"Quavering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for I know I should fall heavy!" said the Goat-father, in a quavering voice; but he did as he was told, and shutting his eyes firmly, he slipped from the window-sill and fell with a heavy flop into the arms ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... the President had had his long, emotional, and flowery say; and when the oldest of French admirals had stepped forward and, in a quavering voice, bidden the dead farewell on behalf of the Navy, it came to the turn of ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... of Ted Slavin was what first drew their attention; and it seemed to come from around the next corner. Then followed a quavering voice, ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... aged woman, obeyed with tottering steps, and, reaching the massive portal, undid the guichet, or lattice, and asked with a quavering voice: ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... breath for an instant, like a creature in pain; then, with her quavering voice, touched with a vibration of anguish, she said; "Oh, how can I ask you to give up? I will give up—I ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... see now how I love you?" he went on, taking her white face between his two hands. "Don't you understand, Meleese? Jean and I have fought—he is bound hand and foot up there in the cabin—and I am waiting for you—for you—" He pressed her face against him, her lips so close that he could feel their quavering breath. "I have come to fight for you—if you won't go," he whispered tensely. "I don't know why your people have tried to kill me, I don't know why they want to kill me, and it makes no difference to me ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood
... Swedish—cooks of all races minister to their appetites. Whenever a panful of scraps is thrown out from the galley, a flock of gulls may be seen fluttering over their fluent table d'hote. Their shrill, quavering cries of joy and expectancy sound as if the machinery of their emotions were worked by rusty pulleys; their sharp eyes glisten, and their great wings flap and whirl together in a confusion of white and gray. It is said that they do useful service as scavengers of the harbor. No doubt; but ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... to take form. It began to emerge in a measure, a boom-boom-boom of tambours and big goatskin drums. A bamboo fife struck into a high, quavering note. The singing club ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... hour together. The harangues were punctuated by occasional bursts of song, not always of a churchly nature, and emphasized by gestures which were more forceful than devout. In this game Mrs. Brenton often joined him, lending her thin soprano voice to help out his quavering childish notes, and doing her conscientious best, the while, to keep the songs attuned to the key of proper piety. To be sure, she did insist upon bringing her sewing into church and, on one occasion, she patched her young ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... said, in a weak, quavering voice, "you have received my letter, I hope. Here is this person that I wrote about. Her name is Mrs. Dunbar. She is an old dependent. She is mad—ha, ha!—mad. Yes, mad, doctor. She thinks she is my wife. She calls herself Lady Dudleigh. But, doctor, her real name is Mrs. Dunbar. She is mad, ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... night noises before Chirpy Cricket came to live in the farmyard. What with Solomon Owl's hooting, his cousin Simon Screecher's quavering call, and the musical Frog's family's concerts in Cedar Swamp, it was a wonder that Johnnie Green ever managed to fall asleep. The Katydids alone were almost enough to drive anybody frantic—if he let himself listen to them—with their everlasting ...
— The Tale of Chirpy Cricket • Arthur Scott Bailey
... a carol surely did. The hair-cloth parlor of the Rattle-Pane House would have calmed anything. And the mousey smell of the old piano fairly jerked the dogs to its senile old ivory keyboard. Cocking their ears to its quavering treble notes,—snorting their nostrils through its gritty guttural basses, they watched Flame's facile fingers sweep from sound ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... of letting it rise as his sentence goes on, or when he is opposed in argument, or wishes to mount above other voices in the conversation, until it dominates everything. Heard in the depths of the woods, quavering aloft, it is felt to be as much a part of nature, an original force, as the northwest wind or the scream of the hen-hawk. When he is pottering about the camp-fire, trying to light his pipe with ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... concert of fashionable music, where he 'tried to faint, that he might be carried out, but didn't know how to do it,' and was compelled to sit with compressed lips, and listen to 'sounds from flat shrill signorinas, quavering to distraction,' for two long hours. When he gets home, however, he 'feeds fat his grudge' against modern musical affectations. Let us condense a few ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... and the character of the baile, funeral and sacred music is the same. The only distinction is the addition of a continuous tremolo to the latter two, which produces the same unpleasant effect on the nerves as a comic song chanted by the shaky, cracked, piping and quavering voice of senility. As the fiddles invariably play their parts in funerals as well as on festive processions, it requires some familiarity with the customs of the country to distinguish one from the other. The music to-night is ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... of the office and departed in the direction of the Deputy Commissioner's house. That day at noon I had occasion to go down the blinding- hot Mall, and I saw a crooked man crawling along the white dust of the roadside, his hat in his hand, quavering dolorously after the fashion of street-singers at Home. There was not a soul in sight, and he was out of all possible earshot of the houses. And he sang through his nose, turning his head from ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... who had been looking with expectant curiosity at the group before the portrait, resumed their loud-toned chatter. When their attention was next drawn in the same direction, it was by a shaky old treble, breaking, quavering with weakness. A small, shabby old woman, leaning on a crutch, stood looking up imploringly ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... See now, I am not angry. Heh, I remember, too, how beautiful she was. I was once tempted much as you are tempted. So I pardon you. I will give you my daughter Ermengarde in marriage, I will make you my heir, I will give you half my kingdom—" His voice rose, quavering; and it died now, for he foreread the damnation of Theodoret's soul while he fawned ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... which had been laid for her on the rugs. As she arranged her skirt and settled herself, from an earthen drum just outside the house and an arghool there came a crude sound of native music, to which almost immediately added itself a high and quavering voice, singing: ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... never heard father in such voice as he is at present,' said Mrs. Plornish, her own voice quavering, she was so proud and pleased. 'He gave us Strephon last night, to that degree that Plornish gets up and makes him this speech across the table, "John Edward Nandy," says Plornish to father, "I never heard you come the warbles as I have heard you come the ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... sure that Mr. Sleuth had got up, that he was there already, waiting for her—she rested the tray on the top of the banisters and listened. For a few moments she heard nothing; then through the door came the high, quavering voice with which she ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... follow them wherever they go. They cook for them, and generally look after them. They are as warlike as their husbands, and encourage them, when they go out to battle, with their applause and curious quavering cries. The men get very little pay; but as they are provided with rations, and draw a certain amount for the women, it costs next to nothing, and I fancy that having the wives with them pays well. I believe they would rather be killed than come ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... one, father!" she gasped in a voice quavering with glad excitement. "Lizzie's little girl, our own little grandchild! We shall have a child about the place again, something to love and work for. You see, Lizzie turns to us in her trouble, poor girl, and it must be a terrible trouble to her," with a momentary sadness ...
— The Story of Jessie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... sometimes suddenly falling into long ranks, and marching, marching, marching, like an endless phalanx of fiery specters, and moving, as I remember, always from east to west. The absolute silence with which these mysterious evolutions were performed and the quavering reflections which were thrown upon the ground increased the awfulness of the exhibition. Occasionally enormous curtains of lambent flame rolled and unrolled with a majestic motion, or were shaken to and fro as if by a mighty, noiseless wind. At times, too, a sudden billowing ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... of the cottage. The leaf tinkled. It had fallen upon the pages of a volume from which a man was reading by a lamp. At that moment the clock of the Capuchins tolled out a doleful TWO; it was answered by the numerous bells of Paris. Solemn, querulous, sepulchral, quavering, silvery, close at hand, or modulated into a dim echo by the distance, the voice of the inexorable hours vibrated over the capital, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... all intimate with Field will forget the enjoyment he took in trolling forth, in a quaint, quavering, cracked, but tuneful recitative, one stanza of ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... But she was so nervous that she felt as though her throat had suddenly closed up, and only a faint, quavering note issued from her lips, breaking off ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... came a high, quavering old voice from around the corner of the house, and Squire Tutt hove in sight. He was panting for breath and trembling with rage as he ascended the steps and stood ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... stood in that rude, lofty, brown room, with the clumsy furniture of a fashion three hundred years old about him, and the scanty light entering its shadowy atmosphere through the small lattice. He kneeled, and the three women with him, and he prayed aloud with an earnest quavering voice for, what appeared to me, a long time. I forget all my life preceding that event, and for some time after it is all obscure also, but the scenes I have just described stand out vivid as the isolated pictures of the phantasmagoria surrounded ...
— Carmilla • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... but deeper in the town there was light and life and merry, evil industry,—screened, but strong to last until morning; there were haunts of haggard merriment in plenty: surreptitious chambers where roulette-wheels swam beneath dizzied eyes; ill-favored bars, reached by devious ways, where quavering voices offered song and were harshly checked; and through the burdened air of this Canaan wandered heavy smells of musk like that upon Happy Fear's wife, who must now be so pale beneath her rouge. And above all this, and for all this, and because of all this, ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... reality; now wondrous in their dark grandeur and solemnity, now glorious in resplendent autumn color of pearly beauty. Here — thrilling sound to huntsman — echoes the wild melody of the hound, awakening the solitude with deep-mouthed bay as he pursues the swift career of deer. The quavering note of the loon on the lake, the mournful hoot of the owl at night, with rarer forest voices have also to the lover of nature their peculiar charm, and form the wild language of ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... willing. And they had no sooner settled themselves among the bare branches of the oak when Simon started to amuse himself by giving his well-known quavering whistle. ...
— The Tale of Master Meadow Mouse • Arthur Scott Bailey
... solitude of a desert night filled with mystery, its vague, haunting, whispering voice burdened with its age-old secrets. Trevison had an arm around the Judge's shoulder. Their voices mingled—the Judge's low, quavering; Trevison's ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... to that nice place, where the little girls had the dolls and the music?" asked Tony, in a quavering voice which he could scarcely keep from sobs; "the good place where Tony got well again, and they gave him his new clothes? Everybody 'ud be so wery kind to poor little Dolly, and she'd come home again, quite cured and strong, like ...
— Alone In London • Hesba Stretton
... of "Three Merry Mowers," but David was not to be put down so easily, and showed himself capable of a copious crescendo, which was rendering it doubtful whether the rose would not predominate over the mowers, when old Kester, with an entirely unmoved and immovable aspect, suddenly set up a quavering treble—as if he had been an alarum, and the time was come ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... us have done with it before I lose my courage," replied the colonel, his voice thin and quavering. He wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. His hand shone white ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... The quavering gutturals of a half-blind old woman, wrinkled and shrivelled with a number of years no man could estimate, jarred the ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... displayed in the analysis of motive are remarkable. The author has a real gift for portraiture. In particular he touches in his minor folk with extraordinarily deft defining lines. Perhaps in general there is a little hesitancy in craftsmanship, a slight quavering between the fashionable modern realism and an older romanticism. But the seriousness of his artistic intention, the solidity of his work (which is by no means to say stodginess, quite the contrary) will commend ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 10, 1917 • Various
... thirty or forty galloping chieftains at their heels. Rocks and scrub and mimosa swarmed suddenly into life. Rushing black figures came and went in the gaps of the bushes. A howl that drowned the shouts of the officers, a long quavering yell, burst from the ambuscade. Two rolling volleys from the Royal Wessex, one crash from the screw-gun firing shrapnel, and then before a second cartridge could be rammed in, a living, glistening black wave, tipped ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a quavering voice of praise, with many a sob between, that goes up to bless God for anything but spiritual blessings. Though it is true that all which comes from the Father of Lights is light, the sorrows and troubles that He sends have the light terribly muffled ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... use. These he shared amongst us; but it was fiery stuff, and even at the first increased rather than allayed our thirst. Most of the crew were lying down now; but one had climbed to the roof of the forecastle, and stood there singing in a weak, quavering voice. Jose spoke to him soothingly; but he only laughed, and continued his weird song. His face haunted me; even when darkness closed like a pall around us I could still see it. He sang on and on in the gloom, and it appeared to me that he was wailing our death-chant. Presently there was ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... he would call down and say in his quavering old voice, "Who's there?" and we'd answer, and right away we'd hear his trap door in the floor of his house open, and hear his steps coming down his stairway and hear him lift the big wooden latch that held the door shut, ...
— Shenanigans at Sugar Creek • Paul Hutchens
... barring of shadow and ruddy light. But the place was a dry, dead shell; no pulse of life seemed ever to have beaten within those ravaged walls. She summoned her energies to call, send out her voice in a cry for them, then stood—the quavering sound ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... yes, that was it! She was suffering from an attack of hysterics; and I had to go in and control her a little. She has been subject to these attacks ever since the death of her husband, poor woman," said he, in a quavering voice. ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... house of the Green Wolf, where a supper, still of the most meagre fare, was set before them. Up till midnight a sort of religious solemnity prevailed. But at the stroke of twelve all this was changed. Constraint gave way to license; pious hymns were replaced by Bacchanalian ditties, and the shrill quavering notes of the village fiddle hardly rose above the roar of voices that went up from the merry brotherhood of the Green Wolf. Next day, the twenty-fourth of June or Midsummer Day, was celebrated by the same personages with the same noisy gaiety. One of the ceremonies consisted ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... with a stiff salute and a quavering voice, "I'm Private Harry Fisher and this is ...
— Sonny • Rick Raphael
... his voice quavering, "do me the honor to look in my eyes. Study me from the viewpoint of an honest man. Tell me whether you will believe what I have to say to you. Do not be too quick. Take time ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... fall," the child went on, her voice quavering but her eyes resolute, "that if Daddy ever wanted to sell me, you'd buy me. I think I ought to be worth a thousand dollars. I can do so much work around the house and help you train Margery! I can work hard. You ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... asked, in a thin, quavering tone. "I've signed 'em, sir. Have yer brought the money? I'm a poor old man, and I need a drop of something now and then to keep the life in me. If yer'll just hand over a trifle I'll send out for—eh—eh, my landlord, he's a kindly man—he'll ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... ago. These strings of blacks, who now, answering the plantation bell, slowly crawled down the lane to the outlying fields, might still have been slaves. This lazy plow, tickling the opulent earth, might have been handled by a slave rather than by this hired servitor, whose quavering, plaintive song, broken mid-bar betimes, now came back across the warm distances which lay trembling in the rays of the advancing sun. These other dark-skinned servants, dawdling along the galleries, or passing here and yonder from the detached quarters of kitchen, and cook-room, and ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... Portsmouth square noticed a mother cowering under a bush. She was singing in a quavering voice a lullaby to her baby. The reporter parted the bushes and looked in. Then he saw what she held in her arms was only a mangled and reddened bit of flesh. The baby had been crushed when the shock of earthquake came and its mother did not know ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... horses neighed and stamped, small brokers and horse-dealers flitted to and fro bargaining with the peasants. In this hubbub of voices, in midst of bargaining and quarrels, mixed with the shrill voices of women and squalling children, sounded the quavering voice of old Abel unweariedly at his task of reciting. The surging elements around did not distract him; on the contrary, they seemed to stimulate him, as his voice ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... its twin, sickle bays, was suddenly disclosed like a scene on the stage when the curtains have been noiselessly drawn aside. The picture of the beautiful little town, with its background of clear-cut mountains, called forth quavering exclamations from our reviving passengers; but a few minutes later when we were in the long, straight street of Mentone, weaving our swift way between coming and going electric trams, all the good work I had accomplished had ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... be done for the poor fellows?" I heard a man behind me ask in a quavering tone, and, turning, I saw one who had declared most vehemently but a few hours previous that if we would surrender the fort we could be assured beyond question of such treatment as civilized people give to prisoners ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis
... a tune that is sung. But by placing my hand on another's throat and cheek, I enjoy the changes of the voice. I know when it is low or high, clear or muffled, sad or cheery. The thin, quavering sensation of an old voice differs in my touch from the sensation of a young voice. A Southerner's drawl is quite unlike the Yankee twang. Sometimes the flow and ebb of a voice is so enchanting that my fingers quiver with exquisite pleasure, even if ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... Sweden! That invincible world power full of doddering senility! He must compare Sweden to an octogenarian who sat, dead drunk and feeble, and boasted of his warlike temper: "I'll never yield—never!" And when Parliament heard that quavering voice it grew palsied with fear. No, he, Irgens, ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... turned not to hear him speak; The old voice whistled as through a leak (Out it came in a quavering squeak): "Work for wage is a bargain fit: If there's aught of mine that you seek ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... with a bright-colored living cloud; the judge's black cat Panch lay along the Mayne side of the fence and blinked at them regretfully with his slanting emerald eyes. From the Mayne kitchen-steps came, faintly, Daddy January's sweet quavering ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... himself neglected and was consequently aggrieved. He hesitated a few minutes before he opened the door leading to The Man's part of the house, took a few steps into the square hall, and called "Mr. Blake" in a quavering voice; but no answer came, as the bachelor had not yet ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... suddenly, something splashed on to the back of his left hand. He lifted it, and looked. It was covered with a great splash of red that dripped from his fingers. An old Irishman near to him, saw it, and croaked out in a quavering voice:—'The bhlood-dhrip!' When the old man called out, they all looked, and in the same instant others felt it upon them. There were frightened cries of:—'The bhlood-dhrip! The bhlood-dhrip!' And then, about a dozen candles went out simultaneously, and the hall was suddenly dark. The dog let ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... moment to meeting her son's description of her was by looking beautifully desperate. She had about her the pure light of youth—would always have it; her head, her figure, her flexibility, her flickering colour, her lovely silly eyes, her natural quavering tone, all played together toward this effect by some trick that had never yet been exposed. It was at the same time remarkable that—at least in the bosom of her family—she rarely wore an appearance of gaiety less qualified than at ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... the stage in Paris. This particular Alcalde, wheezing and waddling about like an asthmatic old man, is Vignol, on whom Potier's mantle has fallen; a young actor who personates old age so admirably that the oldest men in the audience cannot help laughing. With that quavering voice of his, that bald forehead, and those spindle shanks trembling under the weight of a senile frame, he may look forward to a long career of decrepitude. There is something alarming about the young actor's old age; he is so very old; you feel nervous lest senility should ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... he added in his thin, quavering voice—"no doubt Mr. Crow's help would be worth a kernel of corn to anybody who was in trouble. If his advice was good, no one would object to paying for it. And if it proved to be bad, no one would miss a kernel ...
— The Tale of Daddy Longlegs - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... Spence," came the slow response in the quavering voice of the old man. "It's yersel' that's aye ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... to show up again, Zenie?" Miss Susie clipped her words off short to everyone. She was a wisp of a woman with little hands as dry and yellow as parchment. Her voice had a quavering falsetto break in it and her laugh, when there was occasion, was dry and withery and short-lived ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... the old man, in a feeble, quavering voice, "I'm astonishin' well for my age. I don't complain, John, ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... scalp-yell, very far away along the low-browed mountain flank we could hear the far tinkle of hoof and pebble, where the stolen horses moved; and out of the intense blackness of the hills came faintly the answering defiance of the Senecas, and the hideous miauling of the Eries, quavering, shuddering, dying into the tremendous stillness of the Dark Empire which we had insulted, challenged, and which we were now about ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... mauma at the end of the front bench "sets de tchune," a sad, quavering minor, and pitched so high that any attempt to follow it seems utterly hopeless. But no: the women all strike in on the same soaring key, while the men, by a skillful management of the falsetto, keep up with the screamiest flights. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... I beseech you to spare me. This is no time for quavering," said the guest. "However, I am proud of your approbation, my old friend; for this young lady do I intend to take to wife. What ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... waist was girt with a kind of bombardier's girdle from which hung a small armoury of steel implements and leather scabbards: scissors, spectacle case, a bunch of keys, a button-hook, and other more or less intimidating things. "Jeanne," she called in a quavering voice, and as the bonne appeared, tying her apron-strings, they read the billeting-paper together, the one looking over the shoulder of the other, Madame reading the words as a child reads, and ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... Spanish-American viands were generously distributed to friend and stranger, Catholic and Protestant. Mr. Stevenson attended one of these celebrations, and was greatly moved by the sight of the pitiful remnant of aged Indians, sole survivors of Father Serra's once numerous flock, as they lifted their quavering voices in the mass. He expressed much surprise at the clarity of their pronunciation of the Latin, and in his essay on The Old Pacific Capital, he says: "There you may hear God served with perhaps more touching circumstances than in any other temple under Heaven.... These Indians have the Gregorian ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... neighbor and arch-enemy. In fact, the whole corridor was alive with the news of her defeat. At the lunch-table it was the sole topic of conversation, and in the library old Colonel Rockwell—in the pauses of a quavering rendition of "Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep"—bet Mr. Patterson three of the cigars his nephew always sent him on Fridays that Mrs. Walker, being a woman of spirit, would not yield even though the ultimatum ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... are, Neb, nigger-like, and not knowing whether to stay or to go," growled the mate, busy the whole time in shipping two oars. "You put me in mind of a great singer I once heard in Liverpool; a chap that would keep shaking and quavering at the end of a varse, in such a style that he sometimes did not know whether to let go or to hold on. It is onbecoming in men to forget themselves, Neb; if we have found him we thought to be lost, it is no reason for desarting our stations, ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... in the purlieus of Soho. No words of its shabby meanness! But that is our prison-cell In the jail of weary London. Therein for us must dwell The hope of the world that shall be, that rose a glimmering spark As the last thin flame of our pleasure sank quavering in the dark. ...
— The Pilgrims of Hope • William Morris
... end, he sank into his chair by the table and covered his eyes with his shaking hand. Lost Chief sat silent for a moment, then Grandma Brown said in a quavering voice, "Let us sing Rock of Ages." But only she knew the words, and after a single verse she ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... voices, sing the hymn which makes every heart thrill with praise and happiness. I have seen a hundred grand sights in the world—coronations, Parisian splendours, Crystal Palace openings, Pope's chapels with their processions of long-tailed cardinals and quavering choirs of fat soprani—but think in all Christendom there is no such sight as Charity Children's Day. Non Angli, sed angeli. As one looks at that beautiful multitude of innocents: as the first note strikes: indeed one may almost fancy ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... his voice in a long, mournful howl which made mothers put out their hands to their babes. In answer a coyote in the grass raised a high, quavering cry, wild and desolate, the ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... really beautiful windows of the choir, which are a study in themselves, there is very little in this interior to hold the mind; one is lost in a pleasant sense of general symmetry. As the traveller was sitting in the nave, a few priests filed into the choir, and began, in quavering voices, to intone their prayers, and in the peacefulness of the church, in the trembling monotony of the weak, old voices, his thoughts wandered to the stirring history which had been lived about the Cathedral, and within its very ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... to the Bishop's cottage Naab did not speak once; the transformation which had begun with the appearance of his drunken son had reached a climax of gloomy silence after the clash with Holderness. Naab went directly to the Bishop, and presently the quavering voice of the ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... exclaimed, and strolled to the door. The hansom was disappearing round the corner. "That's all right," he repeated in more quavering tones as he returned to the drawing-room and saw that it was littered with sweet-peas. Their colour got on his nerves—magenta, crimson; magenta, crimson. He tried to pick them up, and they escaped. He trod them underfoot, and ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... Then a man's quavering old voice came to her through the winding trail of the arroya. It was lifted tunefully insistent in an old-time ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... of built nature in that part, and singularly well qualified to add horror to horror, when the wind pipes around the tall lands, and hoots adown arched passages, and the far-spread wilderness of city lamps keeps quavering and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... number of her girl friends to watch the test, and Watson, who did not consider himself a vocalist, did not fancy the prospect. But there was no one else to sing, the demonstration must proceed, and finally Watson struck up "Yankee Doodle" in a quavering voice. ...
— Masters of Space - Morse, Thompson, Bell, Marconi, Carty • Walter Kellogg Towers
... a scanty lock or two of fair hair escaping at the side of her face. The features were calm and resigned, but when the pain of the death agony seized upon her the thin lips parted and deep lines of suffering appeared about the mouth; She seemed to struggle as best she could, but the low, quavering cry would not be stifled—lower and more trembling each ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... gave the word to the impatient Racers, and the team swung round to return to Nome, there came to them out of the grayness a voice, faint and quavering like an echo—"Some day you'll be glad ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... nuzzing of camels, wheening of whelps, buzzing of dromedaries, mumbling of rabbits, cricking of ferrets, humming of wasps, mioling of tigers, bruzzing of bears, sussing of kitlings, clamouring of scarfs, whimpering of fulmarts, booing of buffaloes, warbling of nightingales, quavering of mavises, drintling of turkeys, coniating of storks, frantling of peacocks, clattering of magpies, murmuring of stock-doves, crouting of cormorants, cigling of locusts, charming of beagles, guarring of ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... that Simon was headed for another part of the woods, for his quavering cry grew fainter and fainter. So Dickie promptly forgot his fright and scampered on again faster than before, to make up ...
— The Tale of Dickie Deer Mouse • Arthur Scott Bailey
... of it than break his promise!" The crowd gave way as the broken man they had seen a few days before so jovial and healthful was brought up in a chair to the poll, and said, with his tremulous quavering voice, "I 'm ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the deaconlike attitude of the dentist, the conventional solemnity of the schoolteacher and of the immobile Swede, the shaking, quavering terror of Mrs. Ducharme, mumbling to herself the words of the service. Why should the old woman be so upset, he wondered. But his vagrant thoughts always came back to the woman near the coffin, the woman he loved. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... sung—not by paid singers, but by the whole assembly at the loudest pitch of their voices, unaccompanied by any musical instrument, the words being given out, two lines at a time, by the clerk. There is something in the sonorous quavering of the harsh voices, in the lank and hollow faces of the men, and the sour solemnity of the women, which bespeaks this a strong-hold of intolerant zeal and ignorant enthusiasm. The preacher enters the pulpit. He is a coarse, hard-faced ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... smoking-room table, and take in kites at night,—such was the easy routine of their life. In the evening—above all, if Tommy had produced some of his civilisation—yarns and music were the rule. Amalu had a sweet Hawaiian voice; and Hemstead, a great hand upon the banjo, accompanied his own quavering tenor with effect. There was a sense in which the little man could sing. It was great to hear him deliver My Boy Tammie in Austrylian; and the words (some of the worst of the ruffian Macneil's) were hailed in his version ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... on the brogue, you know," said she, looking round with an affectation of shyness, which was most incongruous on her melancholy visage; it was just like a death's head trying to grin, I thought to myself;—and then, she commenced, in a thin, quavering voice, the lay of the departed earl, her ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... faggots for their fire this morning, and I should have a handful of my own meal back,' she answered bitterly; and fell thereon into a passion of impotent rage, shaking both her clenched hands in the direction of the castle, and screaming frenzied maledictions in her cracked and quavering voice. ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... sailing!" the quavering, foolish words startled Thornton; "you best get aboard, sir, anchor's lifting!" Jed ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... Mr Malison by their grandfather. Bent into all the angles of a grasshopper, and lean with ancient poverty, the old man tottered away with his stick in one hand, stretched far out to support his stooping frame, and carried in the other the caps of the two forsaken urchins, saying, as he went, in a quavering, ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... farm are of the fiber of poetry. The silence of the snowy aisles of the forest, the whirring flight of partridges, the impudent bark of squirrels, the quavering voices of owls and coons, the music of the winds in the high trees,—all these impressions unite in my mind like parts of a woodland symphony. I soon learned to distinguish the raccoon's mournful call from the quavering cry of the owl, and I joined the hired man in hunting rabbits from under ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... on—trousers and go to the war myself. I'm not sure that I sha'n't as it is," and, affecting Spartan fortitude, Olympia pretended to be deeply absorbed in adjusting a disarranged furbelow in her attire to conceal the quavering in her voice and the dewy something in her dark eyes. The mother, disconcerted by this defection where she had counted on the blindest adhesion, sank back in the cane rocker, ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... lark, with a lark's spontaneous delight in singing, with an ease and self-abandonment which charmed eye almost as much as ear. Higher and higher rose the clear, sexless notes, till two of them met and mingled in a triumphant trill. To Desmond, that trill was the answer to the quavering, troubled cadences of the first verse; the vindication of the spirit soaring upwards unfettered by the flesh—the pure spirit, not released from the pitiful human clay without a fierce struggle. At that moment Desmond loved the singer—the singer who called to him ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... and he advanced further into the musty porch hoping to find a bell. But as he did so his ear caught the distant sound of shuffling feet. The shuffle of feet drew nearer and presently a beam of light shone out from under the door. A quavering ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... brow and plastered down tightly, meeting in a small knob behind; her wrinkled mouth bore that expression of supreme resolution common with the toothless aged. She was shaky, not with fear, but with the vibrations natural to her years, and she spoke with the slow quavering ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... trance of terror with a quavering breath. She did not understand what had passed, nor a word of what the labourers had said; and in her belief over the peril escaped, and her utter fatigue, she gave the child to Anastasia, lay back, and closed her eyes. A sudden and blessed sleep ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... pale flashes of heat lightning which from time to time illumined the horizon. There was no motion in the heavy black foliage, but it was filled with the shrill droning of the summer insects, and high in the branches a screech-owl pierced the air with its keen, quavering scream. ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... both for your information and your advice," answered Grace, with a little quavering laugh, that testified to the extent of the alarm from which the poor girl had been suffering. "As to the latter, however," she continued, "I shall not follow it, for the simple reason that it would be quite impossible for me to sleep, notwithstanding your reassuring statement that all ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... promise to put me ashore again. He was true to his word, and five minutes later we were shoving off from the ship's side amid the valedictions of my hosts. I have a recollection to this day of the face of the chief engineer gazing sadly down upon me from the bulwarks, while his quavering voice asserted the fact, in ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... in any doubt about it," the old lady said dryly. And as Warren was silent she went on with quavering vigor: "It is not for us to judge her husband's infirmities. ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... run where the trail pitched down, he grinned happily at sight of the moon rising over the low hills and then grabbed at his holster, while every hair in his head stood up curiously. A wild, haunting, feminine scream arose to a quavering soprano and sobbed away into silence. No words can adequately describe the unearthly wail in that cry and it took a full half-minute for Johnny to become himself again and to understand what it was. Once more it arose, ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... of straying too far, the weary woman threw her shawl on the brown straw, and sat down quite near the road. She leaned her bare head against the trunk of a pine, listened to the katydids gossiping in a distant oak that shaded the "branch," to the quavering strident song of a locust; and she intended, after resting for a few moments, to return to the station-house; but unexpected drowsiness overpowered her. Suddenly aroused from a sound sleep, she heard the clatter of galloping hoofs, and as she sprang up, the horse, startled by her ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... trio watched the insufferable hours crawl slowly by. Dobrinton was too frightened to be conversational, Vanessa was too mortified to open her lips, and Clyde was moodily silent. The little Limberg negociant plucked up heart once to give a quavering rendering of "Yip-I-Addy," but when he reached the statement "home was never like this" Vanessa tearfully begged him to stop. And silence fastened itself with growing insistence on the three captives ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... cried Gascoyne, in a quavering whisper, and for a moment Myles felt the chill of goose-flesh creep up and down his spine. But ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... one day to thank Mist Jenkyns for many little kindnesses, which I did not know until then that she had rendered. He had suddenly become like an old man; his deep bass voice had a quavering in it, his eyes looked dim, and the lines on his face were deep. He did not—could not—speak cheerfully of his daughter's state, but he talked with manly, pious resignation, and not much. Twice over he said, "What Jessie has been to us, ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... the door, but all in vain. At length the sexton, who lived hard by, was roused by the tumult, and, fearful lest thieves or some drunken revelers had made their way into the church, he came to the door, lantern in hand, and cried in a quavering ...
— The Children's Longfellow - Told in Prose • Doris Hayman
... and Bouncing Bet that fringed the side yard. The old hound at the chip pile blinked lazily and raised his head, then dropped it and slumbered again. Within, the big room was dim and cool. The high, thin, quavering voices celebrated the love and woe of cruel Barbara Allen. Judith's dark eyes grew soft and brooding; the nervous strokes of her dasher measured themselves more and more to the ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... last and kindled a red band along the east. The gray light at length grew more clear. A coyote on the bluff raised a long and quavering cry, like some soul in torture. As if it were his own voice, Meriwether Lewis stirred, rose, drew back the blanket from his shoulders, and turned ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... later two coaches rolled out of the courtyard of the Tre Croci. As they passed, a window was half-opened on the upper floor, and a head looked out. A line of a song came down, a song sung in a strange quavering voice. It was the catch I had ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... you here for?" roared Leroux, but in a quavering voice that did not sound like his own. "Get out of the way or I'll ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... said in a quavering voice, "forty years, man and boy, have I served your Majesty, and your Majesty's late lamented father, and never have I heard such ...
— Once on a Time • A. A. Milne
... sir." A quavering old voice sounded from the doorway a moment later, and Blaine turned in his chair to face the aged, erect, black-clad figure ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... the edge of the moon And wistfully gazed on the sea Where the Gryxabodill madly whistled a tune To the air of "Ti-fol-de-ding-dee." The quavering shriek of the Fly-up-the-creek Was fitfully wafted afar To the Queen of the Wunks as she powdered her cheek With the pulverized ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... old Ben Reitman, with his slower eyes, always came out five words behind the rest who tumbled upon the responses and scurried briskly through them, so that his fine old voice, somewhat hoarse and quavering now, rolled out its "Amen!" in solitary majesty. They came to that gem of humility, the mourners' prayer; the ancient and ever-solemn Kaddish prayer. There is nothing in the written language that, for sheer drama and magnificence, can equal it as it ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... vision there kept quavering seven dark figures—figures shuffling over the ice, and brandishing planks like oars. And, wriggling like a lamprey in front of them was a little old fellow, an old fellow resembling Saint Nicholas the Wonder-Worker, an old fellow who kept crying ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... do is done under the authority of the ancient and holy Seal of Seals," he answered in a quavering voice, touching the little cylinder of white shell which I had noted upon the person of the King, but that now hung from a gold ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... from the table and went into the little parlour, Auntie Nan on Philip's arm, proud and happy. She fluttered down to the piano and sang, to cheer him up a little, an old song in a quavering old voice. ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... weak and quavering, but a note of triumph, of mastery, informed it—"and now I am going to cane you three boys; I am going to try to break your stubborn wills; but you are big and strong, and you must let me do it. If you don't ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... and then at us on the platform, to see whence came this interruption, not set down in the bills. Firmly and irrepressibly the quavering voices sang on, verse after verse; others of the colored people joined in; some whites on the platform began, but I motioned them to silence. I never saw anything so electric; it made all other words cheap; it seemed the choked ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... to gather in a moment unnatural vigour; and the figure that went flying to Tergou was truly weird-like and terrible: so old and wizened the face; so white and reverend the streaming hair; so baleful the eye; so fierce the fury which shook the bent frame that went spurring like mad; while the quavering voice yelled, "I'll make their hearts ache. I'll make their hearts ache. I'll make their hearts ache. I'll make their hearts ache. All of ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... to call out now and then to guide the boy on the way, and as he drew nearer Dick understood from the quavering tones that his father was ...
— Dick in the Desert • James Otis
... power to move the meeting than the most fervid eloquence could have had. Soon there was scarcely a dry eye in the room, and many were sobbing in sympathy with her inexpressible woe. Her voice was finally heard, and though low and quavering, the sweetly modulated tones indicated a cultivated ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... torn between his duty to the Holy See and his affection for his prince, bowed his head and wrung his hands. "What choice have I?" he asked, on a quavering note. ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... indignation and honest sentiment could inspire. He first told the story of the wrecked life of the brother, and pointed to the bent figure of the hermit of Little Moxie, standing in the shadows. Once or twice Joshua lifted his quavering voice in feeble protest, but the ringing tones of the young man overbore his halting speech. Several times Connick was obliged to force the colonel back on the deacons' seat, each time ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... horse into the ford and sat looking downstream as the horse drank. Just as he drew rein, the old herder imitated with perfect intonation the quavering bleat of a lamb calling to its mother. Fadeaway jerked straight in the saddle. A ball of smoke puffed from the cottonwoods. The cowboy doubled up and slid headforemost into the stream. The horse, startled by the lunge of its rider, leaped to the bank and ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... and Fred and Charley," she said in a quavering voice. "That 's what I called you in for—to ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... stumbled, the master passion, fear, betraying him. He was pressed; he became incoherent; and then from the jolting litter came a groan. In the instant hubbub and the gathering of the crowd as to a natural signal, the clear-eyed quavering Chancellor heard the catch of the clock before it strikes the hour of doom; and for ten seconds he forgot himself. This shall atone for many sins. He plucked a bearer by the sleeve. 'Bid the Princess flee. All is lost,' he whispered. ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to his nephew in the course of each day. He sat apparently attentive, and nodding at the name of O'Brien. Then Carlos would talk against O'Brien from amongst his pillows as if inspired, till the old man, striking the floor with his gold-headed cane, would exclaim, in a quavering voice, that he, alone, had made him, had raised him up from the dust, and could abase him to the dust again. He would instantly go to Havana; orders would be given to Cesar for the journey this very moment. He would then take a pinch of snuff with shaky energy, and lean back in the armchair. Carlos ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... which my poor father recommended to me on his deathbed; poor father, his eyes were closed, and his head stretched back on the pillow. I was sitting beside his bed, my hand in his, when I felt it feebly pressed. His eyes half opened, and I saw him smile. Then he said in a weak, slow, and the quavering voice of an old man who is dying: 'The Pomard at the farther end—on the left—you know, my boy—only for friends.' He pressed my hand again, and, as if exhausted, closed his eyes, though I could see by the imperceptible motion of his lips that he was still smiling inwardly. Come with me to the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the third quarter of the fifteenth century, the long-drawn chant of the rispetto, telling perhaps how the singer's sweetheart was beautiful as the star Diana, so beautiful as a baby that the Pope christened her with his own hands; the quavering nasal cadence of the ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... task for today—(voice quavering, he saved it from the upper registers). Our task for today is to get at the aggregate pattern. And I assure you, gentlemen, we are going to do that! Now. Mr. Pederson, if ...
— We're Friends, Now • Henry Hasse
... four—and a flood of relief swept over him. It was MacDonald. They had used that signal in their hunting, when they had wished to locate each other without frightening game. Always there were three notes in the big gray owl's quavering cry. The fourth was human. He put his hands to his mouth and sent back an answer, emphasizing the fourth note. The light breeze had died down for a moment, and Aldous heard the old mountaineer's reply as it floated faintly back to him through the forest. Continuing ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... and I heard my own teeth snap together. There was something speaking within me stronger than I had ever known myself to be. Again came a query, trembling, quavering, quivering, as though the issue was of ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... eyes that glisten, and utterance tremulous with emotion he is just saying:—"And dear old friends, do you know, I would not have missed this thorn, for the wondrous glory"—and his heart gets into his voice, there is a touch of the hoarseness of deep emotion, and a quavering of tone, so he waits a moment—"the wondrous glory-presence of Jesus ...
— Quiet Talks on Prayer • S. D. (Samuel Dickey) Gordon
... sings,—commencing with a low long weird intonation that suddenly breaks into fractions of notes inexpressible, then rising all at once to a liquid purling bird-tone, and descending as abruptly again to the first deep quavering strain:— ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... was only a bit of acting, however, for Duke was an old dog, had suffered much, and desired no unnecessary sorrow, wherefore he confined his demonstrations to alarums and excursions, and presently sat down at a distance and expressed himself by intermittent threatenings in a quavering falsetto. ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... out, do ye, dearie? Well, you jist shall git out," came the rejoinder in a high, quavering voice, and slowly the old woman lifted herself, with many groans and ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... what he could with the material he had, but the result was something awful. The chorister, a very old man, a hundred I should think, played the harmonium, which was as old as he was. It groaned and wheezed and at times stopped altogether. He started the cantique with a thin quavering voice which was then taken up by the school-children, particularly the boys who roared with juvenile patriotism and energy each time they repeated the last line, "pour notre drapeau, pour ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... she had received a shock. In a transport of shame she awoke from the coma in which she had been plunged, and, like a maiden in alarm, clasped her poor puny little arms over her bosom, exclaiming the while in quavering ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... considered genuine, unless he expresses a pitying contempt for everything that is characteristically English, and for the unfortunate English who are imbued with the prejudices of their native land. He gives a practical expression to his scorn by quavering in a reedy voice, the feeble chansonnettes of an inferior French composer, and by issuing a volume of poems in which the laws of English Grammar are trampled under foot, and the restrictions of English metre are defied. In his lyrical effusions he breathes the passionate desire of a great ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 22, 1890 • Various
... which are never sung, save as a quavering lullaby to some mite who will never remember the tune, and fragments of nocturnes or simple melodies, which awaken the past as surely as the lost shell brings to the traveller inland the surge and thunder ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... my turn," said Miss Martineau. Straightening herself and casting aside the trumpet, primly folding her hands and pursing her mouth curiously, she began, in a high, quavering voice, a song whose burden was the fixed objection on the part of a certain damsel to forsaking the pleasures of the world for the seclusion and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... cries, Pille-Miche saw that the fire did not yet scorch the skin; he drew the sticks cleverly together so as to make a slight flame. On this d'Orgemont called out in a quavering voice: "My friends, unbind me! How much do you want? A hundred crowns—a thousand crowns—ten thousand crowns—a hundred thousand crowns—I offer you two hundred ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... fain see the governor without delay," announced Lois, Mistress Carver's maid, in a quavering voice. "Jasper More was so frighted by the noise that he is in convulsions, and we know not ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... thanks was over, there was quiet enough to hear a fine, though rather quavering, male voice, going over again one or two ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... moment before he assumed an erect position, and I saw two or three quick shudders pass over his frame, such as I had not seen since, many a long year before, I witnessed the horrible tortures of a strong man stricken with hydrophobia. Then he asked, in a voice low, quavering and broken: ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... he worked and his quavering old voice kept tune and rhythm to a remarkable degree as he carefully and ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... his peculiar long, quavering pipe and the order "spread mess gear for the watch below," at 7:20, we of the watch on deck realized that there was still forty minutes to wait. Every man's hunger seemed to increase tenfold, so that even the odor of boiling "salt-horse" ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... sir!" said the old man. He paused; then, in a grave, earnest, quavering voice, he added: "The Lord Almighty have you in his keeping, Measter Desmond, watch over you night and day, now ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... thirty feet of Manisty, who sits nearest to the barrier. The red Cardinal holding the service-book, the groups of guards, clergy and high officials, every detail of the Pope's gorgeous dress, nay every line of the wrinkled face, and fleshless hands, Lucy's eyes command them all. The quavering voice rises into the sudden silence of St. Peter's. Fifty thousand people hush every movement, strain ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward |
