"Twitter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... structure of the rocks and the tissues of living bodies. The winged men on the Assyrian bas-reliefs, the gods of the Nile, the chariot-borne immortals of Olympus, not the greatest of imagined beings ever possessed in fancied attributes one-tenth the power of light. As the swallows twitter, the dim white finger appears at my window full of wonders, such as all the wise men in twelve thousand precedent years never even hoped to conceive. But this is not all—light is not all; light conceals more ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... 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 Lotus-blume ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... Mr. Cowan put forth some questions about her qualifications, and at each answer, his colleagues were given to understand by a faint twitter of his eyes that Miss Watson was ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... and drowsily the next morning after the storm, he lay awhile, listening. No rending, crashing, booming in the woods now, nor rattling of his window-frames. No contemplative twitter of winter birds about the cedars in the yard, nor caw of crow, crossing the house chimneys toward the corn shocks. All things hushed, ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... Christmas, I wish I could express all I feel on this peculiarly English season of 'peace and goodwill.' I remember the picturesque snow (seen here only on the distant blue mountain tops), the icy stalactites pendant from the leafless branches, the twitter of the robin redbreast, the holly, and the mistletoe, decorated homes, redolent with the effects of the festive cooking, and the warm blazing firelight, the meeting of families and of friends, the waits, the grand old peals from the belfries; but, alas, here these childhood associations are ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... turf instead of hedge-rows, which were covered thickly with pale primroses, shining with the same hue as the moon above them. As I passed the scattered cottages, here and there a dog yapped a shrill, snarling hark, and woke the birds, till they gave a sleepy twitter in ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... linnets play among the leaves At hide-and-seek, and chirp and sing; While, flashing to and from the eaves, The swallows twitter on the wing. ...
— The Child's World - Third Reader • Hetty Browne, Sarah Withers, W.K. Tate
... after the echoes of the report died away there was perfect silence in the forest: not a leaf seemed to stir or a bird to twitter; even the very insects ceased their chirring, as though they were wondering what had happened. Then, almost as though at a given signal, the forest resounded with loud trumpetings of alarm and the ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... against her as they met zigzagging homeward much the worse for blackberry wine. She never heeded any of them, though at another time she would gladly have made friends with all, but found compensation for her discomforts in the busy twitter of sand swallows perched on the mullein-tops, the soft flight of yellow butterflies, and the rapidity with which the little canoe received its freight of "Ethiop sweets." As the last handful went in she sprung up crying "Done!" with a suddenness that broke up the Long Parliament ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... d—n'd him often in my hearing."—"If I did," says she, "I have repented of it many's the good time and oft. And if he was so good to forgive me a word spoken in haste or so, it doth not become such a one as you to twitter me. He was a husband to me, he was; and if ever I did make use of an ill word or so in a passion, I never called him rascal; I should have told a lie, if I had called him rascal." Much more she said, but not in his hearing; for having lighted his pipe, he staggered off as fast as he could. We ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... and tranquil silence ensued, broken only by the gentle rustle of the fitful breeze through the foliage of some firs which were dotted here and there along the precipitous sides of the ravine, the chirping of insects, the occasional twitter of a sleeping bird, or a low murmur here and there in the serried ranks of armed men which stood awaiting the order to rush forth to death or victory. The stars flooded the scene with their subdued and mellow radiance, and, but for the occasional gleam of a naked weapon, everything was suggestive ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... far in advance of his former attempts, and Beauseant by Thomas Beck added laurels to his already established reputation as a first-class amateur. Glavis by Master Asa Rawson was rendered in his usual facetious style, creating a universal twitter all around the hall. Mons. Deschappells by Albert Brown was laughable in the extreme, partly from the age of so young a father, as seen through the scarcity of his be-floured locks, and partly from its surroundings. The landlord by B.F. Tucker was ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... taken time—some twenty minutes in excess of his calculations, as a glance at the sky informed him. (He carried no watch.) He hurried home in a twitter of nervousness, which increased as he drew near to his front door. In the passage he stumbled against a pail of water, all but upsetting it, and swore under his breath at his evil luck, which had deferred Mrs Penhaligon's weekly scrubbing to Tuesday (Bank Holiday ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... you: 'As the hazel-bush in copses, As the oak-tree in the forest, As the moon among the planets; Drives the groom a coal-black courser, Running like a famished black-dog, Flying like the hungry raven, Graceful as the lark at morning, Golden cuckoos, six in number, Twitter on the birchen cross-bow; There are seven blue-birds singing On the ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... Gordon had spent two and a half days in Pekin, and was whirling through China, when a telegram arrived from the home authorities, who viewed his movements with uneasiness, ordering him to return at once to England. 