"Chatter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... idols walk or speak, or have they the glorious gift of reason?" demanded the trapper, with some indignation in his voice; "though but little given to run into the noise and chatter of the settlements, yet have I been into the towns in my day, to barter the peltry for lead and powder, and often have I seen your waxen dolls, with their tawdry clothes ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... calm; the chatter of the child has soothed him. It had been a pleasure to dance with her, to laugh when she laughed, to listen to her nonsense. As he walks with her towards the flowers, he tells himself he is not in the least unhappy, though always ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... ancient Church, and the gossips of the day told each other that the duke had named his price for his conversion. To be made high constable of France, it was said would melt the resolve of the stiff Huguenot. To any other inducement or blandishment he was adamant. Whatever truth may have been in such chatter, it is certain that the duke never gratified ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the demimonde at their toilet, with their mirrors, their powders, their enamels and rouge-pots, their brushes and pincers, and all the thousand and one accessories. Acquaintances come in to make a morning call, and we hear their chatter,—Thais and Megara and Bacchis, Hermione and Myrrha. They nibble cakes, drink sweet wine, gossip about their respective lovers, hum the latest songs, and enjoy themselves with perfect abandon. Again we see them at their evening rendezvous, at the banquets where philosophers, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... all day through, I laugh and play as others do, I sin and chatter, just the same As others ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... for Harry, that they had left the drawing-room before he entered it; for he no sooner appeared at the door, than the same little chatter-box, who had betrayed the change in her mother's plans to Mrs. Hilson, ran up to him to tell the great news that they were not going back to Charleston, but were to stay in New York all winter, 'mamma, and Jane, and all of them, ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... Minister put it all in one word: "Let the neutrals cease their everlasting chatter about the destruction of Rheims Cathedral. All the paintings, statues and cathedrals in the world are not so much as one straw to the Germans over against the gaining of our goal and ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis
... as yesterday. Most of us are ill. My teeth chatter and my body is both hot and cold. A storm more wicked never wailed about a ship. Lev-el-Hedyd calls it the shrieking voices of the hundred millions of Mehrikans who must have perished in ...
— The Last American - A Fragment from The Journal of KHAN-LI, Prince of - Dimph-Yoo-Chur and Admiral in the Persian Navy • J. A. Mitchell
... are allowed, and of this privilege, at least, they eagerly availed themselves. On this day they were at the top of exhilaration. There was one broad grin from one end of the column to the other; it might soon have been a caravan of elephants instead of camels, for the ivory and the blackness; the chatter and the laughter almost drowned the tramp of feet and the clatter of equipments. At cross-roads and plantation gates the colored people thronged to see us pass; every one found a friend and a greeting. "How you ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... logos, renders distinct the meaning of the subject it attempts to treat.—Theos, God, or Gods, unseen beings and unknown causes. Logos, word, talk—or, if we like to employ yet more familiar and expressive terms, prattle or chatter. Talk, or prattle, about unseen beings or unknown causes, The idleness of the subject, and inutility—nay, absolute insanity of the occupation, sufficiently appears in the strict etymological meaning of the word employed to typify them. The danger, the mischief, the cruelly immoral, and, ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... although Polly and Janet, in the back seat together, were a little shy and silent at the very first. At the end of a mile, however, they were beginning to warm toward each other and had set up a brisk chatter before they ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... to Flora ever since breakfast, and was already seating herself at the other end of the table. She did not speak much, however, during the meal, for experience had taught what it had been difficult to express in words—that it was not respectful to her teachers to chatter in their presence, as she would do with her companions. She applied herself instead to the good things that had been provided, and ate away steadily until she had sampled the contents of every plate upon the table, and could ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... they turned to see Betty and Nell entering the gate. With Nell's bright chatter and Betty's wit, the conversation became indeed vivacious, running from gossip to gowns, and then to that old and ever new theme, love. Shortly afterward the colonel entered the gate, with swinging ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... at his pipe with a grunt. When not at work, it was usually his role to sit and listen to his wife's chatter. ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... The chatter in the big room had ceased long before Uncle Jap had finished. More than one man present divined that something quite out of the ordinary had taken place. Leveson moistened his lips with his tongue. His chance had come. Had he chosen to repudiate the ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... luncheon, the day of the joint debate at Fairview, that the young man first met Eliza, who sat opposite him. The only other person present was old Donald, the coachman, who was rather deaf and never paid any attention to the chatter around him. ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne
... tiring you, my dear Sir," said Charley, anxiously. "What a fool I have been to chatter on so, when Agnes particularly told me to be brief! I shall leave you now, Sir; I shall indeed. Is there any thing I can do for ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... and before I knew what had struck me I had lost six big dressed stones and another hundred niggers. I got the laugh, of course. Every numskull in Egypt wagged his beard over it; I could hear the chatter myself. But I kept quiet and stuck to the problem, and by and by ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... and forth as she turned away, and then a hasty chatter sprang up as the guests hurried into their tcharchafs for the journey to the ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... place a confused jumble of wheeled traffic caught up by the big landslip in front. Passing, amid the chatter and clamour of men and beasts, through the medley of bullock-carts and ekkas that crowded every available space, we hauled the carriage through the bed of a watercourse whose bridge was broken. Up over the prostrate ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... Carlotta this evening at dinner—"I have decided now that she shall dine regularly with me; it is undoubtedly agreeable to see her pretty face on the opposite side of the table and listen to her irresponsible chatter: chatter which I keep within the bounds of decorum when Stenson is present, so as to save his susceptibilities, by the simple device, agreed upon between us (to her great delight) of scratching the side of my somewhat prominent ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... the rivets on the ship-plates, ever and anon they part before his wistful eyes, and he sees again the little village with its grove of mangoes and its sacred banyan on the inviolable otla; he hears once again the animated chatter of the wayfarers ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... Something more worthy my acknowledgement. And now farewell: I will attend, alone, Her coming forth; and make my sufferings known. [Exit ESPERANZA. A hollow wind comes whistling through that door, And a cold shivering seizes me all o'er; My teeth, too, chatter with a sudden fright:— These are the raptures of too fierce delight, The combat of the tyrants, hope and fear; Which hearts, for want of field-room, cannot bear. I grow impatient;—this, or that's the room:— ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... sick, with your eternal chatter!" Henley burst out, angrily. "I don't care what them two silly women do. I'll not be here to witness such tomfoolery. I'm going to Texas, to be ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... again, and the next after that, and soon the village gossips were all of a chatter, though not a word of it reached the Reverend Samuelu nor his wife. But if Evanitalina dared not tell her parents of O'olo, in her conduct at least she was as good as gold, and every time she held a tryst with her sweetheart, she took her little brother with her as ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... chatter, you poor fish!" Jack exploded unexpectedly, and smote Hank on his lantern jaw with the flat of his palm. "You hick from hick-town! You brainless ape! You ain't a man—you're a missing link! Give you a four-foot tail, by harry, and you'd go down ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... on without speaking. The young man was obstinately averse to breaking the silence, which, nevertheless, annoyed him. He had a theory that feminine chatter was disagreeable. Just why he should feel aggrieved that this particular young woman did not talk to him he could not say. No doubt he would have resented with high disdain the suggestion that his vanity had been covertly feeding ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... pair of shoes![81]—what then? not much, if they Are such as fit with ladies' feet, but these (No one can tell how much I grieve to say) Were masculine; to see them, and to seize, Was but a moment's act.—Ah! well-a-day! My teeth begin to chatter, my veins freeze! Alfonso first examined well their fashion, And then ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... do chatter!" cried Sophy, coming up to us. "I wish one or two of you would think a little more about what wants doing. Cary, you might have made the turnovers for supper. I am sure I have enough ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... light chatter, felt set apart by the tragedy of her own unhappiness. Once she would have enjoyed an escapade like the lunch party; now she was glad that she could go away—and leave it all behind her ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey
... and from a third class carriage just pulled up, out gushes a whole family, the kids naked from the waist up, and the men almost the same from the waist down. The women are in waspish yellow and deep reds, and they group and chatter in the sun, then heave their baggage, great soft baskets, on their heads—the women do this, the men have turbans, so they can't, and away they all go smiling. But better still, in the shade, there's a group of men and women seated, putting in time eating ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... young wife, beautiful, witty, and accomplished, was a born leader of society. She now had to the full the opportunity of studying those types of Spanish ladies and gentlemen whose gay, inconsequent chatter she has so brilliantly reproduced in her novels dealing with high life. The Marquis died in 1835, and after two years she again married, this time the lawyer De Arrom. Losing his own money and hers, he went as Spanish consul to Australia, where he died in 1863. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... dinner given by the Easy Chair to some of its most valued friends was of the life after death, and it will not surprise any experienced observer to learn that the talk went on amid much unserious chatter, with laughing irrelevancies more appropriate to the pouring of champagne, and the changing of plates, than to the very solemn affair in hand. It may not really have been so very solemn. Nobody at table took the topic much to heart ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... devilish long time, Nora. Now if it had been eighteen minutes, or even eighteen months, we should be able to pick up the interrupted thread, and chatter like two magpies. But as it is, I have simply nothing to say; and you ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... not offend the young plowman, to judge by the expression of his face; but he said nothing, and, stooping down, loosened the chains of the whiffletree and turned the faces of the tired horses homeward. The cavalcade moved on in silence for a few moments, but nothing can repress the chatter of a boy, ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... Poll-parrotted. This is the last authentic news. You are not a real hard-working novelist; not a practical novelist; so you don't know the temptation to let your characters maunder. Dumas did it, and lived. But it is not war; it ain't sportsmanlike, and I have to be stopping their chatter all the time. Brown's appendix is ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... could tell where—the tall swale-grass on the river edge, erect now again after the April floods, or the brown broom-corn nearer the road, or from the sky above? We could hear the squirrels' mocking chatter in the tree-tops, the whir of the kingfishers along the willow-fringed water—the indefinable chorus of Nature's myriad small children, all glad that spring was come. But above these our ears took in the ceaseless clang of the drums, and ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... Saying: "We will swap horses till the doom, And mend the pots and kettles of mankind, And lend our sons to big-time vaudeville, Or to the race-track, or the learned world. But India's Brahma waits within their breasts. They will return to us with gipsy grins, And chatter Romany, and shake their curls And hug the dirtiest babies in the camp. They will return to the moving pillar of smoke, The whitest toothed, the merriest laughers known, The blackest haired of all the tribes of men. What trap can hold such cats? The Romany ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... help she could in saddling and bridling him, the other two men standing a little way off in silence. She kept up an incessant chatter, repeating her thanks to Cadmus for his kindness, and binding him more completely ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis
... the year 1855. My husband and I were happy during the first few years of our married life. He was the owner of this beautiful place, which had been in his family for many generations. My daughter, Emmeline, was born here, and when she was a child she filled the old house with her happy laughter and chatter. My husband had a brother, Marmaduke, with whom he was not on good terms. Before my marriage, this brother had left home, and gone to India. My husband held no communication with him, but we sometimes heard indirectly from him, and reports ...
— Patty's Friends • Carolyn Wells
... a mighty chatter of compliments broke forth, and Storri swelled with the savage glory of ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... picnic's got to be, Though they haven't referred the thing to me. There's a boat and we put our parcels in it, And off we push in another minute. And our pace is certainly rather slow, For everybody wants to row; And there's any amount of laugh and chatter, And crabs are caught, but it doesn't matter; For we're all afloat In an open boat, And the breeze is light and the sky is blue, And the sun is toasting ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 27, 1914 • Various
... my cousin, the first-night deadheads, as a body, are unpunctual and unappreciative. They chatter a good deal and seem more interested in the audience than the play, and might well be replaced by the many people who would be glad to plank down their money for a seat. Let them go; and I warrant the managers will be none the worse—I should, indeed, ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... they counted the good things the good Saint had brought them, And laid them all out on their pillows to sort them. Such wonderful voices, such wonderful lungs, It was just like another confusion of tongues, A Babel of chatter from master and miss— And I don't think they've left off ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... certainly clever. When the Duchess found that he could talk without any shyness, that he could speak French fluently, and that after a month in Italy he could chatter Italian, at any rate without reticence or shame; when she perceived that all the women liked the lad's society and impudence, and that all the young men were anxious to know him, she was glad to find that ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... there, and nane o' your chatter," thundered Reuben, stopping in his cleaving, and turning the side of his red face round to the woman. "Flee—vanish—and be cursed to ye—baith you and your doug thegither, ye infernal limmer! It's weel for't, luckie, it was not its head instead ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... party. She also reduced Jane to a state of helpless laughter. I felt the years dropping away from me, and the face of the boy whom I had learned to love was less strained and brighter than I had ever seen it. He said little at first, but his eyes smiled, and he listened eagerly to all Zura's chatter and seemed to be hearing once again of joys dreamed of and a world lost ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... and as though he would speak contemptuously, yet dared not, "this sort of thing has gone on at intervals ever since. It spreads like wildfire, of course, mysterious chatter of this kind, and people began trespassing all over the estate, coming to see the wood, and making themselves a general nuisance. Notices of man-traps and spring-guns only seemed to increase their persistence; and—think ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... squandered an equal amount at the same place. The truth is, Gottfried Nothafft entrusted me with three thousand taler. That's what he did; that's the truth. It was his intention to keep the whole affair from the chatter of women. And he willed that I should use this hard-earned capital in a productive way, and not give it to the culprit who would waste it in debauchery and ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... for a long stretch across the plain. We were approaching the sandy course—where few passengers were seen except wagoners—and all was still and silent till we reached the fringe of forest and heard the chattering scream of a flight of green parrots. But above the chatter of the birds came another cry, and there, straight ahead of us, but beyond our power to overtake, were two riders. Mary was one; the other, a big rough-looking fellow, on a powerful horse, had dashed out from the thicket, caught her horse by the rein, and was now taking ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... manner she felt so necessary—for it is to the girls who are "having a good time" that partners are attracted—and, in order to lend greater colour to her impersonation of a lively belle, she began to chatter loudly, bringing into play an accompaniment of frolicsome gesture. She brushed Walter's nose saucily with the bunch of violets in her hand, tapped him on the shoulder, shook her pretty forefinger in his face, flourished her arms, kept her ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... unlucky as I am, From General ——, who lost that battle t'other day, all the way back to Priam! Come, sit down—do, and let me tell you all about it, and what's the matter; Perhaps it will do me good to have a nice, comfortable, miserable chatter. To begin, then. This morning I woke, and thought I was up with the sun. So never hurried myself; but dressed slow, and came down, to find breakfast all done, And nothing left for me but one cold slapjack, and all the chicken gone, Unless, to be sure, I could have eaten ...
— Neighbor Nelly Socks - Being the Sixth and Last Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow
... passed away. How the rare intermittent sounds impressed themselves upon him!—the stir of the child's waking soon after midnight in the room overhead; the cry of the owls on the oak-wood; the purring of the night-jars on the common; the morning chatter of ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... those critics perhaps most of us agree, when we read books that gossip about Shelley, or Coleridge, or Byron. "Give us their poetry," we say, "and leave their characters alone: we do not want tattle about Claire and chatter about Harriet; we want to be happy with 'The Skylark' or 'The Cloud.'" Possibly this instinct is correct, where such a poet as Shelley is concerned, whose life, like his poetry, was as "the life of winds and ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... up among his blankets on the floor of the bunk house and saw the various sleepers coiled or sprawled in their beds; their breathing had not yet grown restless at the nearing of day. He stepped to the door carefully, and saw the crowding blackbirds begin their walk and chatter in the mud of the littered and trodden corrals. From beyond among the cotton woods, came continually the smooth unemphatic sound of the doves answering each other invisibly; and against the empty ridge of the river-bluff ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... do chatter! no one would believe, to hear you, that you had been almost heart-broken because this very girl, over whom you are so enthusiastic, had ruined your prospects," ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... an impression on the blank iron wall. At first the American chatted of this and that, rehearsing his own aimless ramblings as men will, but presently he observed that Smith was painting away and paying no attention to his partner's chatter. ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... stop to chatter. The person my uncle expects may arrive at any moment. If we had to give him breakfast, where should we be with nothing ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... this very morning. They're murdering everyone—men, women, and children. It's Little Crow who started it, and God knows how many settlers they've killed. They chased me for hours, but I had a good horse. It only gave out yesterday; and since then—But come. It's suicide to chatter like this." He turned insistently toward the door. "They may be ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... bright plumage of the latter seems really like an arrival from the tropics. I see them dash through the blossoming trees, and all the forenoon hear their incessant warbling and wooing. The swallows dive and chatter about the barn, or squeak and build beneath the eaves; the partridge drums in the fresh sprouting woods; the long, tender note of the meadowlark comes up from the meadow; and at sunset, from every marsh ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... no more to her than an annoying din which made it difficult to hear her companion's compliments that were as sweet, heavy, and stale as Mailard's chocolates, left a year on the shelves. Their mutual giggle and chatter at last became so obtrusive that an old and music-loving German turned his broad face towards them, and hissed out the word "Hist!" with such vindictive force as to suggest that all the winds had suddenly broken lose ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... we talked, senseless creatures, sighing in the dark. But so it is with human life everywhere—a foolish chatter and in the dark ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... in Europe! Often she is creditable, but sometimes she is just shocking. This one, a minute ago—19, fat-face, raspy voice, pert ways, the self-complacency of God; and with it all a silly laugh (embarrassed) which kept breaking out through her chatter all along, whereas there was no call for it, for she said nothing that was funny. "Spose so many 've told y' how they 'njoyed y'r chapt'r on the Germ' tongue it's bringin' coals to Newcastle Kehe! say anything 'bout it Ke-hehe! Spent m' vacation ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... by contrast the hard, warriorlike lines of the Colonel's face. He could well believe that, until sorrow had softened him, a fiery impatient temper had ruled this Southern heart. There was a sudden chatter and noise of voices, and they both turned to see a group of negroes, small and great, coming across the lawn with bags and baskets, and after a few muttered words the old master set forth hurriedly to meet them, ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... hers, the picture which they evoked in his memories, the pathetic simplicity of her utterance, caught him by the heart. But Ethne seemed not to hear the appeal. She was listening with her face turned toward the ballroom. The chatter and laughter of the voices there grew louder and nearer. She understood that the music had ceased. She rose quickly to her feet, clenching the feathers in her hand, and opened a door. It was the door of her ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... had gone when something happened. A horse stamped, a cock set up a sudden chatter, the cat leaped to a manger, and a cow scrambled to her feet. The darkness was full of movement,—wings fluttered, timbers shook under kicking hoofs and rubbing hides, tossed heads jarred the rings that held them fast. Then from ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... them to silence that they dare say no word save it be teaching others or praising GOD: and therefore, when they ask GOD aught, He grants it at once." But we, woful wretches, who deal with the world, that chatter all the day like magpies; now lie, now twist, now speak evil, now quarrel, now backbite, now swear great oaths, these defile our prayer and hinder it, that it is not heard; for our mouth is as far from praying GOD, as it is near the world with idle speech. Prayer is ...
— The Form of Perfect Living and Other Prose Treatises • Richard Rolle of Hampole
... behavior had cast a shadow upon the party which even Mollie's empty light-hearted chatter was powerless to dispel, and when, shortly after midnight, Sir Lucien drove Rita home to Prince's Gate, they were very silent throughout the journey. Just before the car reached ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... me. He always greeted me with a low, sweet chatter, with wings quivering, and if he were out of the cage he would come on the back of my chair and touch my cheek or lips very gently with his beak, or offer me a bit of food if he had any; and to me alone, ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... chatter something about the tiger—then another monkey, farther off, would take up the cry, and so on until Mr. Monkey heard it. So it was as good as a ...
— Mappo, the Merry Monkey • Richard Barnum
... below that it was "a fine healthy Commander-in-Chief." Therefore, a Commander-in-Chief is not like a poet. But when a Commander-in-Chief dies, the spirit of a thousand Beethovens sob and wail in the air; dull cannon roar slowly out their heavy grief; silly rifles gibber and chatter demoniacally over his grave; and a cocked hat, emptier than ever, rides with the mockery of ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... the plan of action by the Command. We got the guns into position under cover of night, and thoroughly camouflaged them with grass and tree branches. We did the job so artistically that the birds would come and chatter and sing immediately over the guns when they were not telling their ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... while the stream talked, the larks sang, and in the hollow of the hills three children were happy. George landed half a dozen trout before lunch-time; but Taffy caught none, partly because he knew nothing about fishing, partly because the chatter of the stream set him telling tales to himself and he forgot the rod in his hand. And Honoria, after hooking a tiny fish and throwing it back into the water, wandered off in search of larks' nests. She came slowly back when George ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... was going on briskly, so that they had no time left to chatter, and they only thought of their lines. Every moment big heavy fish were drawn in on deck, and slapped down with a smack like a whip-crack; there they wriggled about angrily, flapping their tails on the deck, scattering plenty of sea-water about, and ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... not then determined to share my secret even with Roderick, as, indeed, by my word I was bound not to do until Hall should so wish. In this intent I hid all my serious mood, and continued the pleasant chatter. ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... fishermen's huts down the beach came an intense blue smoke of fires; above the soft rustle of the swell among the boats came the chatter of many sleepy voices, like the sound of sparrows in a city park at dusk. The day dissolved slowly in utter timelessness. And when the last fishing boat came out of the dark sea, the tall slanting sail folding suddenly as the wings ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... chatter about trifles at such a moment?" cried the Prophet. "Don't you see the lady's ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... the cold river to seek protection! A crowd of spectators witness the scene, with all the composure with which a Roman populace would look upon a gladiatorial show. Not a voice heard in the sufferer's behalf. At length the powers of nature give way; the blood flows back to the heart—the teeth chatter—the voice trembles and dies, while the victim drops ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... song had a wonderful effect upon the denizens of Clear Lake, as we named the sheet of water; for, after a brief momentary pause in their chatter—as if of incredulity and blazing surprise—they all arose at once in such myriads that the noise of their wings was not unlike what I ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... on in a whirlwind of conversation to keep the attention of the soldiers in their own direction. So absorbed were Otto and Fritz in listening to the chatter that they failed to hear the faint whistle of a rope through the air, and it was not until the noose of Dave's lasso settled about their shoulders and they were jerked incontinently backward ...
— Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal - or Perils of the Black Bear Patrol • G. Harvey Ralphson
... differently from what he had expected that Durnovo was a little off his balance. Things were so sociable and pleasant in comparison with the habitual loneliness of his life. The fire crackled so cheerily, the moon shone down on the river so grandly, the subdued chatter of the boatmen imparted such a feeling of safety and comfort to the scene, that he gave way to that impulse of expansiveness which ever lurks in West ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... talking about you," replied Edna wearily. "Mamma will go, of course, and you can accompany her; but I am sick of bazaars, and the noise and chatter will make my head ache. You may take my purse, Bessie, and buy something of Minnie and Eleanor;" and Edna threw down her work and began looking over the batch of novels that her mother had sent in from the circulating library, leaving Bessie to digest her ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... bard; not thus—but Clotho (drat her) Was wakeful still, and plied a hostile loom— I sought Miss Pritt. She mooted some grave matter And looked for light; my lips were like the tomb, Sealed, though they say they heard my molars chatter Up ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 17, 1914 • Various
... respected. His companions would look at him with something akin to awe in their eyes and tell each other in low tones not to disturb Eddie, he was "making poetry," and confine their chatter to themselves, holding rather aloof from the young poet, who wandered on with the abstracted gaze of one walking in sleep—with them, but ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... lad chatter,' said Torstenson. 'His talk helps to pass away the time. And pray,' he continued, turning to Conrad, 'who is to blame for your trouble but yourselves? Have I not many times offered the town ...
— The Young Carpenters of Freiberg - A Tale of the Thirty Years' War • Anonymous
... first day she took her; "she'll talk out loud, I just about know she will, she's such a little chatter-box." ...
— Little Prudy • Sophie May
... in the dark and after leaving the public house, on the steepish icy slope, a wrong path altogether, at the bottom of which he lay. The icy slope, the turn mistaken at night and in liquor, accounted for much—practically, in the end and after the inquest and boundless chatter, for everything; but there had been matters in his life—strange passages and perils, secret disorders, vices more than suspected—that would have accounted for ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... the birdlings keep up with their mother! They like to talk as well as Eddie Dudley and some other children, whom I have heard pleasantly called little chatter-boxes. Children have much to learn, and must ask many questions. The world is new and strange to them, and is a constant source of surprise and wonder. I do not suppose people ever learn faster than before they are six years old, or ever learn more in the same ...
— The Nest in the Honeysuckles, and other Stories • Various
... window one head pokes; Twenty others do the same:— Chatter, clatter!—creaks and croaks All the year the same old game!— 'See my spinning!' cries one dame, 'Five long ells of cloth, I trow!' Cries another, 'Mine must go, Drat it, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... chatter, Mr. Ferrers, and listen to me with whatever little power of concentration you may possess. Your conduct, sir, has been wholly unfitting an officer and a gentleman. If I did my full duty I'd order you in arrest at ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... one problem. The train was hardly out of the station before everybody on it knew that there was a five-year-old making a trip all by himself. Of course, he was not to be bothered, but everybody wanted to talk to him, to ask him how he was, to chatter endlessly at him. Jimmy did not want to talk. His experience in addressing adults was exasperating. That he spoke lucid English instead of babygab did not compel a rational response. Those who heard him speak ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... I have little hope of succeeding. They distrust me. They send the children to my shop for what they want, and the little ones have evidently been told not to chatter. The moujiks avoid me when they meet ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... the road was far away, and only the chatter of the birds and the liquid cluck of the little stream disturbed the stillness of the growing things. She walked softly, except for the whisper of brushing against the spreading branches that choked the tiny path. The heat of noon was rising to its climax, and the shafts ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... hacked by those mountains Mr. Gray mentions, with belts of olive orchard on their flanks, and wild paths furrowing and wrinkling their stern faces. To your right there is a sheeted cataract falling from the basins of the town laundry, where the toil of the washers melts into music, and their chatter, like that of birds, drifts brokenly across the abyss to you. While you sit musing or murmuring in your rapture, two mandolins and a guitar smilingly intrude, and after a prelude of Italian airs swing into ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... anew appeared on the roof, trooping toward that balustrade that faced the sea: upon which the throngs felt the impending of the event, and intently watched. But there seemed no hurry, Hogarth all gay chatter, anon lowering the lids a moment, as he looked over the water; till suddenly hundreds of glasses detected a champagne-bottle with ribbons in the christener's hand; and the consciousness of the moment come moved the hosts when Hogarth, ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... we shall see," and so on—the unmeaning chatter of the crowd, which merely serves to show that it is at the command of the first who chooses to sway it. Stronger words were heard from ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... ravine, set to work to form a pathway down the descent, and up the ascent on the other side, under the additional disadvantage of heavy rain. The sudden transition from the rays of a burning sun to this cold bath made my teeth chatter as if I had a tertian ague. When half our work was completed we breakfasted in the beautiful ravine amidst the dark luxuriant vegetation of the tropics, formed by the pandanus, ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... would be destroying, breaking something very precious inside that being. In fact nothing less than partly murdering her. This seems a very extreme effect to flow from Fyne's words. But Anthony, unaccustomed to the chatter of the firm earth, never stayed to ask himself what value these words could have in Fyne's mouth. And indeed the mere dark sound of them was utterly abhorrent to his native rectitude, sea-salted, hardened in the winds of wide ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... deceiving themselves or are trying to deceive others. They are giving their own little fancies the sanction of the universe. The butterfly that I see flitting about in the sunshine outside might as well read the European war as a comment on its aimless little life. The stars do not chatter about us, but they have a balm for us if we will be silent. The "huge and thoughtful night" speaks a ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... The lady had been asked down for her husband's sake, and he did not approve of this chatter about family. Mr. Stocks, who was about to explain the Haystoun pedigree, caught his host's eye and ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... a falsetto, feminine cooing, greeted the tiny sally; and Otto expanded like a peacock. This warm atmosphere of women and flattery and idle chatter pleased him to ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ladies looked on me as an ugly little rustic foreigner, full of English mauvaise honte. If they tried to be kind to me, it was as a mere child; and they went on with their chatter, which I could hardly follow, for it was about things and people of which I knew nothing, so that I could not understand their laughter. Or when they rejoiced in their return from what they called their exile, and found fault with all they had left in England, ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... interest was always that of the trained editor at work. Richard was not only physically restless but his mind practically never relaxed. When others, tired after a hard day's work or play, would devote the evening to cards or billiards or chatter, Richard would write letters or pore over some strange foreign magazine, consult maps, make notes, or read the stories of his contemporaries. He practically read every American magazine from cover to cover—advertisements were a delight to him, and the finding of ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... knew nothing of any of them. It is a sad fault with us all, and especially with women—we don't think enough. The mass of young women trifle a great portion of their life away on the smallest imaginable things. They chatter like birds and gabble like geese, without the trouble of thinking. The things they see and hear every day awaken no consecutive thought. The stars shine above them, and they call them pretty things, but never ask the astronomic story of their magnificence. The ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... fool she is! Hear her chatter! (Look out of window just here.—Two pages and a half of description, if it were all written out, in one tenth of a second.)—Go ahead, old lady! (Eye catches picture over fireplace.) There's that infernal family nose! Came over in the "Mayflower" on the first ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... and grassy stretches. By this time the children knew the names of most of the mountains around, and of all the lakes. They went through them now like a lesson with their father; and even Olly remembered a great many, and could chatter about Helvellyn, and Fairfield, and Langdale Pikes, as if he had trudged to the ...
— Milly and Olly • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... he bore, with trappings sewed over bits of coloured shell and coral, yet somehow it was all extraordinarily unreal. It was a city full of the ghosts of the life which once pulsed through its ways. The streets were peopled, the chatter of voices everywhere, the singing boys and laughing girls wandering, arms linked together, down the ways filled every echo with their merriment, yet somehow it was all so shallow that again and again I rubbed my eyes, wondering ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... write objectively about a symphony or a picture, to seize its peculiar intrinsic qualities and describe them exactly in words, is a feat beyond the power of most. Wherefore, as a rule, the unfortunate critic must either discourse on history, archaeology, and psychology, or chatter about his own feelings. With the exception of Mr. Roger Fry there is not in England one critic capable of saying so much, to the purpose, about the intrinsic qualities of a work of visual art as half a dozen or more—Sir Walter Raleigh, Mr. Murry, Mr. Squire, Mr. Clutton Brock, Sir Arthur ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... chatter, small one," he said, unsmilingly. "This pretense, it is not necessary between you and me. So. You are ein bischen blasz, nicht? A little pale? You have ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... believe in you. I'm breaking the rules myself now, because I say 'they' when I ought to say 'we.' We're none of us here for our health, Holcombe, but it pleases us to pretend we are. It's a sort of give and take. We all sit around at dinner-parties and smile and chatter, and those English talk about the latest news from 'town,' and how they mean to run back for the season or the hunting. But they know they don't dare go back, and they know that everybody at the table knows it, and that the servants behind them know it. But it's more ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... In the general chatter and chaff no one noticed that Gritzko had never once spoken directly to Tamara, but she was conscious of it, and instead of its relieving her, she ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... such excuse for him presented itself. She stared for a moment, breathless, paled a little and locked her teeth so that they shouldn't chatter; then, a wave of bright anger relaxed her stiffened muscles. She did not look at her father but was aware that he was fixedly ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... found the most nymphlike of pretty creatures a man had ever by any chance beheld. Such delicate little fair crowned heads, such delicious little tip-tilted noses and slim white throats, such ripples of gay chatter and nonsense! When a man has fortune enough of his own why not take the prettiest thing he sees? So Alice and Olive were borne away also and poor Mr. and Mrs. Darrel breathed sighs of relief and there were not only more chances but causes for bright hopefulness in the once crowded house ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... heavy-eyed, but she looked as fresh and charming as ever in her new waist of black lace and the serge skirt which she had bought the day before. It seemed impossible to realize that I was really seated opposite her in the dining car, talking amid the punctuating chatter of a party of red-cheeked French-Canadian school children who had come on the train at Sherbrooke, bound for their home on the occasion of the approaching ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... He could fancy how, to-morrow, their dull placidity would be wrung by the discovery of the crime. The little wood would fling its secret into the eager lap of these decrepit witches; they would crowd to their doors, chatter it, shout it, pull it to pieces. "Body of an Undergraduate . . . Body of an Undergraduate. . ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... and his merry smile and chatter make him a tremendous favourite with the gallery. He has a very strong personality that should carry ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... to him delightful; he was like a traveller who, after a cold and cheerless journey, comes in to the warmth of a fire, and feels a glow of comfort as the blood circulates briskly through his veins. Sometimes, when he had no other engagements, he went out with Nellie Dowsett, whose lively chatter was new and very amusing to him. Sometimes they went up into Cheapside, and into St. Paul's, but more often sallied out of the city at Aldgate, and walked into the fields. On these occasions he carried a stout cane that had been his father's, for Nellie tried in ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... the workingmen, and which give immediately strength and impetus to the needs of the class struggle and to the organization of the workers as a class. The Parisian gentlemen had their heads filled with the most empty Proudhonian phraseology. They chatter of science, and know nothing of it. They scorn all revolutionary action, that is to say, proceeding from the class struggle itself, every social movement that is centralized and consequently obtainable ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter |
