"Rattling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rattling waxeth till he may not heed nor hark! And the day and the heavens are hidden, and o'er Sigurd rolls the dark, As the flood of a pitchy river, and heavy-thick is the air With the venom of hate long hoarded, and lies once fashioned fair: Then a wan ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung • William Morris
... 1864 a few tents were pitched on the place; in 1865 one of the largest towns in New Zealand was to be seen. Wood and canvas were the building materials—the wood unseasoned pine, smelling fresh and resinous at first, anon shrinking, warping, and entailing cracked walls, creaking doors, and rattling window-sashes. Every second building was a grog-shanty, where liquor, more or less fiery, was retailed at a shilling a glass, and the traveller might hire a blanket and a soft plank on the floor for three ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... inside, we then set near the wagon the troughs we had brought, poured the dry corn into them and called the hogs as if it were feeding time. Most of them, it seemed, were not far away. As soon as they heard the corn rattling into the troughs all except three came crowding in. Presently we drove two of the missing ones to the pen, but one ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... northeast. Another gun, and another. Then came a pause and the besieged listened eagerly, for their own walls felt no shock. Again came the bellow of cannon, nearer and heavier, repeated and repeated, and the roll of smoke and the rattling fusillade of bullet shots told that a battle was on. Outside the gates! An army come against Peking! The Army of Deliverance! They were here fighting for the Christians! Oh, the music of birds' song, of rippling ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... low alike, in their democratic Christian way making no distinction between tavern-keepers and princesses. As they talked with Elizabeth and her friend the countess, discoursing upon heavenly themes, they were interrupted by the rattling of a coach, and callers were announced. The countess "fetched a deep sigh, crying out, 'O the cumber and entanglements of this vain world! They hinder all good.' Upon which," says William, "I replied, looking her steadfastly in the face, 'O come thou out of them, then.'" ...
— William Penn • George Hodges
... two or three days Dummy he got to be powerful popular. He went associating around with the neighbors, and they made much of him, and was proud to have such a rattling curiosity among them. They had him to breakfast, they had him to dinner, they had him to supper; they kept him loaded up with hog and hominy, and warn't ever tired staring at him and wondering over him, and wishing they knowed more about him, he was so uncommon ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... "call" very distinctly from my childhood because the men giving it placed the thumb upon the larynx and made it vibrate longitudinally while uttering the cry. The thumb thus used produced a peculiar screeching and rattling tone that hardly sounded human. But the words "I want a piece of hoecake, etc.," as recorded under the "call," were often rhymed off in song with it. Thus we trace the form of "call" and "sponse" from the friendly musical greeting between laborers at a distance to the place of the formation ...
— Negro Folk Rhymes - Wise and Otherwise: With a Study • Thomas W. Talley
... mind, the noise subsided, the laughter became fainter and fainter; until at length it died away, seemingly lost in the distance, and silence once more reigned around. After the lapse of a short interval, this was again broken by a noise resembling the rattling and clanking of a chain dragged heavily along, which seemed to approach by slow degrees towards her apartment, and as gradually receded; then again approached, and again receded; and so on several times, but each ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... gift of mellow, supple song does not come to them so spontaneously as to the Italians. About a thousand years ago, an Italian compared the singing of some German monks to the noise made by a cart rattling down a frozen street; and even Luther compared the singing in cathedrals and monasteries at his time to the "braying of asses." At a more recent period, Frederick the Great, on hearing of the proposed engagement ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... them. The viper is benumbed if one twig of the oak 58 touches it, as is also the bat by a leaf of the plane-tree. The elephant flees before the ram, and the lion before the cock, and seals from the rattling of beans that are being pounded, and the tiger from the sound of the drum. Many other examples could be given, but that we may not seem to dwell longer than is necessary on this subject, we conclude by saying that ...
— Sextus Empiricus and Greek Scepticism • Mary Mills Patrick
... the Veientines, engaged in sacrificing. The soothsayer inspected the entrails, and cried with a loud voice, that the goddess would give the victory to whoever offered that victim. The Romans in the mine, hearing these words, quickly tore up the floor, and burst through it with shouts and rattling arms. The enemy fled in terror, and they seized the victims and carried them to Camillus. However, this ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... then required a different treatment; and a good rattling gallop would have been of ...
— A Sentimental Journey • Laurence Sterne
... ne'er again was spoken Till death the nun's drear oath had broken. Down from each crumbling castle poured, Of ruthless robber-knights, the horde, Sweeping with clang and clamour by, Like storm-cloud rattling through the sky: Pageant so glorious ne'er, I ween, On ...
— Poems • Frances Anne Butler
... colors and rattling drum-beat, the voters of Red Wing marched to the polls; the people of Melton looked good-naturedly on; the young hot-bloods joked the dusky citizen, and bestowed extravagant encomiums on the plucky girl who had saved them from so much threatened trouble; and Mollie Ainslie rode home ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... Hail-stones cut his hands, the rain ran down his back, the velocity of the wind suffocated him. He stopped rowing and let the boat drift with the tide. But realising that an important matter was at stake, a command which could not be disregarded, he picked up the oars again; and the rattling of the tholes mingled with the clamourings ...
— Three short works - The Dance of Death, The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, A Simple Soul. • Gustave Flaubert
... accept it, and he made a rough pallet for himself on the floor close beside me. Well, I could not sleep for my life, and I wished I had not stayed there, though I was so tired. For one thing, there were the luggage trains rattling by at my elbow the early part of the night. But worse than this, he talked continually in his sleep, and occasionally struck out with his limbs at something or another, knocking against the post of the bedstead and ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... o'er the granite coping bent, Oneguine meditative stood, E'en as the poet says he leant.(18) 'Tis silent all! Alone the cries Of the night sentinels arise And from the Millionaya afar(19) The sudden rattling of a car. Lo! on the sleeping river borne, A boat with splashing oar floats by, And now we hear delightedly A jolly song and distant horn; But sweeter in a midnight dream ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... ram, or the dirty face of an old abbess, which bears no little resemblance to the chine of an ape. Of its cry he says that it is as great a torment as an agonizing recollection, a cold shrill laugh from the midst of a kettle of ice; the rattling of sea-pebbles in an old sheep-skin, on which account many call the owl the hag of the Rhugylgroen. The Rhugylgroen, it will be as well to observe, is a dry sheepskin containing a number of pebbles, and is used as a rattle for frightening crows. The likening the visage of ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... hurrying up dark lowering clouds, covering the whole concave of heaven, a lurid light only gleaming out from near the horizon. Then, amidst the most terrific roars of thunder, the brightest flashes of lightning, and the rushing, rattling, crashing sound of the tempest, there burst upon us a wind, which made the ship reel like a drunken man, and sent the white foam, torn off the surface of the harbour, flying over the deck in sheets, which drenched us through and through. In an instant, the surrounding waters were lashed ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... as death as he listened to these words. For a moment it looked as if he were about to spring forward and drag his father from the carriage in order to prevent this visit. In a second they were rattling away from the door. Faith's last glance showed the young man still standing ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon
... dying wife. But the thing never touched her. Six years ago we had the small-pox, and she went all through that in just the same way. I don't believe she has ever had a day's illness in her life. She will be physicking this parish when my bones are rattling in my coffin, and she will be laying down the laws of literature long after your statue has become a familiar ornament of Westminster Abbey. She's a wonderful woman, but a ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... your right flank, wheel! Let the front rank kneel! With the bristle of the steel To the foe. Till their regiments reel, At our rattling peal, And the military zeal ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, May 24, 1890 • Various
... said the Pugilist, "that is right, my good friend; if pugilism had been put down yesterday, I wouldn't have this kind of Nose to-day. I had a rattling hot fight last ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce
... bathed in the moonlight, grow whiter still, the overhanging trees darker; how the shadows of the trees fall blacker, the flowers and the silent grass become more fragrant, and the crickets, unharmonious cavaliers of the night, strike up their rattling song in friendly fashion on all sides. I would describe how, in one of the little, low-roofed, clay houses, the black-browed village maid, tossing on her lonely couch, dreams with heaving bosom of some hussar's spurs and moustache, ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... confinement, I had slept but little. Wearied however at length, by the repetition of ideas that were unavailing, I was slumbering more soundly than usual on the night after the ninth day; and was dreaming that my doors were unbolted, the chains rattling, and men entering to murder me; from which I was waked by starting in my dream to run and resist them. It was the real clanking of the bolts and locks of the house doors that inspired this dream; they opened to give some one admission. I know not what was the ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... were following the Avenue of the Bois de Boulogne, amid the noise and the rattling of wheels. The carriages, a little less crowded than below the Arc de Triomphe, seemed to struggle in an endless race. The cabs, the heavy landaus, the solemn eight-spring vehicles, passed one another over ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... You see he's rather lonely and unhappy, after all, you know, under all that cynicism and rattling. Every one has two sides to their character (I believe in Browning up to a certain point)—one to face the world with, and ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... hostile territory, silence is maintained; articles of equipment are secured to prevent rattling, and smoking and talking are not permitted. Also, under certain conditions villages and farmhouses are avoided on account ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... streams should go one way, though the gentle mother had ever led their dancing steps another; nay, the very rocks must fall before him, and take what form he wills. The battle is lost and won. Nature is fairly routed and driven from the field, and the rattling, crackling, hissing, spitting demon has taken ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... searches the under side of leaves and branches for insect life, "in that near-sighted way peculiar to the tribe." It is a very stoic among birds, and seems never surprised at anything, "even at the loud report of a gun, with the shot rattling about it in the branches, and, if uninjured, it will stand for a moment unconcerned, or move along, peering on every side amongst the foliage, warbling ...
— Birds Illustrated by Colour Photography, Vol II. No. 4, October, 1897 • Various
... perfidious Albion—to be journeying across the monotonous plains of Upper Burgundy, en route for the gay capital. 'Twas a summer morn, and the breezy call of the incense-breathing lady, as Gray the poet calls her, came delightfully upon our heated forehead, as we pushed down the four-paned rattling window of that clumsy typefication of slowness, misnamed a diligence, to escape from the stifling atmosphere of the rotonde. Our fellow-travellers consisted of a couple of greasy, black-haired, sallow-faced cures, two farmers' wives with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... high and dry, the pavilions deserted and the bathing-houses boarded up, the beaches take on a new aspect. The sun shines with a cold gleam, and the surf has an angry snarl to it as it surges up the sandy slopes and then recedes, dragging the pebbles after it with a rattling sound. The outer line of sand-bars, which in summer breaks the blue sea into sunny ripples and flashing whitecaps, then churns the water into fury and grips with a mighty hold the keel of any vessel that is unlucky enough to be driven on them. When the keen winter winds whip through the beach ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... off, but a fresh wind had sprung up; it was chilly and searching. This with my wet clothing made me very uncomfortable; my nerves began to quiver before the searching wind. The barking of mastiffs, the crowing of fowls, and the distant rattling of market waggons, warned me that the ...
— The Fugitive Blacksmith - or, Events in the History of James W. C. Pennington • James W. C. Pennington
... his own apartments, dragging up the most comfortable chair in the room, forcing him into it, and tucking a cushion under his head, or ringing up Jefferson every few moments for some new luxury. These he would catch away from that perfectly trained servant's tray, serving them himself, rattling on all the time as to how sorry he was that he did not know the exact hour at which Jack would arrive, that he might have had breakfast on the table—how hot had it been on the road—how ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... "sack of castings," the voice kept on crazily alluding to "your uncle" and "all night"—and phrases that were jumbled as in a dream. He came to himself suddenly with a start and then the connection was broken off and there was nothing but a confused buzzing and rattling. He straightened up on the stool, waited a minute, and then jiggled the receiver. He felt very queer. He felt to blame for his stupidness. He felt someway as though he had been caught up with. And he could ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... high heels on the concrete sidewalk was a rattling tattoo so eloquent of disorganized panic that more than one head was thrust from a neighboring window to investigate, and more than one head was pulled back, nodding to the well-worn and charitable hypothesis, "Their first quarrel." The hypothesis would instantly ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... the canvas cover over the bay packhorse.... Something took place. I heard a bang, a clatter, a rattling of hoofs. I peered around the bay and saw the blue pony performing some of the most finished, vigorous, and varied bucking it has ever been given me to witness. He all but threw somersaults. He stood on his upper lip. He humped up ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... all those six non-natural things at once, good air, good diet, exercise, company, sleep, rest, ease, &c., that are bound in chains all day long, suffer hunger, and (as [2196]Lucian describes it) "must abide that filthy stink, and rattling of chains, howlings, pitiful outcries, that prisoners usually make; these things are not only troublesome, but intolerable." They lie nastily among toads and frogs in a dark dungeon, in their own dung, in pain of body, in pain of soul, as Joseph did, Psal. cv. 18, "they hurt his feet in the ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... from the upper world. His breathing was sharply audible, as of one drugged by sleep; his body had not moved an inch in an hour or more, so fierce was the suspense that held him rigid. From time to time he swallowed, although his mouth was dry and empty; there was a rattling sound accompanying the act that suggested the hoarse croak of a frog. Always his gaze was on the door, never wavering, unblinkng, fascinated by the horror that was creeping down to him as surely as the sun crept up to the apex ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... displayed on the parapet, and he was on the point of bargaining for some. He smiled, thrust his hands philosophically into his pockets, and fell to strolling on again with a proud disdain in his manner, when he heard to his surprise some coin rattling fantastically ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... with as much rattling and distention to make a noise; and when they get their new seats, and the teacher is again engaged upon his work, they exchange winks and nods, and in ten minutes are slyly cannonading each ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott
... turned his red, weather-beaten face to them from the doorway where he stood, pulling on his clumsy gloves. "Who, me?" he asked. "No; I never seen him till to-day. He's a new hand, I reckon." He drew the door after him with a rattling slam, rang the bell for himself, and ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... we heard a coach drive up, and questions asked below. "A gent with an elderly wife, sir," was returned from the bureau. And the wheels went rattling on, and free at last from public ken We washed all off in her chamber and restored her ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... get a "bite." Again was the retreat conducted in the midst of a rattling volley, with hurtling missiles burning the air all around them, as well as beating a lively tattoo on the armored parts ...
— Air Service Boys Flying for Victory - or, Bombing the Last German Stronghold • Charles Amory Beach
... have discharged all their moisture, collected into a dense canopy, darkening the whole heaven, and rumbling with thunder, that became every moment louder and heavier. Then came gusts of wind, groaning through the forest, rattling among the dead limbs of the girdled trees, and whistling over the palisades of the fort. These were succeeded by louder peals of thunder, and vivid flashes of lightning, which continued and increased, until the tempest, for such it was, burst in fury, discharging deluges of rain, that fell ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... in a tenor voice; it was the citoyen Blaise just come back to his shop. He advanced, boots creaking, charms rattling, coat-skirts flying, an enormous black cocked hat on his head, the corners of ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... lay his weary head in the lap of Thetis, as friend Hudibras has it; The horned moon, and the sweet pale stars, were looking serenely! upon the darkened earth, when the denizens of this little village were disturbed by the cry of fire. The engines would have been rattling through the streets with considerable alacrity, if the fathers of the town had not neglected to provide them; but the energetic citizens were soon on hand. There was much difficulty in finding where the fire was, and heads and feet were turned in various directions, ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... friends, who were so fond of music, had frequently in full gabble joined the con strepito chorus, and quite completed that kind of harmony in which our concert excelled. Add to which there was the rattling of the card tables, placed ready by her order during the music; for she was too good an economist to lose time. But she professed to have a delicate ear. Enoch had taught her to know when things were done ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... abed and sleeping. The clock on the wall ticked loudly and lazily, as if it had time to spare. Outside the rattling windows there was a restless, whispering wind. The room grew light, and dark, and wondrous light again, as the moon played hide-and-seek through the clouds. The boy, wide-awake and quiet in his bed, was thinking of the Stranger ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... moment to trample me under their feet. Fortunately for me, they were all tolerably quiet The thunder of the artillery had long ceased; but, had it even continued, it could not possibly have been heard amidst the rattling of carriages and cannon; the shouts of soldiers and officers, as sometimes cavalry, at others infantry, wanted to pass first; the incessant cursing, cracking, pushing, and thrusting. Never while I live shall I witness such a scene of confusion, of which ...
— Frederic Shoberl Narrative of the Most Remarkable Events Which Occurred In and Near Leipzig • Frederic Shoberl (1775-1853)
... from the cannon's mouth, and rushed along its deadly track. It struck the top of a wave, and bounding up passed through the sails and cordage of the Russian, cutting one or two of the lighter spars, and also the main topsail halyards, which caused the yard to come rattling down, and rendered the sail useless. Seeing this, the pirate captain ordered sail to be reduced in order to keep at a sufficient distance astern to render the guns of the chase useless. Every shot from our gun now told with terrible ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... otter at Myers and wanted one for himself. He had brought with him an otter trap, with smooth jaws instead of the cruel teeth which are customary, and he set it near an otter slide. The next day as the canoe approached the point where the trap had been set the rattling of the chain that held it told of the victim it had made. The hind leg of the otter was held firmly by the trap, but he sprang fiercely at Ned as he came near, and the sharp teeth snapped together within a few inches of the boy's face as the short chain straightened ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... the skin with lake water was no rattling good exchange for riding home on a fresh horse that felt like a warm stove under me, but a five-mile short cut across the apex of the road and lake triangle was better than walking twenty-two miles along ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... that's flat," cries stern papa. A lucky sunbeam shines on the discourse, The parents soften, and Miss mounts her horse. Each tickled with some laugh-inspiring notion, Behold the jocund party all in motion: Some by a rattling buggy are befriended, Some mount the cart—but not to be suspended. The mourning-coach[B] is wisely counter-order'd (The very thought on impious rashness border'd), Because the luckless vehicle, one night, Put all its merry mourners in a fright, Who, to conduct them to the ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... her pocket the magic fish-bone, that had been dried and rubbed and polished till it shone like mother-of-pearl; and she gave it one little kiss, and wished it was quarter-day. And immediately it WAS quarter-day; and the king's quarter's salary came rattling down the chimney, and bounced into the ...
— Holiday Romance • Charles Dickens
... tremendous rush, at the risk of his own neck, they said, and the grey stood off his fence. Such a little thing, dear, such a little thing. Boatman stood off his fence, landed on top, and turned clean over on to his rider. Vixen hit all round, but by rattling good horsemanship—as good as Paul's own, they said—was kept on her legs, and came in winner of ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... of fours, silent, with not a canteen rattling, with scabbards thrust under their stirrup leathers, each man sitting his saddle like a statue, ready carbine flung forward across the pommel, those sunburnt troopers moved steadily down the broad ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... except for the trembling of her head. The girl (Byrne was certain she was a casual gipsy admitted there for some reason or other) sat on the hearth stone in the glow of the embers. She hummed a tune to herself, rattling a pair of castanets slightly now and then. At the mention of the archbishop she chuckled impiously and turned her head to look at Byrne, so that the red glow of the fire flashed in her black eyes and on her white teeth under the dark cowl of ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... the state-coach of Black Log, drawn by Isaac Bolum's lemon-colored mules, with the committee rattling along behind in a spring wagon, politely taking our dust, I came home once more, over the ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... animals are so rare that a family of hunting Indians can scarcely find a living in a thousand square miles. Today the voracious maw of the daily newspaper is eating the spruce and hemlock by means of relentless saws and rattling pulp-mills. In the wake of the lumbermen settlers are tardily spreading northward from the more favored tracts in northern New England and southern Canada. Nevertheless most of the evergreen forests of the north must always remain ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington
... sleeping-place there came sounds of energetic house-cleaning: pieces of property came tumbling out of the door—an old saddle-blanket, a yellow slicker, a pair of boots, a tin bucket. Finally a branding-iron bounded back from the heap and fell rattling on the door-sill; then there was a sound of wiping and dusting out. Janet sat silent, her hands in her lap. In a little while he came crawling backwards out of the door and brushed the accumulated dirt off the door-sill with a light blue ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... the accommodation of the stewards of steamboats landing at the levee. At seven or eight in the evening they were sure to be open, with business in unabated activity. But the clerks were full of curiosity when Barbara, escorted only by the negro serving boy, presented herself and began rattling off orders greater in volume than any they had ever received, even from the steward of an overcrowded passenger steamer. She began by ordering forty sugar cured hams and four hindquarters of beef. She followed up these purchases with orders ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... bitter blast, and wheel about the sky. A cake of scurf lies baking on the ground, And prickly stubs, instead of trees, are found; Or woods with knots and knares deformed and old, Headless the most, and hideous to behold; A rattling tempest through the branches went, That stripped them bare, and one sole way they bent. Heaven froze above severe, the clouds congeal, And through the crystal vault appeared the standing hail. Such was the ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden
... strain on her powers, vehemently talking of other things, and, with burning cheeks and shining eyes, moving incessantly from one employment to another; now her needle, now her pencil—roaming round the garden gathering flowers, or playing rattling polkas that half stunned Ethel in her intense listening for tidings. Ethel, who had relieved guard and sent Mary home in the afternoon, had vainly striven to make Ave rest or take food; the attempt had brought on such choking, that she could only desist, and wait ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... it so. My argument is that War makes rattling good history; but Peace is poor reading. So I back Bonaparte for the reason that he will ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... her master gave her the customary lesson: She circled the tanbark on her fat brown pony—now to the right, at a walk; now to the left, at a trot; now back to the right again at a rattling canter, with her yellow hair whipping her shoulders, and her three-cornered hat working farther and farther back on her bobbing head, and tugging hard at the elastic under her dimpled chin. After nearly an hour of this walk, trot and canter she was very rosy, and quite out of breath. ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... and the finer parts at the surface, or, after applying it, to add a thin layer of earth, barely sufficient to fill its spaces,—to "bind" it so as to give it a firm and solid consistency. Loose and rattling gravel makes a handsome walk to look at, but an unpleasant one to walk upon. Nothing is more agreeable than well-trodden, dry, root-bound earth, as where grass has been worn away by frequent use; but this becomes at once objectionable on being saturated ...
— Village Improvements and Farm Villages • George E. Waring
... to the side of the stage. Abruptly the roar of the men was drowned in another sound—a soul-rending, teeth-grating, bone-rattling screech. The men froze, jaws sagging, eyes wide, hardly believing their ears. In the instant of silence as the factory whistle died away, Walter grabbed the microphone. "You want the code word to start the machines again? I'll give it to you ...
— Meeting of the Board • Alan Edward Nourse
... that like those who were placed in the furnace, nine times heated, he may come out without a hair of his head singed—unhurt and rejoicing, ready again to fight the good fight, with much shouting, the rattling of chariots, and the noise of triumph ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... on the whole, more genial when found in a society of young gentlemen, graduates of the Turf and the Marlborough, and guided in their benignant studies by the gentle experience and the mild wisdom of White's. The startling scandal, the rattling anecdote, the astounding leaps, and the amazing shots, afford for the moment a somewhat pleasing distraction, but when it is discovered that all these habitual flim-flams are, in general, the airy creatures of inaccuracy and exaggeration—that the scandal is not true, the anecdote has no foundation, ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... rattling voice. "Because of the... carelessness of someone... Mrs. Vernon wandered into the room ... of Mrs. Leroux. She seems to have had a fit of remorse... or something like it. She begged Mrs. Leroux to pull up... before... too late. Ho-Pin arrived just as she was crying to ... Mrs. Leroux... ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... falling, change the position of his weapon. I did that for him by a mere touch, and it ran by me, near, it is true, but without hurting me. Mine, on the other hand, pierced the muscle of the Black Colonel's right arm, and instantly his sword fell from his hand, rattling close to my foot. The blood spurted from him to the cry of the onlookers, "Ah, he's ill hit," for he looked it, lying there on the ground with a long, red gash in ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... as far as she could, select those which the Prioress would herself select; and the promise she could see pleased the dying woman. It was at the end of the week that the end came. Evelyn sat by her, holding her hand, and hearing an ominous rattling sound in the throat, she waited, waited, heard it again, saw the body tremble a little, and then, getting up, she closed the eyes, said a little prayer, and went out of the room to tell the nuns of the Prioress's death, surprised ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... rattling nonsense—nothing more. He was always lightheaded. He ran upstairs and into the dining-room before I could ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... obtain the greatest possible effect with the smallest power; if so, the more simple the language, the more matter is condensed, the nearer we approach to perfection. Flourishes and flowers of rhetoric may be compared to extra wheels applied to a carriage, increasing the rattling and complexity of the machine, without adding to either the strength of its fabric or the rapidity of ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... with a thud. Stan jumped and landed in a hedge beside the road and rolled on into tall grass. O'Malley hit close beside him, and they crouched behind the hedge watching the truck. It went rattling on into the night. Sim called ...
— A Yankee Flier Over Berlin • Al Avery
... winter,—and it was not a great while before I congratulated myself on the good fortune which had provided me with that warm nest. More than once, however, I experienced something like a sentiment of shame, when, in the dark and freezing nights, with the hail rattling on my tent, I sat by my warm fire, and heard the crack of the sharp-shooters, along the lines beyond Petersburg. What right had I to be there, by that blazing fire, in my warm tent, when my brethren—many of them ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... away from the farmhouse, and started at a rattling pace along the pleasant road, with green waving corn on his left, and broad blue ocean on ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... come over to see the game stopped near Merriwell and his party and laughed over the "snap" Camden would have that day. One of them was telling the others how easy it was to rattle Dayguild and break his courage by hitting him hard and putting two rattling coachers on the line to keep him "up in the air." Frank did not miss a word ...
— Frank Merriwell's Cruise • Burt L. Standish
... Do to Flo, and both stood primly silent till they were tumbled into another mail bag, and went rattling on again with ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... the grand object of interest to the whole tribe of 'Leo-hunters,' male and female, of the metropolis. Nay, Pickwick chintzes figured in linen-drapers' windows, and Weller corduroys in breeches-makers' advertisements; Boz cabs might be seen rattling through the streets; and the portrait of the author of 'Pelham' or 'Crichton' was scraped down or pasted over to make room for that of the new popular favourite in the omnibuses." For forty years the writings of this great novelist have held their place in ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... Men? There were men enough; all dead, apparently, except one, who lay near where I had halted my platoon to await the slower movement of the line—a Federal sergeant, variously hurt, who had been a fine giant in his time. He lay face upward, taking in his breath in convulsive, rattling snorts, and blowing it out in sputters of froth which crawled creamily down his cheeks, piling itself alongside his neck and ears. A bullet had clipped a groove in his skull, above the temple; from this the brain protruded in bosses, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... and the wind, which has risen to a gale, fills the air with noises—the rattling of loosely-fastened shutters, the sough of the pine trees behind the house, the thousand-and-one eerie sounds that a high wind and night bring into empty ...
— Only an Irish Girl • Mrs. Hungerford
... it as if riding on horseback; some, however, have been modernized so as to afford a more convenient seat in the usual way. Night and day these droskys are every where to be seen, sometimes drawn up by the sidewalk, the driver asleep, awaiting a customer, but more frequently rattling full tilt over the pavements (the roughest in the world) with a load, consisting, in nine cases out of ten, of a fat old gentleman in military uniform, a very ugly old lady with a lapdog, or a very dashy young lady glittering ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... length, however, you get fairly under weigh, with about a four knot breeze, and continue to make some progress for an hour or two amidst a noise caused by the rumbling of the vehicle, the creaking, jingling, rattling, and clanking, of the atalage, the unceasing crack of the whip, and the chattering of your companions, to which the sounds at Babel were music. The movement then becomes adagio, and soon afterwards ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... malice, pride, and envy. Having never been able to succeed in any of his undertakings, he revenged himself on all around him by loading them with the blackest calumnies. Rich as he was, he found it difficult to procure a set of flatterers. The rattling of the chariots that entered Zadig's court in the evening filled him with uneasiness; the sound of his praises enraged him still more. He sometimes went to Zadig's house, and sat down at table without being ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... tall looking-glass, and two lighted wax candles; a table in the middle with some packs of cards, and a liqueur bottle and glasses, and a bed on one side opposite the fireplace. The window looked on to a side street, noisy with the incessant rattling of vehicles, and so narrow that the numerous lighted interiors of the houses opposite were visible to the most casual observer. A smell of smoking pervaded the room, explained by the presence of a young man, who held a cigar in one hand, whilst he leaned ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... particular a Vogtland regiment, whose marching step was fairly orthodox, following the beat of a drummer who tried to vary the monotony of his instrument in an artistic manner by hitting the wooden frame alternately with the drumhead. The unpleasant rattling tone thus produced reminded me in ghostly fashion of the rattling of the skeletons' bones in the dance round the gallows by night which Berlioz had brought home to my imagination with such terrible realism in his performance of the last movement ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... nurse, and watcher, and performer of nameless offices about the persons of the dead—whom he had recommended. Her name, as Mr Pecksniff gathered from a scrap of writing in his hand, was Gamp; her residence in Kingsgate Street, High Holborn. So Mr Pecksniff, in a hackney cab, was rattling over Holborn stones, in quest of ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... and describes the sacrifice and oath of the seven chiefs. The Chorus of Theban maidens enter in confusion and sing the first ode. The hostile army is hurrying from its camp against the town; the Chorus hear their shouts and the rattling din of their arms, and are overcome by terror. Eteocles reproves them for their fears, and bids them sing a paean that shall hearten the people. The messenger, in a noteworthy scene, describes the appearance of each hostile chief. The seventh ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... had already passed so far behind the point, that the ball struck a projecting part of the cliff; dashed it into atoms, and, glancing upwards, passed through the cap of the Talisman's mizzen-mast, and brought the lower yard, with all its gear, rattling down on the quarter-deck. When the smoke cleared away, the Avenger had ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... pertinacious than ever. Rest was impossible. The children kept up a continuous chatter, sitting up in bed to listen to the sounds. Mr. Fox tried the windows and doors, to discover, if possible, the source of the annoyance. The night being windy it suggested itself to him that it might be the sashes rattling, but all in vain; the raps continued and were evidently answering the noise occasioned by the father shaking the windows, as if ...
— Hydesville - The Story of the Rochester Knockings, Which Proclaimed the Advent of Modern Spiritualism • Thomas Olman Todd
... York, a rattling talking fellow, not much excepting having got some dollars, now setting off to make a tour through Europe for the benefit of his health; talks of soon learning French and ...
— A Journey to America in 1834 • Robert Heywood
... therefore I would counsel you to omit no decent nor manly degree of importunity. Your debts in the whole are not large, and of the whole but a small part is troublesome. Small debts are like small shot; they are rattling on every side, and can scarcely be escaped without a wound: great debts are like cannon; of loud noise, but little danger. You must, therefore, be enabled to discharge petty debts, that you may have leisure, with security, to struggle with the rest. Neither the great ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... another movement; another indignant exclamation, then the creak of furniture, a step, a rattling at the door. She turned on her side towards the wall, shut her eyes and breathed lightly and regularly. The key revolved, the door opened and closed, and she heard feet shuffling cautiously over the carpet. A moment and Fritz was in bed. Another moment, ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... dream. The eldest sister stood with clasped hands and down-bent head, shivering and speechless, as if waiting for something to follow. Nor did she wait long. A terrible flash and thunder-peal made the castle rock; and in the pausing silence that followed, her quick sense heard the rattling of a chain far off, deep down; and soon the sound of heavy footsteps, accompanied with the clanking of iron, reached her ear. She felt that her brother was at hand. Even in the darkness, and amidst the bellowing of another deep-bosomed cloud-monster, she knew ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... the swamp, with a swarm of indistinct figures clinging to the low cars. When it stopped, the sides of the cars fell outward, a big plow moved forward from one to another, and broken rock and gravel, pouring off, went crashing and rattling down the slope. The noise it made rang harshly through the stillness of the evening, and when it ceased a whistle screamed and the clangor of the wheels began again. As the engine backed the train away, the blaze of the head-lamp fell on an object lying half buried in the muskeg ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... ghosts through these watery woods. Into this wilderness it seems impossible that the hand of human industry, or the foot of human wayfaring should ever penetrate; no wholesome growth can take root in its slimy depths; a wild jungle chokes up parts of it with a reedy, rattling covert for venomous reptiles; the rest is a succession of black ponds, sweltering under black ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... wheels by means of the spur-gear also caused frequent jerks, each cylinder alternately propelling or becoming propelled by the other, as the pressure of the one upon the wheels became greater or less than the pressure of the other; and when the teeth of the cogwheels became at all worn, a rattling noise was produced during the ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... are caused by evil spirits, or the moon; and a comet brings the measles. The help of the witch doctor has to be sought on all occasions, for his special work is to drive away the evil spirit that has taken possession of a sick one. This he does by rattling a hollow calabash containing stones. That important person will perform his mystic hocus pocus over the sick or dying, and charm away the spirits from a neighborhood. I have known an Indian, ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray |
