"Rattling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... swept round the point that had hitherto shut out the view of Sandy Cove, and a few minutes later the rattling of the chain announced that the voyage of the Foam ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... his letter, he walked into the wood, with some inconvenience, from the furze that pricked his legs, and the briars that scratched his face. He at last sat down under a tree, and heard with great delight a shower, by which he was not wet, rattling among the branches: This, said he, is the true image of obscurity; we hear of troubles and ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... which nearly all may enjoy, the inspiring, soul-elevating influences of which nearly all may feel. I say, nearly all; because it is a sad truth that there are some persons who have no ear whatever for music, and to whom the harsh, rattling noise of the cart on the stony street affords just as much melody as do the sweetest tones that may issue from a musical instrument. Again: there are those, who, although possessing to some extent a faculty for musical discernment, are yet so much ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... and made a calculation; Auber's train was probably at Newark. I could stand it no longer, and I went toward his room, stamping on the bare floor, whistling nervously, and rattling the rickety balustrade. I banged open the door and began to ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... work; and the energy of the bishops soon relaxed. But Mary had no thought of hesitation in the course she had entered on, and though the Imperial ambassador noted the rapid growth of public discontent "rattling letters" from the council pressed the lagging prelates to fresh activity. Yet the persecution had hardly begun before difficulties were thickening round the Queen. In her passionate longing for an heir who would carry on her religious work Mary had believed herself ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... wife and a number of children, and that his azotea is occupied by the federalist troops. Fortunately, these grenades burst in the patio of his house, and no one was injured. The chief danger to those who are not actually engaged in this affair, is from these bullets and shells, which come rattling into all the houses. We have messages from various people whom we invited to come here for safety, that they would gladly accept our offer, but are unwilling to leave their houses exposed to pillage, and do not dare to pass through the streets. ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... going to happen?" asked the lady; and the listener thought he had never heard a sweeter voice, though he might not have thought so if he had heard it at Bonnydale, or anywhere else except in the midst of the din of pealing guns and the rattling ...
— On The Blockade - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray Afloat • Oliver Optic
... baby were at the pier to meet him. He looked for signs of the mourning Ursula had described, but he looked in vain. Never had he seen her lovelier, or so sparkling. And how she did talk!—rattling on and on, with those interesting commonplaces of domestic event—the baby, the household, the garden, the baby—the horses, the dogs, the baby—the servants, her new dresses, the baby—and so on, ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... a volley of low toned Latin phrases, rattling in the stillness like the popping of ...
— The Backwash of War - The Human Wreckage of the Battlefield as Witnessed by an - American Hospital Nurse • Ellen N. La Motte
... author required them to conduct their most secret affairs in a lighted ground-floor room with the curtains undrawn. Most of them turn out to be Bolshevists, or at least in the receipt of Soviet subsidies—though I see a well-known Labour Daily reviewed the plot as unconvincing. Odd! Anyhow, a rattling story. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 1st, 1920 • Various
... o'clock in the afternoon, we found a young Indian girl stretched upon the savannah. She was almost in a state of nudity, and appeared to be about twelve or thirteen years of age. Exhausted with fatigue and thirst, her eyes, nostrils, and mouth filled with dust, she breathed with a rattling in her throat, and was unable to answer our questions. A pitcher, overturned, and half filled with sand, was lying at her side. Happily one of our mules was laden with water; and we roused the girl from her lethargic state by bathing her face, and forcing her to drink a few ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... place. Although a "square man," he had by no means been fitted into a round hole! Knowing this, Prince Bladud felt no anxiety as to the management of the craft, and gave himself up to contemplate the grandeur of the storm, for the howling blast, creaking spars, and bursts of rattling thunder, rendered conversation out of ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... to resist; and in a half sleep, broken with an aching, terrified sense of something wanting which he could not find, he was swept down the line, got on the coach, and mechanically, almost without knowing it, found himself set down at the city of A—, and the coach rattling away down the street. ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... rattling, a clamor at the door, and Isabel turned to Mr. Grimm mutely, with arms outstretched. The revolver barrel clicked under his hand, then, after a moment, he replaced the ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle
... a story which he had sketched out a number of weeks before and which ever since had been worrying him with its insistent clamor to be created. Apparently it was to be a rattling sea story, a tale of twentieth-century adventure and romance, handling real characters, in a real world, under real conditions. But beneath the swing and go of the story was to be something else—something that the superficial reader would never discern and which, on the ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... of the machinery of modern language is labour-saving machinery; and it saves mental labour very much more than it ought. Scientific phrases are used like scientific wheels and piston-rods to make swifter and smoother yet the path of the comfortable. Long words go rattling by us like long railway trains. We know they are carrying thousands who are too tired or too indolent to walk and think for themselves. It is a good exercise to try for once in a way to express any opinion one holds in words of one syllable. If you say "The social utility of ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... have been hauled up 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 ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... we threw among them some knives, tobacco, bells, tape, and binding, with which they were much pleased. Their musical instruments were the drum, and a sort of little bag made of buffaloe hide, dressed white, with small shot or pebbles in it, and a bunch of hair tied to it. This produces a sort of rattling music, with which the party was annoyed by four musicians ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... all nations were there, Ligurians, Lusitanians, Balearians, Negroes, and fugitives from Rome. Beside the heavy Dorian dialect were audible the resonant Celtic syllables rattling like chariots of war, while Ionian terminations conflicted with consonants of the desert as harsh as the jackal's cry. The Greek might be recognised by his slender figure, the Egyptian by his elevated shoulders, the Cantabrian by his broad calves. There were ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... below. Before them, interrupted here and there by a mass of ruined masonry, or a few arches of aqueduct, waved the grey-green, billowy plain, where the wind, which rolled the great winter cloud-balls overhead, danced and sang with the tall, dry hemlocks and sere white thistles, shining and rattling like skeletons. And on to it seemed to descend cloud-mountains, vague blueness and darkness—cloud or hill, you could not tell which—out of whose flank, ever and anon, a sunbeam conjured up ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... as I was simply dying for some candy I made fudge while preparing breakfast. I had to use condensed milk, watered; and as there was no marble slab I had to stir it in the pan. I don't know how good it is; it's awfully grainy"; and thus, rattling on, she took a square of the confection and placed ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... could say more, or further hail the Red Cross girl, there was a crash and terrific rattling around the turn of the avenue. The next instant a horse appeared, madly galloping along the roadway, and drawing the shattered remains of a ...
— The Girls of Central High Aiding the Red Cross - Or Amateur Theatricals for a Worthy Cause • Gertrude W. Morrison
... The rest had shouldered their bows and were aiming, but I thought unsteadily; and before the triggers were drawn again Will Green had nocked and loosed, and not a few others of our folk; then came the wooden hail of the bolts rattling through the boughs, but all ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... she asked, dropping the little package into her handbag of gold mesh and rattling the various accoutrements of beautification which ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... friend of mine, but I understood from this way of attacking me that petty hatreds were lifting up their rattlesnake heads. All the low-down, little viper world was crawling about under my flowers and my laurels. I had known what was going on for a long time, and sometimes I had heard rattling behind the scenes. I wanted to have the enjoyment of hearing them all rattle together, and so I threw my laurels and my flowers to the four winds of heaven. In the most abrupt way I broke the contract which bound me to the Comedie ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... overhead and she was afraid of those snaky things on the windowsills. She remembered the man who had been killed in the draw, and she wondered what she would do if she saw crazy Lou's white face glaring into the window. The rattling of the door became unbearable, she thought the latch must be loose and took the lamp to look at it. Then for the first time she saw the ugly brown snake skins whose death rattle sounded every time the wind jarred ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... of so anomalous a state of domestic architecture? Shall we sand our floors, and design chairs with high backs to break off the draughts from our rattling sashes, from which we have removed the cords and weights? abandon the equable temperature throughout our dwellings for individual fires unassisted by the furnace or steam-coil? revert to the moderator or carcel lamp, casting a dim light over a radius of a few feet and entirely ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... Seer, 'Now who shall render this dark scripture clear That I may know the meaning of the gift?' And the mage oped his mouth and strove to lift His voice, but could not, for the wished word Clave to his rattling throat, that no man heard: Whereby the soul, departing, bore away From all men living, even to this day, The secret. And the jewel hath passed down Seven times from sire to son, and in the crown It shineth ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... more varied and musical than those of other woodpeckers—are probably the results of his new free life, and the modified tongue and bill. In the woods one seldom hears from him anything but the rattling rat-a-tat-tat, as he hammers away on a dry old pine stub. As a rule he seems to do this more for the noise it makes, and the exercise of his abilities, than because he expects to find insects inside; except in winter time, when he goes back to his ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... brought down the great stove from the hut; and breaking a pane of glass in the barred window, they fixed it up with its chimney and lighted it. From time to time the turmoil above them would break out again: the rattling, and sometimes a dull rumbling as of rushing water. But only a faint murmur of it penetrated into the cellar. Towards night ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... square, between a dying man and his 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
... chronicles are drums, resembling the tom-toms used in the temples to the present day. The same variety of form prevailed then as now, and the Rajavali relates, in speaking of the army of Dutugaimunu, that in its march, the "rattling of the sixty-four kinds of drums made a noise resembling thunder breaking on the rock from behind which the sun rises."[1] The band of Devenipiatissa, B.C. 307, was called the talawachara, from the multitude of drums[2]: chank-shells contributed to swell the ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... on the righteous side, and Gideon's sword was out, With clash of steel, and rattling drum, and freeman's thunder-shout; And crimson torrents drenched the land through that long, stormy fight, But in the end, hurrah! the Wrong was beaten by ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... 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 ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... King of 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, ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... had a quaint conceit that if she listened attentively she would be able to hear Priscilla's heart jingling in her body—rattling like a bit of ice in a tin bucket. Now the woman's mean, chaste little soul laid bare before her filled Delia Toomey with ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... The paddle came rattling down upon the bottom of the skiff. Roland stooped, and before she knew what he was about, took Hilda in his arms, lifted her ashore, and laid ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... 'tis sweeping With rattling beat, Like dwarf imp leaping In gallop fleet He flies, he prances, In frolic fancies, On wave-crest dances ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... rustles into hearing with Bessie Gabriel in tow. Josie is rattling volubly, but with a hint of the confidential in her tone. She insists that: "Of course, I never let on, but every time we meet I can ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... day we were sent for by the governor, to be examined. It was a triumph to us to be conducted as a spectacle through the market-place and the streets, with our chains rattling. The soldiers, who knew not where the governor would hear its, dragged us from place to place, till, at length, he ordered us to be brought into his closet. He put several questions to us; our answers were modest, but firm: at length we were remanded to prison; ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... avenge On the Achaian host thy servant's tears. Such prayer he made, and it was heard.[7] The God, Down from Olympus with his radiant bow And his full quiver o'er his shoulder slung, 55 Marched in his anger; shaken as he moved His rattling arrows told of his approach. Gloomy he came as night; sat from the ships Apart, and sent an arrow. Clang'd the cord [8]Dread-sounding, bounding on the silver bow.[9] 60 Mules first and dogs he struck,[10] but at themselves Dispatching ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... piano drummed somewhere; a man's loud voice rang out, and a woman's laugh faint, hollow and far away, like the ghost of laughter, returned in echo. The musical clinking of glasses, the ring of a cash register, the rattling click of pool balls, came up ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... the plaza and the heart of the town. She was still in the open country, with orchards stretching out interminably on either side and not even a peon within hailing distance, when the chug and snort of a motor reached her reluctant ears. Billie knew that irregular rattling hum, and insensibly quickened ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... backward to Mr. King, whose head was almost under his bench. Each had received a bullet, and both lay breathing unconsciously. The cobbler stooped over and placed his hand under Theodore's head to straighten it a little. For a full minute nothing was heard but the loud rattling in Maudlin's throat and the steady, laborious breath of ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... her nearly in a straight line to the opposite bank. Here I watched her to see whether she would trundle herself like a dog, but she merely rested a bit, letting the water run from her, and then set off at a rattling pace across the mead, which doubtless ...
— Chatterbox Stories of Natural History • Anonymous
... each other. Hilda's face flushed to a sombre red. Mrs. Lessways brusquely left the room. Then Hilda could hear her rattling fussily at the kitchen range. After a few minutes Hilda followed her to the kitchen, which was now nearly in darkness. The figure of Mrs. Lessways, still doing nothing whatever with great vigour at the range, was dimly visible. ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... chattering of voices, a rattling of knives and forks, and changing of plates. Mark Antony was master of ceremonies at the table, giving directions to ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... followed a rattling catalogue of matrimonial failures in the artist world, amusing enough—perhaps a little cruel. Cuningham laughed. Watson, on whom Lord Findon's whole personality seemed to have an effect more irritating than agreeable, fidgeted with his brushes. He struck in presently with the dry remark ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... explosion, and the echoes rolled out from the hills as though they were armed with heavy guns, and were taking part in the conflict. Probably the rattling windows and the shaking frames of the houses roused all the sleepers within a mile ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... air toward the precipice. But from the clump of cactus growth along the parapet arose a sahuaro, with branching arms, and against this the snake was flung. Wrapped around the thorny top by the momentum of the cast, it hung, hissing and rattling ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... and went into the shack. From the inside of this 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 shirt. He went in again, ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... run on first, kept knocking and knocking at the door, and shouting at the top of their voices, but the creaking of the verandah posts, the rattling of the shingles on the roof, the continuous roar of the thunder, and the howling of the wind among the trees, completely drowned their voices. They ran round to try and find an entrance by one of the windows or back door, ...
— The Young Berringtons - The Boy Explorers • W.H.G. Kingston
... of the race itself," added Enoch quietly. "I know! But I had to choose between a rattling good administrator ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... Hanlon placed his hands under the old man's arms his tongue was rattling on at a prodigious speed; and as he tossed the old man lightly away like a doll he was saying, "And niver once did the spacheless man and the deaf wife have anny worrds except once; and 'twas then that——." But he spoke no more. He was himself again. ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... chiming clock on his dressing-case in the adjoining bedroom had tinkled forth its ten tapping hammer strokes when the man sitting in the dark heard the pounding of hoofs and the rattling of buggy wheels in the quiet street. He was absently awaking to the fact that the vehicle had stopped at his own door when he heard voices, the widow's and another, in the lower hall, and then a man's footsteps on the ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... of his countenance, and the sweat standing in large drops upon his forehead; nay, there was a manifest disorder in his speech, when he regretted his want of the pila and parma, with which he would have made a rattling noise, to astonish his foe, in springing forward, and singing the hymn to battle, in the ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... to a liquid stream, red as a river of blood. The princesses were frightened and began to cry. Their tears fell into the crimson flood. Captain Devot, who seemed in his dream to be one of the ladies' attendants, jumped from his horse to pick up the princesses' tears, which turned into little, rattling stones as they fell. With that, he waked. The princesses were gone—"all but Victoire," he said, smiling, "she shall stay with us! The thunder was the thunder of German guns. The poppies were there—and the blood was there. So also were the stones ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... at the review to-day; for, amidst all the rattling and noise of artillery and the galloping of cavalry, there was only one infantry movement that we have not practised, and that was done by only one regiment, and apparently considered quite a novelty, though ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... friend I have on earth—except Alice.... And there—to make a clean breast of it, I'm not sure that my aunt cares much about my getting married. She doesn't say so, of course. You know her well enough for that." He looked sidelong at the rattling gaudy traffic. ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... was opened and we all rushed in. It was a room 14'x12'; many of us could not, therefore, come in. When we went in we took a light with us. It was one of the hurricane lanterns—the one we had taken to the kitchen. The lamp suddenly went out. At the same time a brickbat came rattling down from the roof and fell near my feet, thus I could feel it with my feet and tell what it was. And Prayag groaned again. Dr. M.N. came in, and we helped Prayag out of his bed and took him out on the ...
— Indian Ghost Stories - Second Edition • S. Mukerji
... in the middle distance was a track and cradle similar to the one shown in the first picture. The machine in the cabinet buzzed, and clicked, and made a noise like that of a small boy rattling a stick along a picket fence. A draught from some open window blowing against the linen screen caused the flat, deserted plain to undulate like the waves of the sea. The horizon bobbed up and down, showing first a great expanse of sky, and then the ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... But an invitation from the Doctor to visit his cottage and see his curiosities absolutely petrified him; and he vowed he had rather see Old Noll charge at the head of Hazlerig's lobsters than dead men rattling their own bones, or poor innocent children swimming in pickle like witches in a pond. Winking on De Vallance with a look of significance, he said, "You do not know so much of this Doctor as I do; for though the whole country talks ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... little pieces of hot lead into her ear, and he would have escaped, but he sold the body to the old county hospital for practicin' purposes, and while they was monkeying with the skull they heard something rattle and when they investigated it was several pieces of lead inside rattling around. So they arrested Zianow and got him to confess the whole thing, and he was sent up for life, because it turned out his wife had stabbed him four times the week before he poured the lead into her while she slept, and frightened him so ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... changed, and such a change! O night, And storm, and darkness, ye are wondrous strong, Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light Of a dark eye in woman! Far along From peak to peak, the rattling crags among, Leaps the live thunder; not from one lone cloud, But every mountain now has found a tongue, And Jura answers through her misty shroud— Back to the joyous Alps, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... spoiled the satisfaction the sound of the water gave them, especially for Sancho, who was by nature timid and faint-hearted. They heard, I say, strokes falling with a measured beat, and a certain rattling of iron and chains that, together with the furious din of the water, would have struck terror into any heart but Don Quixote's. The night was, as has been said, dark, and they had happened to reach a spot in among some tall trees, whose leaves stirred by a gentle breeze ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... shout from the Austrian Legation, some hoarse cries in guttural German, and the big gates of the Legation were thrown open near us. The night was inky black, and you could see nothing. A confused banging of feet followed, then some more orders, and with a rattling of gun-wheels a machine-gun was run out and planted in the ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... to say whether he would have any fried eggs or not, for at that moment Ethan crept from his concealment, whatever noise he made being drowned by the clatter of the dishes and the rattling of the chairs. Stealing up behind Baker, who was intent only on beefsteak and coffee, he slipped the hangman's noose over his head, and hauled it tight. The robber attempted to spring to his feet, but Ethan hauled him over backward on the floor. At the same time Lawry threw the end of ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic
... manhood but its longings. My life is the dying pang of a worn-out race, and I shall go alone down into the dust, out of this world of men and women, without ever knowing the fellowship of the one or the love of the other. I will not die with a lie rattling in my throat. If another state of being has anything worse in store for me, I have had a long apprenticeship to give me strength that I may bear it. I don't believe it, Sir! I have too much faith for that. God has not left me wholly without comfort, even here. I love this old place where I was ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... by way of responding, stirred the pine-knots until they gave forth a more satisfactory light, hung her bonnet on the bedpost, and seated herself wearily in a rickety chair, the loose planks of the floor rattling and ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... inside and ranged up against the long bar where of yore a half-dozen nimble bar-keepers found little time to loaf. The great room, ordinarily aroar with life, was still and gloomy as a tomb. There was no rattling of chips, no whirring of ivory balls. Roulette and faro tables were like gravestones under their canvas covers. No women's voices drifted merrily from the dance-room behind. Ol' Jim Cummings wiped a glass with palsied hands, ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... for Burnside's corps to pass. Meade and his staff, besides my own staff, were with me. The lady of the house, a Mrs. Tyler, and an elderly lady, were present. Burnside seeing us, came up on the porch, his big spurs and saber rattling as he walked. He touched his hat politely to the ladies, and remarked that he supposed they had never seen so many "live Yankees" before in their lives. The elderly lady spoke up promptly saying, "Oh yes, I have; many more." "Where?" said ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... on in silence, Save for rattling iron and steel, And a skirmish echoing round us, Showering faintly, peal ...
— Along the Shore • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... spoon and his strawberries as unconcernedly as if nothing had happened. I was conscious that I blushed, but my face was in the shade, and nobody else knew it; and to this day I have no doubt the old gentleman would have marvelled what sent that mysterious spoon rattling against his table and whizzing between his boots, had not Halicarnassus, when the uproar was over, conceived it his duty to go and pick up the spoon and apologize for the accident, lest the gentleman should fancy it an intentional rudeness. Partly to reward him for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... their music as in us by ours, so that harmony itself is simply a matter of education after all, and the glorious Fifth Symphony itself, "Lohengrin," or "Scots wha hae," played or sung as I have heard them, would convey no more meaning to these people than so much rattling of cross-bones; but imagine the Fifth Symphony on any scale but ours! I cannot reconcile myself to the idea that we have not the only scale for such a theme; but one has to learn that there are different ways for every thing, and no one who knows much will assume that ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... had subsided, got on his legs, and with one hand rattling the five-shilling pieces in his breeches-pocket, and the thumb of the other thrust into the arm-hole of his waistcoat, thus began to address them.—"Gentlemen," said he, "I'm no orator, but I'm an honest man—(hiccup)—I feels werry (hiccup) much obliged to my excellent friend the Lord High Keeper ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... took hat and walking-stick for his customary morning stroll along the street to Butcher Trengrove's to choose the joint for his dinner and pick up the town's earliest gossip. It is Troy's briskest hour; when the dairy carts, rattling homeward, meet the country folk from up-the-river who have just landed at the quays and begun to sell from door to door their poultry and fresh eggs, vegetables, fruit, and nosegays of garden flowers; when the tradesmen, ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... strongly reminded Harry of the rattling of the rigging in a gale of wind, was now heard in the hall, and Vingo presented himself at the door; he looked at Harry, then at his mistress, while the pupil of his eye gave place to its lighter counterpart, and ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... Wasn't it a rattling good comedy situation? Seems a kind of pity we were the right ones. It would have been such nuts to see the right ones come and get fired out, & we chatting along comfortably & ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... legend. But with the explosion of this idea of a primal curse, like Eve's, on the property," added the Dona Maria, with a slight bitterness, "thou mayest have thy citas—elsewhere. Thou canst scarcely keep this Captain Carroll any longer at a distance by rattling those bones of Koorotora in his face. And of a truth, child, since the affair of the letters, and his discreet and honorable conduct since, I see not why thou shouldst. He has thy mother's reputation ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... length, and, at the tail of a line of stiff carts, they went rattling over the mountain-road. The harebells nodded their washed faces from the hedge, and the talk ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... Morning, doing a deal of Mischief; and working strange Confusion in the Affairs of its Inhabitants. Several Monarchs have done me the Honour to acquaint me, how often they have been shook from their respective Thrones by the rattling of a Coach or the rumbling of a Wheel-barrow. And many private Gentlemen, I find, have been baulk'd of vast Estates by Fellows not worth Three-pence. A fair Lady was just upon the Point of being married to a young, handsome, rich, ingenious Nobleman, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... breathing was less quick and laborious. The spasm of the head was no longer visible. The flow of saliva had stopped and there was less delirium. The jaw began to be dependent: the rattling, choking noise in his throat louder. He carried straw about in his mouth. He picked up some pieces of old leather that lay within his reach and carefully concealed them under his bed. Two minutes afterwards he would take them out again, ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... reached the door, Leneli sat down on the step, and Mother Adolf put the baby in her arms and went at once into the quiet house. Then there was a sound of quick steps about the kitchen, a rattling of the stove, and a clatter of tins which must have pleased the cuckoo, and soon she reappeared in the door with a bowl ...
— The Swiss Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... spirit of his commander's order. In a twinkling he had the boy astride of his neck with the kettle-drum resting on his head, and then the rattling music began. Clark followed, pointing onward with his sword. The half frozen and tottering soldiers sent up a shout that went back to where Captain Bowman was bringing up the rear under orders to shoot every man that straggled or ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... risky, but Torrance spoke with a curious unconcernedness, and Clavering laughed as, signing to two men, he prepared to do his bidding. There was a creaking and rattling, and the great door at one end of the hall swung open, and Flora Schuyler, staring at the darkness, expected to see a rush of shadowy figures out of it. But she saw only the blurred outline of two men who stooped and dragged something in, and then ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice, With the masts went by the board; Like a vessel of glass, she stove and sank, ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... who, with helpless faces Low in the dust, in stiffening ruin lay, Felt the hoofs beat, and heard the rattling traces As o'er us drove ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... the darkness still reigned and a terrific noise, caused by the large stones rattling on the roof and splintering the distant forest branches. The priest on hearing that authoritative drawl behind him, cowered, his fear of personal violence from Crabbe, who bore a bad name, mastering his ecclesiastical dignity; but as he perceived that the guide was fairly sober he gathered courage ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... the highroad now, and were walking on, Orion's arm flung round Diana's waist. Suddenly, rattling round a corner of the country road, came a man with a milk cart. He was a very cheery-looking man with a fat face. He had bright blue eyes and a ...
— A Little Mother to the Others • L. T. Meade
... way from Charing Cross to Dover the train had hammered the words of the telegram into George Darrow's ears, ringing every change of irony on its commonplace syllables: rattling them out like a discharge of musketry, letting them, one by one, drip slowly and coldly into his brain, or shaking, tossing, transposing them like the dice in some game of the gods of malice; and now, ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... roaring sound Burst from th' AEolian caves, and rend the ground; With equal rage their airy quarrel try, 490 And win by turns the kingdom of the sky; But with a thicker night black Auster shrouds The heavens, and drives on heaps the rolling clouds, From whose dark womb a rattling tempest pours, Which the cold north congeals to haily showers. From pole to pole the thunder roars aloud, And broken lightnings flash from every cloud. Now smokes with showers the misty mountain-ground, And floated fields ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... his wife's words very often in the next few days. He thought of them when David stood rattling the knob of the dining-room door, and saying "Maggie says please come and see Mrs. Richie." He thought of them as Jinny pulled him slowly up ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... which entered the town with many blasts of the horn, and with much flourishing of whip, at five o'clock every evening. In the yard of the Red Dragon he waited for the arrival of his father's guest. At the appointed time the coach came rattling round the corner, and, as it drew up on the noisy cobble stones, a pale, thin face emerged from the coach window and looked ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... blanket. "I did not go there. I sprained my ankle." He talked still with that curious rattling in his voice. "I lost time and the damned Indians left me. When ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... a thing of the ultra-damned. All Editors of scientific publications read the Monthly Weather Review and frequently copy from it. The noise made by the stones of Bismarck, rattling against those windows, may be in a language that aviators will some day interpret: but it was a noise entirely surrounded by silences. Of this ultra-damned thing, there is no mention, findable by ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... found it difficult to answer had he been asked which he preferred: to play cards in a beerhouse with a buxom Bohemian waitress beside him, or to be in the neat stables amid the chain-rattling, snorting, stamping company of the horses. Both were to his taste; but perhaps on the whole he was really happiest walking up and down before the stalls, with the goat trotting after him, and the horses turning their heads to follow ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... wrath was awake, 'twas a furnace in glow; As a surge on the rock struck his bold indignation, As the breach to the wall was his arm to the foe. So the tempest comes down, when it lends in its fury To the frown of its darkness the rattling of hail; So rushes the land-flood in turmoil and hurry, So bickers the hill-flame when fed by ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... were formal words of welcome to which she returned a speechless bow, and then he offered his arm and conducted her slowly up the stairs, his sword rattling in its scabbard, to the apartment which was to be her home, and the prison for ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... hammer's blow; I give to him the path who burthens beareth, He worketh for a useful end I know. But he, who for the klip-klap never heareth The call of bells to feeling's holiday— Hath but sham-life, mechanically moving, Soul-less he is, unconscious and unloving. Fly agile arrow, rattling in thy speeding Over the busy emmet's roof of clay, And waken ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... Augustus Howard, a slim young gentleman of high birth and connections, but who, having, as a portionless cadet, his own way to make in the world, condescended to be his lordship's private secretary, were rattling over the streets the ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VII • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... found out for you, Sergeant, in the rattling of a brace-block! You have some notion about a degree, and minutes and ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... then love too is gone, It was a reed that I leant upon: Never doubt I will leave you alone And not wake you rattling bone ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... white manes and tails; always, from some incomprehensible reason, with manes and tails different in colour from their bodies. They are hardy, active animals, and they seem to take positive pleasure in the rattling, neck-or-nothing scamper that succeeds ...
— Chasing the Sun • R.M. Ballantyne
... rattling good friend. [She takes his hands.] Almost wish I'd married you instead. We'd have been more ...
— Fanny and the Servant Problem • Jerome K. Jerome
... their father and mother, who were preparing to lead the way to the shrubbery, but before they were out of the hall door, the post chaise and four was rattling down the avenue and in a few minutes the two lads were pressed to the hearts of their beloved ...
— Christmas, A Happy Time - A Tale, Calculated for the Amusement and Instruction of Young Persons • Miss Mant
... meditations were interrupted by the sound of carriage wheels, which not only came rattling down the little street, but stopped at the hall door. She started up in a fright, pushed back her disordered hair from her flushed face, and the next moment found herself in the voluminous embrace ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... week: indeed, in some places in Scotland where I have stayed when I was a girl, the post came in but once a month;—but letters were letters then; and we made great prizes of them, and read them and studied them like books. Now the post comes rattling in twice a day, bringing short jerky notes, some without beginning or end, but just a little sharp sentence, which well- bred folks would think too abrupt to be spoken. Well, well! they may all be improvements,—I dare say they are; but you ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... stood leaning upon the spade, looking into the open grave, forgetful of everything above the earth. I thought to approach him unheard and unseen; but it was willed otherwise, for I stepped upon some of the crispy earth thrown out, and set the stones to rattling in a very rude sort of way. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... up, then toppled over and fell to the ground. Instantly there arose a deafening chorus of squawks. Herons flew up from the tree tops all about us. The tops of the pines fairly rocked. Great sticks, dirt and cones came rattling down. Upward they soared in a great flock, several hundred feet above the trees, then flew around and ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... train was to reach Rugby at ten minutes to six; at six the London express left Rugby; at a quarter to eight it reached London; at half-past eight the Dover mail would leave London Bridge station; and at half-past seven, or thereabouts, next morning, Henry Dunbar would be rattling through the ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... our three-horse establishment to two, and began to descend the Rhineward zig-zags at a rattling pace, our driver (and all the drivers) hurrying all the way. We reached the first village (where there was considerable Grass again, and some Hemlock, but scarcely any attempts at cultivation), in fifty minutes, and I think the distance was nearly five miles. ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... appeared in a doorway; black boys sprang up like a crop of mushrooms and took charge of the buck-board; Dan rattled in with the pack-teams, and horses were jangling hobbles and rattling harness all about us, as I found myself standing in the shadow of a queer, unfinished building, with the Maluka and Mac surrounded by a mob of leaping, bounding dogs, flourishing, as best they could, ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn |
