite to sing to him on such a slight acquaintance; and not to be behind in his manners, he sang to her with his strange, twittering note. The two conversed and sang to each other for some little time, when another ...
— The Story of a Robin • Agnes S. Underwood
... wild state, were as tame and gentle as farm cattle; and we noticed some new species at every turn. There were strange plants too, growing in the fields and garden, and vines trained upon espaliers, and corn-cribs filled with yellow corn, and dove-cotes, and martin-boxes, with swallows twittering around them. All formed a curious ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... Monsieur,—Monsieur Boulanger, our landlord. She invariably took her seat beside him, and devoted quirks and quivers exclusively to him, tapping him with her fan, calling him "Mechant! mechant!" "farceur," or "quel diable d'homme!" twittering and carolling in her old broken voice, like a senile canary dreaming of its far-off youth. M. Boulanger was of peasant origin and appearance, gray-bearded and gray-haired, and clumping always in sabots over the stone floors, except in the salon in the evening. But her eyes were ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... amatory pleasantness of a young couple, who had not thought it at all necessary to increase the distance between them because of his presence. These things he had seen, but the stream, and the hedges, and the twittering of the birds, were ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... surface of the stream. A small speckled kingfisher was hovering overhead, as if balanced in the air, with its beak bent down on its breast, watching the fish beneath; presently it darted like an arrow into the water; returned with an empty bill, and then went off, with its clear, sharp, twittering note, as if to console ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... its dark greenery autumn had hung out a banner to herald her coming—a scarlet sumach. A yellowing maple leaf fell at Helen's feet as she passed. Along the water's edge where the birches grew thick arose a great twittering and chattering. The long southern flight was already being discussed. Away out beyond the island a canoe drifted along on the golden water. Some one seated in it was picking a mandolin and singing, ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... of which the Egil's Saga is full, few are better perhaps than the picture in a dozen words of King Eric Blood-axe "sitting bolt upright and glaring" at the son of Skallagrim as he delivers the panegyric which is to save his life, and the composition of which had been so nearly baulked by the twittering of the witch-swallow under his eaves. The "long" kisses of Kormak and Steingerd, and the poet's unconscious translation of AEschylus[175] as he says, "Eager to find my lady, I have scoured the whole house with the glances of my eyes—in vain," dwell in the memory as softer ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... sight. Silvia sat by our bedroom window twittering soft, cooing nonsensical nothings to Diogenes, who was clasped in her arms, his flushed little face pressed ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... prison. These men who bent over foolish papers were evidently convicts of the most desperate character; so, at all events, you would judge when occasionally one or other of the prison-governors, known as "partners," passed among them with the lash of his eye. Such faint human twittering as may have grown up amongst even these poor exiles would suddenly die into a silence white with fear, as when the shadow of a hawk falls across the song ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... time I sauntered forth quite sad at heart, when an unexpected familiar twittering greeted my ear, and I turned northward to see my little friends circling about the stables. Life closer to the front had evidently not offered any particular advantages, and in a few days' time their constant comings and goings from certain specific ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... at the grate for your father when he comes home after services. Oh, Mary, if you and I could go to that place! It is so pleasant there." In the blue light and in the silence her thin voice recalled the twittering of a lark. ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... fancied seclusion? When other birds are cheerily out-of-doors, on some bright morning of May or June, one will often discover a solitary Cat-Bird sitting concealed in the middle of a dense bush, and twittering busily, in subdued rehearsal, the whole copious variety of his lay, practising trills and preparing half-imitations, which, at some other time, sitting on the topmost twig, he shall hilariously seem to improvise before all the world. Can it be that he is really in some slight ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... American Scholar had filled Carlyle with delight. It was the first clear utterance, after long decades of years, in which he had 'heard nothing but infinite jangling and jabbering, and inarticulate twittering and screeching.' Then Carlyle enjoined on his American friend for rule of life, 'Give no ear to any man's praise or censure; know that that is not it; on the one side is as Heaven, if you have strength to keep silent ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... some fine bantams at Yokohama, and a whole cage full of rice-birds. They are the dearest little things, and spend most of the day bathing and twittering, occasionally getting all together into one nest, with their twenty-five heads peeping out. They are exactly like a magnified grain of rice, with legs and a bill. I hope I shall take them home alive, as they have borne the cold very well so far. We have also ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... himself on the green knoll whence he had first seen the old man of the glen. He rubbed his eyes—it was a bright sunny morning. The birds were hopping and twittering among the bushes, and the eagle was wheeling aloft, and breasting the pure mountain breeze. "Surely," thought Rip, "I have not slept here all night." He recalled the occurrences before he fell asleep. The strange ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... bread and milk and baked potatoes, but there is a wrong as well as a right way with even such simple things, and Mell really did all very cleverly. She swept the kitchen, strained the milk, wound the clock. Then, as a sound of twittering voices began above, she ran up to the children, washed and dressed, braided the red pigtails, and got them downstairs successfully, with only one fight between Tommy and Isaphine, and a roaring fit from ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... dawn when we came out upon the marsh; and above, I heard the whir and whimpering rush of wild ducks passing, the waking call of birds, twittering all around us in the darkness; the low undertone of the black water flowing ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... the whole of Syria, I missed the delightful minstrels of the air. The sparrow alone can find sustenance every where, for he lives in towns and villages, wherever man is seen. A whole flock of these little twittering birds woke ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... procession starts into the woods. The sun shines almost unobstructedly into the forest, for there are only naked branches to bar it; the snow is soft and beginning to sink down, leaving the young bushes spindling up everywhere; the snowbirds are twittering about, and the noise of shouting and of the blows of the axe echoes far and wide. This is spring, and the boy can scarcely contain his delight that his out-door life is about ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... position on the banks of the Crocodile. The scene was truly idyllic. Below us the river in this particular place was placidly flowing, the various trees on its banks were bursting out in their spring foliage, and birds were twittering amongst them: indeed, one cheeky little feathered thing came and perched on a peach tree covered in pink blossom close by and piped a matin to me, and there was I, lounging luxuriously in the deep grass, a pipe in my mouth, a Lee-Enfield ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... gilding the grounds of Brinkley Court and the ear detected a marked twittering of birds in the ivy outside the window when I woke next morning to a new day. But there was no corresponding sunshine in Bertram Wooster's soul and no answering twitter in his heart as he sat up in bed, sipping his cup of strengthening tea. It could not ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... is to awaken, on a fresh glorious morning, and find the rising sun staring into your face with dazzling brilliancy!—to see the birds twittering in the bushes, and to hear the murmuring of a rill, or the soft hissing ripples as they fall upon the sea-shore! At any time and in any place such sights and sounds are most charming, but more especially ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... were I not a clod, intent On being just an earthly thing, I'd be that rare embodiment Of Heart and Spirit, Voice and Wing, With pure, ecstatic, rapture-sent, Divinely-tender twittering That Echo swoons to re-present,— A ...
— Songs of Friendship • James Whitcomb Riley
... already examined, and placed them on one of the two chairs in the room, then seated himself on the other opposite to this. With his hands in his pockets he sat with eyes fixed upon those two dumb witnesses. Now and then he whistled, almost inaudibly, a few bars. It was very still in the room. A subdued twittering came from the trees through the open window. From time to time a breeze rustled in the leaves of the thick creeper about the sill. But the man in the room, his face grown hard and sombre now with his thoughts, ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... began to wane, and a freshness blew across the veldt. Somewhere on the very top of the kopje a bird uttered a twittering note. She turned her face, listening for the answer, and found Burke seated on another ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... and fared out on a little eminence looking over the scene. Not a soldier stirred in his plaid; the army was drugged by the heavy fir-winds from the forest behind. The light of the morning flowed up wider and whiter from the Cowal hills, the birds woke to a rain of twittering prayer among the bushes ere ever a man stirred more than from side to side to change his dream. It was the most melancholy hour I ever experienced, and I have seen fields in the wan morning before many a throng and bloody day. I felt "fey," ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... then, that an old bachelor, wedded to trout-fishing and tobacco-smoke; familiar with nothing but whist, yarn stockings, flannels and shooting-jackets; without the least possible relish for landscape or color, for the twittering of birds, or the swarming of bumble-bees and forest-leaves; with no sense of poetry, and a mortal hatred of ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... Ricardo, who was fairly twittering with excitement. "You sit there talking about chocolate while my cup shakes in ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... are strolling through a super-cat city at night. Over yonder is the business quarter, its evening shops blazing with jewels. The great stock-yards lie to the east where you hear those sad sounds: that twittering as of innumerable birds, waiting slaughter. Beyond lie the silent aquariums and the crates of fresh mice. (They raise mice instead of hens in the country, in Super-cat Land.) To the west is a beautiful but weirdly bacchanalian park, ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... overspreads a clear summer sky, just stealing out of the shades of night, had not disappeared, except in the eastern quarter of the heavens, where a faint suffusion heralded, like a distant banner, the approach of the sun, welcomed, at first, by the low twittering of the birds, which gradually increased in frequency and loudness, until they swelled into bold strains, and rose ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... mid-forest, right in the tall timber, Scott, advancing, flushed a woodcock, which darted up, filling the forest with twittering music—the truest music of our eastern autumn, clear, bewildering, charming in its evanescent sweetness which leaves in its wake a ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... shoulders, or hopped about over her fair locks, without fear. It was nothing unusual to her to see the pretty creatures playing about the branches, or entering the long vertical tunnels that led upward to their nests—nothing unusual for Trueey to listen for hours to their sweet twittering, or watch their love-gambols around the borders ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... most memorable concerts at which I was ever happy enough to be a listener. This was given some years ago in an old apple-orchard by a flock of fox-colored sparrows, who, perhaps for that occasion only, had the "valuable assistance" of a large choir of snow-birds. The latter were twittering in every tree, while to this goodly accompaniment the sparrows were singing their loud, clear, thrush-like song. The combination was felicitous in the extreme. I would go a long way to ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... there was a girl and her name was Little Red Riding Hood, and once as she was walking home in the dark, after an unusually heavy tea, she met a wolf. And he said, 'Evening, Little Red Riding Hood,' and she, though she was twittering with fear, and in no condition for running because of the immensely heavy tea, ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... too much at the hesitations, the countless gropings, the preposterous follies of this virgin mind, which a butterfly lifts to the clouds, to which grains of sand are mountains, which understands the twittering of birds, ascribes thoughts to flowers, and souls to dolls, which believes in far-off realms, where the trees are sugar, the fields chocolate, and the rivers syrup, for which Punch and Mother Hubbard are real and powerful individuals, ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... the day Major Monkey began to notice that a good many of his neighbors looked at him very coldly. The birds, especially, glared at him as if they were actually angry. And wherever he went they set up a loud twittering. Some of them even flew at his head and tried to peck him as they ...
— The Tale of Major Monkey • Arthur Scott Bailey
... me the dawn was beginning to break; the morning star was shining in the sky; the earliest birds were twittering, and cocks answered each other from distance to distance; but not a human being was to be seen. We crossed ploughed fields and stubble to find the road, and I felt the truth of my guide's augury of the night before. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... not a very pretty walk. There were no birds twittering in the trees, or cuckoos. You could not hear the gentle roar of the ocean, and what flowers there were, were in pots on ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... when the people are once awake they can't any more be bamboozled by a political despot than the war eagle, screaming across the blue dome of the everlasting heavens, will turn tail when he hears the twittering of a pewee!" Mr. Niles closed, as he always closed a speech, with the metaphor that ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day |