'It did not produce a twitter in me,' he wrote to his sister; 'I died long ago, and it will not make any difference to me; I am prepared to follow the unrolling of the scroll.' The world, perhaps, was not big enough for him; and yet how clearly he recognised ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... beneath my thatch Shall twitter from her clay-built nest; Oft shall the pilgrim lift the latch, And share my meal, ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... his 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 the core of the pool (for fishing ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... clearing for action. The noise that it was going to make! . . . A few seconds flitted by that to them seemed unusually long . . . and then suddenly a sound like a distant peal of thunder which appeared to come from the clouds. Desnoyers no longer felt the nervous twitter against his knee. The senator seemed surprised; his expression seemed to say, "And is that all?" . . . The heaps of earth above them had deadened the report, so that the discharge of the great machine seemed no more ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Wilbrid said, "how all Nature welcomes the sunshine, hear the birds twitter, see the cattle slowly moving on that rise. All Nature here joins in a hymn of peace, yet far beyond those western ridges three million men lay trenched through the winter and stared in hellish hate at each other across a ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... flew out across the darkness. 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 ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... There are evenings when I quite forget myself, when I'm one of the last two left in, and get all excited. There's a sort of hum in the air, and, as you go round the room, people at the tables start applauding. Why, if you didn't know about the inner workings of the thing, you'd be all of a twitter. ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... 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 started, a light flashed across his face, and he ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... the birds began to twitter; day was breaking. The girl was worn out and panting, and when the sun rose in the purple sky, she stopped, for her swollen feet refused to go any further; but she saw a pond in the distance, a ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... I leaned up against one of the outermost trunks of the perky little clump of trees, and facing East awaited developments. A thin, cold wind had sprung up, and was quietly stirring the leaves above me to an uneasy sibilance. I heard, now, too, an occasional sleepy twitter as if a few members of the orchestra had come into their places and were indolently testing the tune of their pipes. It came into my mind that the cold stir of air was the spirit of the dying night, fleeing westward before ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... horses of the Asiatics grew restive, flocks of birds flew into the garden, and occupied all the trees, with noisy twitter. ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... dawn when they laid him down. Birds were already beginning to twitter in the trees. Desire would be waking soon. The world was going to begin all over presently. Spence laid his hand gently on the ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... promptly on hand when the hour arrived, and seated herself in a great twitter before the machine. She began bravely enough: "My dear father," and then she paused, but slowly went on till she had completed half a page of typewritten words. Miss Dorothy did not offer any suggestions, but sat at the other side of the room before her writing-table. At the pause in the clicking ...
— Little Maid Marian • Amy E. Blanchard
... explosion was just before dawn. The fuse was lit and fifty thousand men stood gripping their guns, waiting for the shock. A quarter of an hour passed and nothing happened. An ominous silence brooded over the dawning sky. The only sounds heard were the twitter of waking birds in the trees and hedgerows. The fuse had failed. Two heroic men crawled into the tunnel and found it had spluttered out in a damp spot but fifty feet from the powder. It required an hour to secure and plant a new fuse. Day had dawned. ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... prosaic and matter-of-fact world for one of fantastic improbabilities; but it is safe to assume that the three persons who fell asleep beneath Miss Ludington's roof that morning, just as the birds began to twitter, encountered in dreamland no experiences so strange as those which they had passed through with their eyes ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... poet bearing the rose away, yet how could the fluttering little creature hope to prevail against the cruel invader? What could he do but twitter in anguish? So there are tragedies and heartaches in lives that are ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... not put him into the aircar with the revolving arm again. Instead, four new ones came into his room after he had eaten the strange red and orange fruits that were all of the bug diet he could stomach, and began to twitter very seriously at him, while pointing to various objects, parts of their bodies, the walls around them, and ...
— The Worshippers • Damon Francis Knight
... went out of the room with a little hysterical twitter like a scared bird, and the two men were left alone. Silence came over them again. Both men looked moodily at nothing. Finally ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... 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
... yellow sand-dunes and winding creek bordered with brown grasses and patches of mallow or green rushes, and over all the arch of blue summer sky. One or two carriages rolled along the distant road as they sat there; but otherwise; the stillness was unbroken save by the twitter of birds in the woods behind them, the chirp of sand-peeps or the scream of gulls on the beach, and the soft intermittent boom of ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... neighbor swallow, Starting on your autumn flight, Pause a moment at my window, Twitter softly your good-night; For the summer days are over, All your duties are well done, And the happy homes you builded Have grown empty, ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... clock was so distinct that it made an echo in the high hall; the morning sun streamed across the pavement, from the cloistered garden the chirping of a few sparrows and the sharper twitter of the house-swallow that had already nested under the eaves sounded very clearly through ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... imperiously as, in organisms of another sort, hunger claims satisfaction for the body. She was by nature a flame and a bird. The riddle of her existence was involved in two words: to blaze and to fly. Besides, she had impulse and caprice; she loved to twitter, and to laugh quietly in a corner. From the thoughtfulness into which she dropped oftener and oftener, she woke up as a gladsome and petted child; that room was filled with her quick speech, her ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... the seas, to behold again the vision of far-off intimate hills that lift their orchards high above the fields facing the sunlight, and for a while again to speak with the souls of old. But about the dawn dreams twitter and arise, and circling thrice around the Happy Isles set out again to find the world of men, then follow the souls of the sailors, as, at evening, with slow stroke of stately wings the heron follows behind the flight of multitudinous ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... he did not like to be disturbed, and so he told Saul some things that very nearly scared the lingering hope out of him, and almost reduced him to a condition where he himself was a fit candidate for a companionship with Samuel. Then suddenly the air grew warmer and fresher, the birds began to twitter in the first faint flush of the morning, and looking around one could not ...
— Fair to Look Upon • Mary Belle Freeley
... executing diabolic waltzes on the tips of their eight legs, vanishing into the ground like imps as you approach; curlews start from behind the loose drifts of sand and float away with heartbroken cries seaward; little sandpipers twitter plaintively, running through the weeds; and great, sulky, gray cranes droop their motionless heads over the still salt pools along ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... know what to write about my house. It is a Japanese idyll; there is nothing within or without which does not please the eye, and, after the din of yadoyas, its silence, musical with the dash of waters and the twitter of birds, is truly refreshing. It is a simple but irregular two-storied pavilion, standing on a stone- faced terrace approached by a flight of stone steps. The garden is well laid out, and, as peonies, irises, and azaleas are now in blossom, it is very bright. ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... 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 ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... an hour or two they sat lounging and chattering in the warm shade, while the gentle wind brought them every spring scent, every twitter of the birds, every swaying murmur of the forest. David lay on his back against the log, his eyes now plunging into the forest, now watching the curls of smoke from his pipe mounting against the background of green, or the moist fleecy clouds which seemed to be actually tangled in ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... is as if the Southern summer had laid itself up here to rest in Scandinavian forest-solitude, and sought itself out a glade where it might lie in the sun's hot beams and sleep: hence this stillness, as if it were night. Not a bird is heard to twitter, not a pine-tree moves: of what does the Southern summer dream here in the North, amongst ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... does truth sound bitter As one at first believes? Hark, 'tis the sparrows' good-night twitter ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... were now. I marked down a few score dozen battens, and reckoned it all out on my paper—that would have to do. But it was still too early for a man to live in the forests and hills; the flowers were come, but there were no berries yet. Song and twitter of birds at their mating, flies and midges and moths, but ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... of his success, whatever it was, had preceded him hours before. Andrew McBain had hid out, the idle women were all a-twitter; but Mary Roget Fortune was calm. She had heard the news from the very first moment, when L. W. had dropped in on McBain; but the more she heard of his riotous prodigality the more it left her cold. His return to town reminded her painfully of that other time when he had come. She ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... to the parlour. Through the window came the songs of the reapers and the twitter of birds busy among the seeds at the barn-door. Roses swinging on the porch threw a perfume into the room. Young Islay felt, for the first time in his life, a sense of placid happiness. And when Nan sang later—a newer, wider world, more years, more thoughts, more profound ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... thin-legged piano and the haircloth furniture were furbished up for the morrow. Moreover Mary Ellen liked our company. She had a spooky feeling about the parlour. Mr. Handsomebody gave her the creeps, she said, and once when she had turned her back she had heard one of the stuffed birds twitter. It ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... his young friend rippled on. A growing gamin coarseness in her talk with a nervous, restless twitter underneath. Her dark child eyes, perverse under their touch of black paint, swung eagerly through the crowd. Her talk of Johns, of dumb times and moldy times, of classy times and classy memories varied only slightly. ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... annoy the husband, the man who is in the way will almost always feel himself justified in extracting a slightly pleasurable sensation from the transaction. He will say to himself probably, unconsciously indeed, and with no formed words, that the husband is an ass, an ass if he be in a twitter either for that which he has kept or for that which he has been unable to keep, that the lady has shewn a good deal of appreciation, and that he himself is—is—is—quite a Captain bold of Halifax. All ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... instruments of a great purpose, are yellow with pollen and laden with honey. They find more, infinitely more, nectar than they can carry away. The days are long, and every hour is full of joy. But already the tide is at the turn. The nightingale's rapturous song has become a lazy twitter; the bird has done with courtship; it has a family in immediate prospect, if not one already screaming for food, and the musician has half lost his passion for music. It will come again next year. How swiftly all this life ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... her the child is right, but should have said wheat-sacks and water-mill. And then I get it down.... Yes, I get it down and show it to her"—this slowly and reminiscently. "And then, my lady, I look round, and there's the poor old soul, all of a twitter!" This was accelerated, for ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... a blaze of splendor and the birds began to twitter. The gripsack which he carried grew strangely heavy, and he felt faint and weary. The long strain of the day before was beginning to tell upon him, and it was many hours since he had ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... birds along the beach," muttered the boy. "They twitter and run into the surf and back again, and I am one of them! I must be, for I feel the water cold, and yet I see you all, so kind to me! Don't whistle for me now; for I don't get much play, gentlemen! Will the Speaker turn me out if I play with the beach birds just once? ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... the warriors ceased their shuffling dance, were arrested with the spears in their hands in as many poses. Bakahenzie's scream was stoppered as if by a hand upon his mouth. In the silence their heavy breathing rivalled the twitter and hum of the forest. Birnier sketched furiously, glaring portentously from the group to the paper. Bakahenzie took a step forward, a nervous step, and yelled, "Kill!" but his voice released those of the warriors. In one loud ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... for the nights; with the first twitter of the birds my babies begin to stir. Through the mists of dispersing sleep, their chatter blends with the warblings that fill the morning air, or with the swallows' noisy debates—little cries of joy or woe, which make their way to my heart rather than my ears. While Nais struggles to get at me, ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... God is good! He wants His children to be happy! The white clouds chase each other across the blue dome of heaven, the birds in the azaleas and in the orange-trees twitter, build nests and play hide-and-seek the livelong day. The balmy air is flavored with ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... on a winter's day, But warm and bright, and calm as May, The birds, conceiving a design To forestall sweet St. Valentine, In many an orchard, copse, and grove, Assembled on affairs of love; And with much twitter and much chatter, Began to agitate ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... lips that had been so firm when the hot iron burned, recalled that other Father who is always near, always tender and helpful; and, folding his hands, Rob said the heartiest little prayer he ever prayed, there on the hay, to the soft twitter of the brooding birds. It did him good; and wisely laying all his fear and doubt and trouble in God's hand, the boy felt ready for whatever was to come, and from that hour kept steadily before him the one duty that was plain—to be brave and cheerful, keep ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... affiches of vacancies before fixing on a lodging. Unlike us, these callow tourists—though many of them on their first visit to Rome—are no sooner within the walls, than they find, without assistance, their way to the Forum, and proceed to build and twitter in that very Temple of Concord where Juvenal's storks of old made their nidus and their noise! Andiamo a Napoli; yes, but not yet; we are sure at this season to have an impatient patient or two to visit in the Babuino, or at Serny's; who, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... the earl nor Lady Julia having said anything on the subject. "Of course we are going," said Mrs Eames, "and it was so very kind. But I've never been out to such a house for so many years, John, and I do feel in such a twitter. I dined there once, soon after we were married; but I never have been ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... boundary of the country. There the first green sprouted forth, and there they took leave of the two Reindeer and the Lapland woman. "Farewell!" said all. And the first little birds began to twitter, the forest was decked with green buds, and out of it, on a beautiful horse (which Gerda knew, for it was the same that had drawn her golden coach) a young girl came riding, with a shining red cap on her head and a pair of pistols in the holsters. This was the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... when 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 ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... 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 ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... confusion of noise. Clocks began to strike, doors began to slam, dogs began to bark, cocks began to crow and hens to cluck; a breeze sprang up outside and set the branches of the trees swaying and creaking; the doves began to coo upon the roofs, the swallows to twitter under the eaves, flies came out and buzzed about the window, mice squeaked in the wainscot and ran scampering along the rafters. The fountain in the garden leapt up sixty feet into the air, and the goldfish swam among the water-lily leaves; ants left their nests and foraged about ...
— The Sleeping Beauty • C. S. Evans
... I was surprised with what I supposed to be the notes of a bird, under or upon the sill of a window. My impression was, that they somewhat resembled the notes of a wild duck in its nocturnal flight, and, at times, the twitter of a redbreast, in quick succession. To be satisfied on the subject, I carefully removed the shutter, and, to my surprise, found it was a garden snail, which, in drawing itself along the glass, had produced sounds similar to those elicited ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 381 Saturday, July 18, 1829 • Various
... several moments, but nothing could be heard save the rustling of the leaves, as they were moved back and forth by the morning breeze, or the twitter of birds, as they started out in search of breakfast, and George said, ...
— Ralph Gurney's Oil Speculation • James Otis
... shops are not besieged by the crowds of more populous thoroughfares. Commerce is not turbulent, nor is the public consumer besieged by loud invitations to "buy." Bird-fanciers have sought the congenial tranquillity of the scene; and pigeons coo, and canaries twitter, in Vauxhall Walk. Second-hand carts and cabs, bedsteads of a certain age, detached carriage-wheels for those who may want one to make up a set, are all to be found here in the same repository. One tributary ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... can't wait now—our carriage is champing the bit at the foot of the stairs—but we're coming back in a week, and then we'll do our best to look you up again." She included Lanfear in her good-bye, and all her girls said good-bye in the same way, and with a whisking of skirts and twitter of voices they vanished through the shrubbery, and faded into the general silence and general sound like a bevy of birds which had ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... the ground, with its little wings outspread. My dog crept softly up to it, when suddenly an old black-breasted sparrow threw himself down from a neighboring tree and let himself fall like a stone directly under the dog's nose, and, with ruffled feathers, sprang with a terrified twitter several times against his open, threatening mouth. He had flown down to protect his young at the sacrifice of himself. His little body trembled all over, his cry was hoarse, he was frightened to death; but he ...
— Bird Day; How to prepare for it • Charles Almanzo Babcock
... young are rear'd, and when the old, Lost to the tie, grow negligent and cold— Far to the left he saw the huts of men, Half hid in mist that hung upon the fen; Before him swallows, gathering for the sea, Took their short flights, and twitter'd on the lea; And near the bean-sheaf stood, the harvest done, And slowly blacken'd in the sickly sun; All these were sad in nature, or they took Sadness from him, the likeness of his look, And of ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... Semitic races broke it by twittering into a laugh behind her fan. Janet met Kendal's eyes instinctively; he was burning red, and his manner was eloquent of his helplessness. Angry with herself for having waited, so long, Janet joined Elfrida just as the twitter made itself heard, and Mr. Jasper's face began to ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... blossoms, the invisible riddles of Heaven and earth, of all the concealed secrets beyond the blue of the sky; all the panorama of Nature strung out in a wild, sweet forest song. Jinnie had backed against the wall as she played, and when out of her soul came the twitter of the morning birds, the babbling of the brook on its way to the sea, the scream of the owl in a high woodland tree, Lafe turned to watch her, and from that moment until she dropped exhausted into a chair, he did not take his ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... slipping from its dark cover in the east and hanging like a jewel of gold just above the black crown of the pines. Breaths from the heights sifted down through the vast woods, carrying sometimes the dreary twitter of a bird disturbed, or the mellow call of insects singing to each other of the summer night. All sounds of the wilderness were as echoes of ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... Spring: with sunshine see me coming; Birds begin to twitter; hark! the bees are humming: Green to field and hillside, blossoms to the tree, Joy to every human heart are what I ...
— The Nursery, Volume 17, No. 101, May, 1875 • Various
... long before, when they weren't robin red-breasts but only robins. It is a merry, tender sort of story. They twitter it in a chuckling fashion to their children. If you prefer to hear it first-hand, creep out to the nearest holly-bush on almost any Christmas Eve when snow has made the night all pale and shadowy. If the robins have chosen your ...
— Christmas Outside of Eden • Coningsby Dawson
... right, and that he had somehow allowed himself to become unnaturally affected and strung up. He could believe this in the air and in the dawn. For he escaped out of prison as he walked, and heard the dirty sparrows begin to twitter as they sank to the brown puddles in the roadway, or soared to the soot that clung round the chimneys ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... 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
... 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
... been in a 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 ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... there is 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 ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... 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 ask my ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... suppose, the 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 waking for the first time to ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... scorpion. He gave me such a fright: I am all of a twitter yet when I think of it. Grandfather went to Liverpool one Whitsun-week to go strolling about the docks and pick up what he could from the sailors, who often bring some queer thing or another from the hot countries they go to; and so he sees ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... glad of it. My nerves are pretty steady as a general thing, but I declare I'm all of a twitter to-night—and no wonder. It's darker than a pocket in here. Can't we ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... sound Bessie Fairfax 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 ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... fine journey," said Joanna, drowning Mrs. Hill's apologetic twitter, "the train came the whole of sixty miles ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... irregular street every house is three to four hundred years old. The projecting upper stories are supported on great timber balks, often with the ends grotesquely carved. Under the projecting eaves the swallows build, and twitter about the diamond-paned windows which reflect so richly the sunset light. In the steep roofs there are dormer-windows, and the old tiles have mellowed to a deep rose-red, stained yellow with lichen, and sink into irregular planes and angles ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... curtains, drapery wardrobes, and even tiny stoves for cool mornings and evenings. They combined the comforts of a house with the open air and delightful freshness of a tent, where one might hear every bird twitter, and see the dancing leaf shadows in the moonlight. Over the front platform the canvas cover extended to form an awning, and a wire-gauze door, in addition to one of wood, made them airy or ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... began creeping in among the forest trees and still no tracks were in sight. Anxiously he listened for the terrible yet thrilling rush of a train which he remembered so well. He ought to be in hearing distance of them by now. But nothing broke the forest stillness save the twitter and song of birds, the scurrying of rabbits or frisking of squirrels with occasionally the sound of some ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... the twitter o' the bluebird and the jay, And that sassy little critter jes' a-peckin' all the day; There' music in the "flicker," and there' music in the thrush, And there' music in the snicker o' ...
— Riley Farm-Rhymes • James Whitcomb Riley
... all so familiar that relying on tread alone (as in fact they did) they could not miss their way. Below them, along the quay, and on the causeway at the head of it—voices were calling and lights moving; but the fog reduced the shouts to a twitter, as of birds, and the torches and lantern to mere glow-worm sparks. The coastguards were embarking and the Lord Proprietor, just arrived upon the scene, was running about—as Sergeant Archelaus put it afterwards, "like a paper man in a cyclone"—calling out the names ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... old languor, the dreamy, hushed steps of her former method. Now she appeared to dart about the lawn like a swallow, following the calls of the birds. She would stand poised to listen, her ear would catch a twitter, and she was gone; flitting, skimming, seeming not to touch the earth. She danced to the flowers in her hand, to the trees, the sky, her face aglint with changing smiles, her skirts rippling ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... Fitzgerald keeps up a gentle twitter, in the hope of propitiating the wrathful goddess ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... a twitter; for though he fancied his own heart said it, still his ear-drum rattled, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... medical student who had spoken, but he was now silent, and the other said, after they had listened to the twitter of a piano in the parlor under the room, "That girl's playing will ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... she had none. She was desperately jealous of Miss Todd, but she herself knew not why. She asked all manner of questions as to his going and coming, but she never asked herself why she was so anxious about it. She was in a twitter of sentimental restlessness, but she did not understand the cause of her own uneasiness. On the days that Sir Lionel came to her, she was happy, and in good spirits; when, however, he went to Miss Todd, she was ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... hall. Finally, at four o'clock she has composed herself with a book in the library, and before the fire sits half lost in reading, half in wondering. Without, the early gloom of the short day is gathering, and the bare trees cast murk shadows all across the frostbitten lawns, and late birds twitter their good-night notes, and a few sleepy rooks ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... sex and the other, they have in the herd choice and particular election in their affections, and that they have amongst themselves a long commerce of good will. Even those to whom old age denies the practice of their desire, still tremble, neigh, and twitter for love; we see them, before the act, full of hope and ardour, and when the body has played its game, yet please themselves with the sweet remembrance of the past delight; some that swell with pride after they have performed, and others who, tired ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... passed, and paled slowly to gray. Birds began to twitter. Through the door of the cabin the light of day streamed in. The two Indian sentinels were building a fire on the stone hearth. One by one the other savages got up, stretched and yawned, and began the business of ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... Thousands of aching demons in his weary limbs promised him surcease if he would. Every stir in nature, each drowsy twitter of the birds, coaxed him to relax his watchfulness, but he resisted. Time seemed a paralytic as Carter waited the passing of the day. A score of times his head bent forward in weariness. He could feel pain pass from him like a sigh, only to be called back as in reaction ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... the brown leaves Gold stars push; A mist of green Veils the bush. Here a twitter, There a croak! They are coming— The spring-folk! Heart, be not dumb; Let the ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... long wondered at the indefatigable hatred which pursues your memory. You, who knew the men, will not marvel that certain microbes of letters, the survivors of your own generation, still harass your name with their malevolence, while old women twitter out their incredible and unheeded slanders in the literary papers of New York. But their persistent animosity does not quite suffice to explain the dislike with which many American critics regard the ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... wistful, as though the decent honest days that were no more had had their merits after all. Raffles would plan a fresh enormity, or glory in the last, with the unmitigated enthusiasm of the artist. It was impossible to imagine one throb or twitter of compunction beneath those frankly egotistic and infectious transports. And yet the ghost of a dead remorse seemed still to visit him with the memory of his first felony, so that I had given the story up long before ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... rose from his bed, and at that very moment a thousand little birds, who lived in his room, began to twitter and trill. "Awake so early, little ones!" whispered the ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... near the toes of one of the sparrows, and he flew. There was a twitter, then a stir all over the tree; but nothing further happening, they tucked in their heads again and went back ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... Taurica, Where now a captive 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 pall 140 From some black ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... 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 ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... heather mixed with 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 on wings invisible in their ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the fashion plate, the evidence of pains, of correctness not instinctive but studied—the marks our new-sprung obstreperous aristocracy has made familiar to us all. It would have struck upon a sense of humor like a trivial twitter from the oboe trickling through a lull in the swell of brasses and strings; but Hiram Ranger had no sense of humor in that direction, had only his instinct for the right and the wrong. The falseness, the absence of the quality called ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... Storm called to see the old woman at Martha's Vineyard, and he saw the matron, the house doctor, and a staff nurse as well. His adventure was known to everybody at the hospital. Once or twice he caught looks of amused compassion, and heard a twitter of laughter. As he stood by the bed, the old woman muttered: "I knoo ez it wuzn't the work'us, my dear. He spoke to me friendly ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... that bright dome of azure, there is a delightful frolicsome twitter heard. It is not the Nightingale; no, not so clear and mellow as that. Not the Thrush; no, not so loud or gushing as that. It is our little friend the Lark. Oh! how merry he is! more so than either of the other two. And what is he about? He ...
— The Story of a Dewdrop • J. R. Macduff
... describe the feelings of that shipwrecked sailor as he and his dog drank from the same cup at that sparkling crystal fountain? Delicious odours of lime and citron trees, and well-nigh forgotten herbage, filled his nostrils, and the twitter of birds thrilled his ears, seeming to bid him welcome to the land, as he sank down on the soft grass, and raised his eyes in thanksgiving to heaven. An irresistible tendency ...
— Jarwin and Cuffy • R.M. Ballantyne
... how it did titter and twitter and giggle and struggle! It fanned its wings as furiously as a Zizz; it was as wild as a moon-moth in a net, or a bird you hold in your hand. And all the time, it was about ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... passion &c. (state of excitability) 825; ecstasy &c. (pleasure) 827. blush, suffusion, flush; hectic; tingling, thrill, turn, shock; agitation &c. (irregular motion) 315; quiver, heaving, flutter, flurry, fluster, twitter, tremor; throb, throbbing; pulsation, palpitation, panting; trepidation, perturbation; ruffle, hurry of spirits, pother, stew, ferment; state of excitement. V. feel; receive an impression &c. n.; be impressed with &c. adj.; entertain feeling, harbor feeling, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... he became aware of a sound that was not the stir of leaves, nor the twitter of birds, nor the music of running waters, though all these were in his ears,—for this was altogether different; a distant sound that came and went, that swelled to a murmur, sank to a whisper, yet never wholly died away. Little by little the sound grew plainer, more insistent, until, mingled ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... much heaving and grunting, because our hands were tied together, we contrived to struggle to our feet. The Selenites made way for our elephantine heavings, and seemed to twitter more volubly. As soon as we were on our feet the thick-set Selenite came and patted each of our faces with his tentacles, and walked towards the open doorway. That also was plain enough, and we followed him. ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... 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 the shrike's perch. The ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... baby had died last week and now, suddenly, she burst out crying and had to leave the room. There was a little twitter of sympathy. How good they all were to one another, these people, stupid and odd perhaps in some ways, but so brave for themselves and so generous to one another. It was no mean gathering of souls that Mrs. ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... cheerfully and kindly toward the whole human race. As he walked down into the city to transact some business he had there with his lawyer, he went out of his way to speak to little children. He gave all his acquaintances a heartier "Good-morning" than usual. He even whistled at passing dogs. The twitter of the sparrows in the trees, their fierce contentions on the grass, amused him. He leaned over the railing of the fountain in the square with the idlers, and took a deep interest in the turtles, who were baking their frescoed backs in the warm sun, as ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... 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 satisfied ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... smutched muzzle, another with his impertinencies, he makes sport for the rest of the gods? As also that old Silenus with his country dances, Polyphemus footing time to his Cyclops hammers, the nymphs with their jigs, and satyrs with their antics; while Pan makes them all twitter with some coarse ballad, which yet they had rather hear than the Muses themselves, and chiefly when they are well whittled with nectar. Besides, what should I mention what these gods do when they are half drunk? Now by my troth, so foolish that I myself ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... easy to be patient with Lemuel as he 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 ...
— A Princess in Calico • Edith Ferguson Black
... the road; the 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 with how much better a countenance I should be able to do it if I could but improvise ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... coif and long black veil, was sitting by the bedside reading her book of hours; through the window could be seen a strip of blue sky crossed by some budding tree in the convent garden, little birds were beginning to chirp and twitter amongst the branches. The spring had come in these last days whilst Madelon had been lying there, and in the midst of the glad resurrection of all nature, she too was stirring and awakening to ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... gentleman downstairs, sir, who says he must see you instantly on most urgent business. He seems to be in a rare twitter, sir—" ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman |
