"Twitter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... us yesterday, and has put us all into a twitter. He said, just as he was going away, that he didn't believe that Lord Trowbridge had any right to give away the ground, because it had not been in his possession or his family's for a great many years, or something of that sort. We don't clearly understand all about it, nor does he; but ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... balcony the husbandman looks forth, And when the rising sun his trembling rays Darts through the falling drops, against my roof And windows gently beating, wakens me. I rise, and grateful, bless the flying clouds, The cheerful twitter of the early birds, The smiling fields, and the refreshing air. For I of you, unhappy city walls, Enough have seen and known; where hatred still Companion is to grief; and grieving still I live, and so shall die, and that, ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... to close my eyes again before there begins a chirp, a twitter, a general thrill of sound. All the birds are awake, and are soon in full chorus. Presently a flush of color will run around the horizon, and it will be dawn. The actual night has flown. I can hear Smith, our grocery-man around the corner, setting off into the country for his milk ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... woman," replied the burly little man, with a look of mingled surprise and pity, "my name is not Thompson. It is Twitter— Samuel Twitter, of Twitter, Slime and—, but," he added, checking himself, under a sudden and rare impulse of prudence, "why do you ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... The air was balmy. The fragrance of flowers was patent in the breeze. The limpid moonlight, in a glow of beauty, kissed the hills and valleys. While from the vines and bushes the merry twitter of playful birds, symphonies soft and low, entranced with other delight, the romantic party goers. Now a still other delight was in store—some fine music and good singing, which every recipient enjoyed to the highest note. Thanks and compliments for such a model evening were ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... distance Elisaveta could hear the sound of a horn and the lowing of cows. The bedroom walls were tinged with rose light. The early light stole in through the windows and messaged an altogether new, better day. A refreshing breeze blew in through the open window, the twitter of birds also entered, the air ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... fragrant thyme, blue harebells and pale bents of quiver-grass edged the path, and thistledown, drifting from the chalk uplands, lay like snow in the hollows, or danced like living things on the path before her. A brood of goldfinches, with merry twitter and flashing wings, flitted round a tall milk thistle with variegated leaves and a little farther on, just at the opening of a glade from the path, she beheld a huge dragon-fly, banded with green, black, and gold, poised ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... will surely quicken soon or late, The tardiest bird will twitter to a mate; So Spring must dawn again with warmth and bloom, Or in this world, or in the world to come: Sing, voice of Spring, Till I too blossom and rejoice ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... times there is borne to the nostrils the faint, stifling scent of burning brush, indicating that land is being cleared by the forehanded, thrifty farmer for early planting. Often at such times, before a shower, may be distinctly heard the faintest twitter and "peep, peep" of young sparrows, the harsh "caw, caw" of the crow, and the song of the bobolink, poised on the swaying branch of a tall tree, the happiest bird of Spring; the dozy, drowsy hum of bees; the answering call of lusty young chanticleers, and the ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... am not in the habit of attending mass, save on Sunday to set an example. There were no shops open, not a sound about. I went out upon the ramparts to the Mont St. Lambert, where the band plays on Sundays. In all the trees there was not so much as the twitter of a bird. I could hear the river flowing swiftly below the wall, but I could not see it, except as something dark, a ravine of gloom below, and beyond the walls I did not venture to look. Why ...
— A Beleaguered City • Mrs. Oliphant
... Miss Damaris? Alone here in the dark. You did make me jump. But there," she added, repentant of her unceremonious exclamation, "I don't know what possesses us all to-night. The least thing seems to make you jump. Mrs. Cooper's all of a twitter, and Laura—silly girl—is almost as bad. I suppose it's the weather being so quiet after yesterday's gale. For my own part I always do like a wind about. It seems company, particularly these long evenings if you're called on to go ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... and far isles See where the east is reddening, The flocks that fly a thousand miles From sunsetting to sunsetting; Look up, look out, behold the swallows, The throats that twitter, the wings that beat; And on their song the summer follows, And in the summer life ...
— Ballads and Lyrics of Old France: with other Poems • Andrew Lang
... Sexes similar. Silent, gentle, courteous, elegant birds. Usually seen in large flocks feeding upon berries in the trees or perching on the branches, except at the nesting season. Voices resemble a soft, lisping twitter. ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... But through the slowly-mellowing avenues And solitary passes of the wood Rode Tristram toward Lyonnesse and the west. Before him fled the face of Queen Isolt With ruby-circled neck, but evermore Past, as a rustle or twitter in the wood Made dull his inner, keen his outer eye For all that walked, or crept, or perched, or flew. Anon the face, as, when a gust hath blown, Unruffling waters re-collect the shape Of one that in them sees ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... choicest prawns. The water that glided past the bank was like crystal; the evening sun lit up the scene with orange and gold; and as the two boys lolled restfully upon the bank listening to the murmur of the running water, the twitter of birds, and the distant lowing of some ox, they thoroughly appreciated everything, even the rest after their tiring night's work ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... more Mandy Ann was utterly absorbed in her enchanting task. So quiet she was over it that every now and then a yellow-bird or a fly-catcher would alight upon the edge of the bateau to bounce away again with a startled and indignant twitter. The woodchuck, having eaten his carrot, curled up in the sun and went ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... the tree-tops, had set every leaf a-whispering and nid-nodding to its gossips,—just as the peddler on his way through the village at home stirs all the women-folk to chattering about the latest news from the whole countryside. In the thicket beside us a chorus of feathered singers were all a-twitter, each trying to outdo his neighbour; but one saucy fellow piped the merriest tune of all, mingling in a delicious medley the sweetest notes of all the rest. Of a sudden, as I listened, there was a soft rustle in the undergrowth, and ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... air is! How fair the scene! I wish I had as lovely a green To paint my landscapes and my leaves! How the swallows twitter under the eaves! There, now, there is one in her nest; I can just catch a glimpse of her head and breast, And will sketch her thus, in her quiet nook, In the margin of my ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... the village clock, When he came to the bridge in Concord town. He heard the bleating of the flock, And the twitter of the birds among the trees, And felt the breath of the morning breeze Blowing ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... were halfway to Newmarket, flying through the darkness at a pace which two months previously I would not have dared venture upon in broad daylight. And right onward to St. Albans, we kept it up, reaching the ancient town just as the birds began to twitter in the hedges at the first grey light of early dawn. At St. Albans we stopped at the police-station. A man was ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... are stretched forth below, Tattered by thronging mad torrents descending; Beneath them the naked rocks downward are bending, Still deeper, the wild shrubs and sparse herbage grow; But yonder the forests stand verdant in flora And birds are a'twitter in choiring chorus. ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi
... drowsily from mazy thicket where sullen shadow thinned, little by little, until behind leaf and twig was a glimmer of light that waxed ever brighter. And presently amid this growing brightness was soft stir and twitter, sleepy chirpings changed to notes of wistful sweetness, a plaintive calling ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... my mocking-bird! When you have been sitting on other front porches, have you, by the divine law of your being, been reproducing your notes as though they were mine, and even pouring forth the little twitter that was meant for your ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... and art; I heard the rhythmic blow of the craftsmen's hammers in the goldsmiths' workshops and on the walls of churches, the party-cries of armed factions in the narrow streets, the organ-roll of Dante's verse, the crackle of the fagots around Arnold of Brescia, the twitter of the swallows to which St. Francis preached, the laughter of the ladies listening on the hillside to the quips of the Decameron, while plague-struck Florence howled beneath them—all this and much more I heard, joined in strange unison with voices earlier ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... the early twilight fell from the leaden sky, and the shadows began to skulk behind the bushes, and the birds gathered to their nests with sleepy twitter, she tripped over a little stone, fell weakly to the ground, and lay still. She had not the strength to get ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... broke. When the wind is easterly you can always see the coming morning much sooner; and about 3.30, when the birds in the sweet hedgerows were just beginning to twitter, the first soft, grey dawn stole over ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... kind of twitter ever since, for there seems something very formidable in the idea of appearing as an authoress ! I ever dreaded it, as it is a title which must raise more expectations than I have any chance of answering. Yet I am highly flattered by her invitation, and highly delighted ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... a very, very few farmer youth of marriageable age, and more rustic and seafaring elders long past it, all in the Sunday best which they had worn to the graduation exercises at the High School, where we took them mostly up. The womenkind were in a nervous twitter of talk and laughter, and the men tolerantly gay beyond their wont, "passing the time of day" with one another, and helping the more tumultuous sex to get settled in the overcrowded open car. They courteously made room for one another, and let the children stand between their knees, or took ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... beauty of this scene—the quiet so profound, broken only by the bell-like dropping of a fountain—and the twitter of birds, hung in gilded cages, among the blossoms, had an overpowering charm even to a man so blase as the General. He paused in astonishment, looking around with pleasant interest—for an instant, forgetful of the person he was seeking. But, to a man so accustomed ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... giant Lyre, ornately gilded, On whose convenient coignes and curves The pert brown sparrows late have builded. They flit, and flirt, and prune their wings, Not awed at all by golden glitter, And make among the silent strings Their satisfied ephemeral twitter. ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone
... night in a long and narrow inlet where the trembling reflection of the tug's funnel lay beside the mirrored tops of pine trees that clung to the rocky shore. Ahead and behind was the open lake. There was no sound but the twitter of sleepy birds and the honk of a startled heron that winged its flight to solitudes still more remote. Then Clark began to fish, and, just as he landed a five pound bass, a girl's voice sounded clearly while a canoe floated round a nearby point. ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... down the mountain's side, Thy progeny are seen;—young primroses, And all the varying buds of wildest birth, Dotting the green slope gaily. On the thorn, Which arms the hedgerow, the young birds invite With merry minstrelsy, shrilly and maz'd With winding cadences: now quick, now sunk In the low twitter'd song. The evening sky Reddens the distant main; catching the sail, Which slowly lessens, and with crimson hue Varying the sea-green wave; while the young moon, Scarce visible amid the warmer tints Of ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... a twitter; for though he fancied his own heart said it, still his ear-drum rattled, as ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... heart; at times he made a rather formal call upon the entire Nesbit family, which he was obviously encouraged to repeat by the elders. But Morty was inclined to hide in the thicket of his sorrow and twitter his heart out to the cold stars. Tom Van Dorn pervaded the Nesbit home by day with his flowers and books and candy, and by night—as many nights a week as he could buy, beg or steal—by night he pervaded the Nesbit home ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... I hear of your fine charities, master Israel?" said Ben Aboo. "Ah, do not look surprised. There are little birds enough to twitter of such follies. So you are throwing away silver like bones to the dogs! Pity you've got too much of it, Israel ben Oliel; pity you've got too much ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... of mine is the Chickadee, with his black cap and white shirt bosom. This active little gentleman is the most social and friendly of them all. If out in the country, this little fellow in company with his mates will twitter gaily at sight of you, every now and then looking curiously at you as if asking, "And who are you, sir?" or "Who are you, ma'am?" and pecking his way gradually nearer and nearer will inspect ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... shades are deepened, And I doff my hat and gloves, No sweet bird is there to "cheep and Twitter twenty million loves:" No dark-ringleted canaries Sing to me of "hungry foam;" No imaginary "Marys" Call ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... book, suffering no sort of discomfort; he lazily smoked his pipe and thought how much better it was to be listening to the twitter of the birds, watching the clouds of rooks wheeling over the distant wood, and resting in peace, than slaving with an 18-ft. rod and straining every muscle in the effort to dispatch the unheeded fly across the big water to ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... of mind, however, was soon dispelled when I encountered Polton, for the little man was in a veritable twitter of excitement at the prospect of witnessing the clearing up of the mysteries that had so severely tried his curiosity; and even Thorndyke, beneath his habitual calm, showed a trace ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... at 'The Plough.' It is a sad case: he is quite a young man, and our doctor fears that he will not pull through." But Mr. Carlyon forbore to state the fact that each night he had relieved his son, rising from his bed in the gray pearly dawn, before the first bird-twitter was heard, to take his watch beside the fever-stricken stranger. The Carlyons were men whose left hand did not know what their right hand did, and the Rev. Rupert Carlyon's ministry had been a record of humble, unobtrusive acts of good-will and kindness ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... scientists have bestowed upon this or that flitting atom in feathers. Before the student is out of bed, a new warbler-note will distract her; in the twilight some tiny bird will fly over her head with an unfamiliar twitter; each and every one will rouse her to eager desire to see it, to ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... swallow, oft, beneath my thatch Shall twitter from her clay-built nest; Oft shall the pilgrim lift the latch, And share my meal, ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... shrike resembles the mocking-bird. Indeed, a policeman whom I found staring at one would have it that he was a mocking-bird. "Don't you see he is? And he's been singing, too." I had nothing to say against the singing, since the shrike will often twitter by the half hour in the very coldest weather. But further discussion concerning the bird's identity was soon rendered needless; for, while we were talking, along came a sparrow, and dropped carelessly into a hawthorn bush, right under ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... returns; and in his jocund train Brings verdure, flowers, and days serenely clear; Brings Progne's twitter, Philomel's lorn strain, With every bloom that paints the vernal year; Cloudless the skies, and smiling every plain; With joyance flush'd, Jove views his daughter dear; Love's genial power pervades earth, ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... associations of sounds rather than their actual quality which make them pleasant or unpleasant. The twitter of sparrows is, in itself, as prosaic a sound as there is in nature, but I never hear it on waking without a feeling of inward peace. It seems to link me with some incredibly remote and golden morning, and with a child in a cradle ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... heard was the irregular clangor of a bell, and behold it was morning! Some one had been into the dortoir and had opened a window or two. The warm fragrant breath of sunshine and twitter of birds entered. ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... by any imprint of the base emotions and aims sure almost, a little later, to enter in and defile! The rain pattered ceaselessly; the heavy scent of the lilacs came in through the open windows; the martins screamed about their boxes under the eaves of the stable, and I could hear the twitter of innumerable birds; but with the consciousness of all this I had no thought except of my rapture for Kenneth when the dog sprang at the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... grows into the color of the sprouting grain, and the buds upon the lilacs swell and burst. The peaches bloom upon the wall, and the plums wear bodices of white. The sparkling oriole picks string for his hammock on the sycamore, and the sparrows twitter in pairs. The old elms throw down their dingy flowers, and color their spray with green; and the brooks, where you throw your worm or the minnow, float down whole fleets of the crimson blossoms of the maple. Finally the oaks step into the opening quadrille of spring, with grayish ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... the most entire I had ever felt. And he loosened my hands, and drew me to him and kissed me, saying "My love!" And as I felt—yes, actually felt—the pressure of his lips upon mine, and felt the spring shining upon me, and heard the very echo of the twitter of the birds, saw the light fall upon the water, and smelled the scent of the acacias, and saw the ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... Standing there, one almost hesitates to speak above a whisper for fear of arousing something or somebody out of sleep, or of breaking the wonderful spell of the place. Pausing under those trees, and feasting one's eyes upon the lovely, rural scene, not a sound reaches the ear except the twitter of the birds, and perhaps the faint jingle of a cow-bell. Mrs. Pitt gave a start at the sound of John's voice, when ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson
... their congeners by having their legs covered with soft downy feathers down to their toes. They are no songsters, but twitter in a pretty inward soft manner in their nests. During the time of breeding they are often ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... in there and even the chirping of the sparrows was softened into a faint twitter. Here at last was a place set apart, a moment of stillness when he might think things ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... dawning; the birds were beginning to twitter softly and the dew was rising noticeably from the ground. Frederick had slid down the trunk and was staring, with his arms crossed back of his head, into the rosy morning light softly stealing in. Suddenly he ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... by footsteps sounded outside the door. There was a pause; a hurried whispering of women's voices; the twitter of a nervous laugh, and then the door was pushed softly opens and the girl to whom the one-eyed Hans had given the necklace of blue and white beads with the filigree cross hanging from it, peeped uncertainly into the room. Behind her broad, heavy face were three others, equally homely ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... stuck into the darkness. As to the night-hawks and the other birds which fly in the dark, they swooped around and over him the whole livelong night; and when he began to get a little sleep, about daybreak, every bird in the place began to sing, or twitter, or scream, or crow, or gobble, or chatter, and the Prince might as well have tried to fly as sleep. About eight o'clock, a man came to feed the birds, and seeing the Prince in the aviary, he put him out instantly. ...
— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton
... put her through her nightly torture before he fell into the arms of Morpheus. She did not mind much if Polly was wakeful—she knew she should never close her eyes all night. The soft spring air floated in through the open window, and she heard the birds twitter and the frogs peep: she heard Abraham Lincoln, the old horse that she used to ride to water before she grew big enough to work, whinney over his hay; and Goliath, the young giant that had come to take his place in the farm work, answer him ...
— A Princess in Calico • Edith Ferguson Black
... did tell us we never got enough money for our work," argued Sarah. "And if anything comes of it and Nicholas and me earn five bob more a week between us, it means marriage. So I'm in a twitter." ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... the twitter of sparrows, the jingle of bells, the hooting of a siren, or was it my neighbor singing "A rose I gave to you"? of course it was,—the rumble of a post-office van, and the cry of children's voices, ...
— The Professional Aunt • Mary C.E. Wemyss
... eyes now, as you sing it, And hear her low answerin' words; And then the glad chirp of the crickets, As clear as the twitter of birds; And the dust in the road is like velvet, And the ragweed and fennel and grass Is as sweet as the scent of the lilies Of Eden of old, as ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... traditions were practised there, it is said, by villagers, who were Christian only in name. Yet it lay peacefully enough to-day, the shadows of the clouds racing over it, the wind rustling in the grass, with nothing to break the silence but the twitter of birds, the bleat of sheep on the down, and the crying of cocks in the straw-thatched ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... hillock where she had so often scattered flowers. A squirrel leaped and frisked in the boughs above her, and she startled a rabbit from the thick grass and fallen yellow leaves: but neither these, nor the twitter of gossiping orioles, nor the harsh, hungry cry of a bluebird told her a syllable of all that ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... their endeavors to lure back the dancers, determined to join the excitement, and ceased playing. The leader laid down his violin, the pianist trailed up the key- board with a departing twitter and quit his stool. They all crossed the hall, headed for the crowd, some of them making ready to bet. As they approached the Bronco Kid, his lips thinned and slid apart slightly, while out of his heavy-lidded eyes there flared unreasoning rage. Stepping forward, he seized ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... pipe, but when his eyes closed and his head fell too far forward, he righted himself and rested his right elbow on his left fist. He puffed out the grey smoke and dozed alternately, spitting now and then into the middle of the room or shifting his hands. When the pipestem began to twitter like a young sparrow, he knocked the bowl a few times against the bench, emptied the ashes, and poked his finger down. Yawning, he got up and laid the ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... saucers with noisy vehemence on to a tray, "I wouldn't worrit the poor mistress, and she just on the eve of a matrimonial venture. It's tryin' to the nerves, it is; so Mrs. Ross tells me. Says she, 'When I married Tom,' says she, 'I was on the twitter for a good month.' It's awful to think as your poor ma's so near the brink—for that's 'ow ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... densely wooded, and from whose highest peak we could see a wide extent of timbered country. Often in our evening rides we have gone round by that saddle, in spite of a break-neck track and quicksands and bogs, just to satisfy our constant longing for green leaves, waving branches, and the twitter of birds. Whenever any wood was wanted for building a stockyard, or slabbing a well, or making a post-and-rail fence around a new paddock, we were obliged to take out a Government license to cut wood in this splendid bush. Armed with the necessary document the next step was to engage ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... dispassionate soliloquy, became half audible, and ceased. As we gave ear to the silence, we became aware that a cool stir in the darkness was growing into a breeze. After a time, the thin crowing of game-cocks in distant villages, the first twitter of birds among the highest branches, told us that night had turned to morning. A soft patter of bare feet came along the deck, a shadow stood above us, and the low voice of ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... The twitter of birds startled her with the knowledge that it was dawn. From the Embassy George and Diane were to go on to two or three great houses, but surely they should be home by this time! The reflection meant the renewal of her fear. Where was her son? ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... Brighteye wandered, singing, singing, down the lanes and main road of the river-bank, were, however, infrequent; and the surest sign of his approach, before he came in sight, was the continuous, gossiping twitter I have already described. This habit of singing and twittering was not connected with amorous sentiments towards any sleek young female; Brighteye adopted it long before he was of an age to seek a mate, and he ceased practising his solos before the first winter set in and the morning ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... the sun rose and the birds began to twitter and sing, the girl rose and looked in her mirror. There she saw the bright, happy face that ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... promise of yellow beauty was given by the stalks of the evening-primrose scattered on every hand, the flowers furled now, sleeping. In the groves were pines, small cedars, and a sprinkling of sturdy dwarf oaks. And from their shelter came the welcome sound of a bird's twitter. ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... For a second their wrinkled faces stared, eyes blinked, and short, unhollowed lips stretched over yellow teeth, then, with a flutter of dark garments, the Chinese started away from the fixed beams and were gone into the shadow. Except for the sudden twitter of a voice, the spurt of a stone flung up against the metal of the car, they melted silently out of sight and hearing. Sick with panic, Fanny leant down upon her knees and covered her head with her two arms, expecting a blow from above. Seconds passed, and ice-cold, with one leg gone to sleep, ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... sun shone, spring seemed in the air, it smelt like April or May, and some over-venturous birds sang in the coppices as I went by. I had plenty to think of, plenty to be grateful for, that gallant morning; and yet I had a twitter at my heart. To enter the city by daylight might be compared to marching on a battery; every face that I confronted would threaten me like the muzzle of a gun; and it came into my head suddenly ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... preparation intimated the watering-place supremacy which Leghorn enjoys in Italy, and which must make our quiet hotel in the season glisten and twitter and flutter with the vivid national life. The preparation includes a delightful drive by the seashore, with groves and gardens, to the city gate and indefinitely beyond it, which we one day followed as far as an old fort, where a little hotel had nestled with every promise of simple comfort. There ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... to the east, another brightness began to grow and gather this light into its outstretched wings. In the nearest wood a soft twitter came from a single tiny bird. Another voice answered it. A different note came from a third quarter; there were three or four replies; the sky turned to blue, and began to flush; a mocking-bird flew ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... as well I did, too. A couple of days later, just about the time the bats begin to twitter, I heard the thud of feet on the grass, and a laugh. They thought they'd taken on an easy job—just walk into the house, and cop me at my supper. We let em up to within twenty yards. Then we let em have it, the three of ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... aloft Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft. And gathering swallows twitter in ...
— A Day with Keats • May (Clarissa Gillington) Byron
... tuneful, the loquacious throng Flutter and twitter, prodigal of time, And little masters make a toy of song Till grave men weary ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... in the distance the ridges and peaks of distant mountains stood out sharply clear against the intense blue of the sky. There was great stillness everywhere,—a pause, as it seemed, in the mechanism of the universe. The twitter of a bird or the cry of some wild animal would have been a relief,—so Seaton felt, though accustomed ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... buttered toast simply talked to Toad, and with no uncertain voice; talked of warm kitchens, of breakfasts on bright frosty mornings, of cosy parlour firesides on winter evenings, when one's ramble was over, and slippered feet were propped on the fender; of the purring of contented cats, and the twitter of sleepy canaries. Toad sat up on end once more, dried his eyes, sipped his tea and munched his toast, and soon began talking freely about himself, and the house he lived in, and his doings there, and how important he was, and what a lot ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... them, with hot, hazy sunshine in which berries ripened and bird and insect life filled the Toba with a twitter and a drone, when the smoke of distant forest fires drifted like pungent fog across the hills, Hollister began to wonder if the net Myra seemed unconsciously to spread for men's feet had snared ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... and sneezing. I did not love it then; it seemed a ludicrous thing to love; but her I loved, my girl-mother, she whom now I saw unfolding like the glory of the morning—the transfigured woman. Through her I came to love the wee thing, as it grew strong; as its little soul unfolded itself in twitter and cry and half-formed word, and as its eyes caught the gleam and flash of life. How beautiful he was, with his olive-tinted flesh and dark gold ringlets, his eyes of mingled blue and brown, his perfect little limbs, and the soft voluptuous roll which the blood of Africa had ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... the next morning with Miss Ambient, whom I found strolling in the garden before breakfast. The whole place looked as fresh and trim, amid the twitter of the birds, as if, an hour before, the housemaids had been turned into it with their dust- pans and feather-brushes. I almost hesitated to light a cigarette and was doubly startled when, in the act of doing so, I suddenly saw the sister of my host, ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... start. The young farmer's mind is on his work. We suspect he has capacities outside of his cornfield and yuca patch, but to this point in the record before us he gives no clue. He is a farmer, and nothing else. The bright-winged birds flit and gleam and twitter in the evergreen woods about him, but his hand is on the plough and his ear drinks in only the music of his panting team. From his window, looking eastward, he sees the advance beams of the sun flung across the savanna: he takes the hint, and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... such a twitter that she could hardly stand still, and for the first time in her life refusing, "I ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney
... priestess, she alway Mingles her tender grave Hellenic speech With theirs, tuned to the hailstone-beaten beach As pours some pigeon, from the myrrhy lands 130 Rapt by the whirlblast to fierce Scythian strands Where breed the swallows, her melodious cry Amid their barbarous twitter! In Russia? Never! Spain were fitter! Ay, most likely 'tis in Spain That we and Waring meet again Now, while he turns down that cool narrow lane Into the blackness, out of grave Madrid All fire and shine, abrupt as when there's slid Its stiff gold blazing ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... behind them warmed with a faint dun glow. A cock in the Beaumanoir yard woke suddenly and crowed, and the challenge was answered from La Vauroque. Jeanne Falla's pigs grunted sleepily at the disturbance. The pigeons rumbled in their cote, and the birds began to twitter in the trees about the house. And behind the white curtains there, ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... a rustling overhead in the feathery branches of the palms in the cobwebby spaces among the leaves that give the bats of Africa a home. A twitter of angry bat voices, shrill squeaks and flutters in the darkness. Then stillness—of a sudden—and the ground trembles with a far-off throbbing as a convoy of motor lorries approaching thunders past us, rumbling over the bridge and out into the ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... times a day. A hundred little springs and streams well in its soil, making spots of livid greenness round their rise. A hundred birds of every kind are flying and singing there. Larks sing; cuckoos call; all the tribes of linnets and finches twitter in the bushes; plovers moan; wild ducks fly past; more melancholy than all, on stormy days, the white sea-mews cry, blown so far inland by the force of the gales that sweep irresistibly over the treeless and houseless ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... twitter, 'course, then—the whole town. He'd got another prize—so the paper said—an' there was a paragraph praisin' up some pictures of his in the magazine. He was our Jimmy, an' we was proud of him, yet we couldn't help wonderin' how he'd act. We wan't ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... such a day are the reveries that come and go over the heart, under the shade of a noble oak that lifts its crowned head to the clouds, while birds twitter love-songs among its branches, and lovers lie dreaming on ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... newcomers on the day after their arrival, the day of the christening. They had not gone into Aaron's house, for you are looked askance at in Thrums if you pay visits on Sundays, but they had stood for a long time gossiping at the door, which is permitted by the strictest. Ailie was in a twitter, as of old, and not able even yet to speak of her husband without an apologetic look to the ladies who had none. And oh, how proud she was of Tommy's fame! Her eyes were ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... the wind nice? Isn't the sun nice? Isn't everything nice? Let us both chirp and hop and twitter. Come ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... programme of a concert he had been unable to attend. I have no more learning about bird-music than would help me to guess that a dull dissyllabic refrain in the heart of the wood came from the cuckoo; and when at moments I heard a twitter of fuller tone, with a more suggestive modulation, I could only hope it was the nightingale. I have listened for the nightingale more than once in places so charming that his song would have seemed but the articulate expression of their beauty, and have never heard much beyond ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... fine journey," said Joanna, drowning Mrs. Hill's apologetic twitter, "the train came the whole of sixty miles ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... the prospect, and calling himself an old fool, while his heart beat loudly, and then seemed to stop beating altogether. He had seen the dawn lighting the window chinks, heard the birds chirp and twitter, and the cocks crow, before he fell asleep again, and awoke tired but sane. Five weeks before he need bother, at his age an eternity! But that early morning panic had left its mark, had slightly fevered ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... morning's freshness, the girl galloped rapidly along the shell-road, the clattering thud of her horse's hoofs startling in the quiet. As yet only a sleepy bird or two had begun to twitter. There was a growing noise of wind ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... wander together; but I had a sense all this time that I was, so to speak, in hospital, being tended and cared for, and not allowed to do anything wearisome or demanding effort. But I became more and more aware of other spirits about me, like birds that chirp and twitter in the ivy of a tower, or in the thick bushes of a shrubbery. Amroth told me one day that I must prepare for a great change soon, and I found myself wondering what it would be like, half excited ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... verses make One heart more glad; if they but bring A single smile, for that One's sake I should be satisfied to sing. As Locker said, in phrasing fitter, Pleased if but One should like the twitter. ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... life, is obvious to every student of them. Thus, if you leave your empty perambulator under the trees and watch from a distance, you will see the birds boarding it and hopping about from pillow to blanket in a twitter of excitement; they are trying to find out ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... Do you wonder that the poet says of his experience, "I gazed—and gazed,—but little thought what wealth the show to me had brought"? I wonder if any of you have ever had a similar experience. I remember the days when I used to go fishing, and there is a great joy even now in recalling the twitter of the birds and the hum of the bees as I lay on the bank and waited for the ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... it," he thought, as he went up to his sitting-room. "I wish I wasn't all of a twitter. I wish I ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... them, after all; their natural way of cooling the 'sweating of the corn.'" Then we drove away through the lanes draped with birch tassels and willow wands, while bloodroot and marshmarigold kept pace in the runnels, and I heard the twitter of the first barn-swallow of ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... era in human affairs. When the curses are loudest and most vehement, Mary's gentle hand pats his lips, smooths the gray hairs from the wrinkled brow, and calms his troubled spirit. Pansies bloom beneath the latticed windows of her cabin home. Morning-glories twine around it. Swallows twitter their joy, and build their nests beneath the eves. Motherly hens cluck to their broods in the dooryard. The fare upon the table within the cabin is frugal, but there is always a bit of bread or a herring for a wandering exile. When women pine for their old homes, when ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... rapidly through the expanse of it that girdled the forest, and hurried on through the firs to the cottage. The whole wood was alive with hum and cry. Wherever a group of other trees rose amid the firs, the loud chirp of the chaffinch was heard, or the eager twitter of some little newly-wedded birds, disputing about the position of their nest. The beetle in his black cuirass droned around the buds of the chestnut; at times a wild bee, newly wakened from its winter sleep, came ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... woodpeckers which make the Park their home. Both nest in hollows bored out by their strong beaks, but although full of splinters and sawdust, such a habitation is far superior to the sooty chimneys in which the young chimney swifts break from their snow-white eggs and twitter for food. How impatiently they must look up at the blue sky, and one would think that they must long for the time when they can spread their sickle-shaped wings and dash about from dawn to dark! Is it not wonderful that one of them should live to grow up when we think of the ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... they alone possessed: a casket little people will be wise in not hurrying our Father Time to open for them, if they would continue to enjoy the jewel they suppose it to contain. Finally, these energetic young ladies said their prayers by the morning twitter of the birds, and went to their beds, less from a desire for rest than because ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... should say, "Turnkey, lock the cell!"' Companionship doesn't seem to me the normal thing. Solitude is the normal thing, with a few bits of talk thrown in, like meals, for refreshment. But you can't lay down rules for people about it. Some people are simply gregarious, and twitter together like starlings in a shrubbery: that isn't talk—it's only a series of signals and exclamations. The danger of solitude is that the machinery runs just as you wish it to run—and that ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... say, every one of them knew her and recognised her as a friend and fellow-comrade, for she would sing to them sometimes like a lark, which always set them all on the twitter; goldfinches, linnets, and bullfinches, of which mother kept a large stock, hopping about their cages trying by every means in their power to attract her notice on her entering the shop and coming near them; ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... glowing hues, and the air had that wintry mildness which is soothing though melancholy. The window was open; and, wrapped up in a thick shawl, I was inhaling the damp moist air, and listening to the rustle of the dried leaves which were being swept from the gravel walk below; the low twitter of some robin-redbreasts was in unison with the scene, and affected me in an Unaccountable manner. My tears fell fast on the book in my hand. This book was the "Christian Year;" that gift of Edward, which I had thrust away in a fit of irritation about a year ago. I had opened it again ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... surprising. The soft soughing of the wind in the trees; the gentle rustle of the grass as it is swayed by the passing breeze; the musical ripple of water as it gurgles from the spring; the piping of the quail as it calls to its mate; the twitter of little birds flitting from bush to bough; the chirp of the cricket and drone of the beetle are among the sounds that are heard and fall soothingly upon ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... morn, a pleasant, one, in Spring, And Nature's varied voice is tuned to sing. The swallows twitter underneath the eaves, And zephyrs stir the newly-opened leaves; The cock's loud crowing sounds on every hand, Each bird is warbling praises through the land. Young COOPER thinks it were indeed a sin If he to tune his harp did not begin. He rises from his bed, pours forth ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... his knees and sat staring at the pond. Overhead the trees were whispering; behind him, in and out of their holes the rabbits whisked; far off he could hear the twitter of a swallow; the foxglove was dead, the bracken was turning brown, the cones from the fir trees were lying on the ground. As he watched, a strange thing happened. Slowly and slowly the pond lengthened out and out, stretching ...
— Very Short Stories and Verses For Children • Mrs. W. K. Clifford
... in the shrill chatter as incessant as the twitter of the agitated birds, who found their night snatched from them and hardly knew whether to scold or join ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... In front of them, Doorke, like a little black shadow, danced up and down in his cart to the jolting of the wheels as he jogged quietly along. The crickets chirped in the ditch; and from high up in the trees came the dying twitter of birds about ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... Her twitter, from topical bough to topical bough, hardly demanded reply. She exclaimed over Zoe, admiring her extravagantly, insisted upon kissing away a purely imaginary look of headache from her brother's brow, and led the way quite tinily regal, her ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... fields of Louisburg there came a fearful sound, growing, rising, falling, stopping the singing and the twitter of the birds. Across the land there came a horrible procession, advancing with short, uncertain, broken pauses—a procession which advanced, paused, halted, broke into groups; advanced, paused, stopped, and stooped; a procession which came with wailings and bitter cries, ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... to meet her, as he knew she would soon return, bearing with her the blue flowers he loved, and then, when she saw him coming towards her,—free, yes, free!—would not all past sorrow be forgotten in the ever-present joy? So, with a twitter of gratitude to the girl who had opened his prison door, he fluttered his wings, just to try their strength, poised a while in the air, then away he flew with unerring instinct towards his dear home in the old ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... The only sound now came from a robin, hunting about the turf and now and then breaking out into an impatient twitter. ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch |
