"Cackle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... will fall to-day: I will fall with them. Just at that time Sitting-Bull made his appearance. He said, just as though I could hear him at this moment: "A bird, when it is on its nest, spreads its wings to cover the nest and eggs and protect them. It cannot use its wings for defense, but it can cackle and try to drive away the enemy. We are here to protect our wives and children, and we must not let the soldiers get them." He was on a buckskin horse, and he rode from one end of the line to the other, calling out: "Make a brave fight!" ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... is one of the greatest of small men. Have you read Emerson or Lowell yet? Here are new men of real thoughtfulness whose minds are upon the truth which does not fade with passing events. These questions about Texas and Oregon, about tariffs, about Whigs and Democrats, what are they but the cackle of the moment? And yet there is something pathetic about Douglas. Why does he not settle to the solid study and experiences of the law? Why this catching at this and the other opportunity? Mr. Williams says that Mr. Douglas has just ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... ourselves, with charitable intent. Above all, that class of 'Logic-choppers, and treble-pipe Scoffers, and professed Enemies to Wonder; who, in these days, so numerously patrol as night-constables about the Mechanics' Institute of Science, and cackle, like true Old-Roman geese and goslings round their Capitol, on any alarm, or on none; nay who often, as illuminated Sceptics, walk abroad into peaceable society, in full day-light, with rattle and lantern, and insist on guiding you and guarding you therewith, though the Sun is shining, and the ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... rather long and very loud grating, shrikish notes; then instantly shook his wings with an extraordinary flapping noise, and followed that with several highly curious and startling cries, the concluding one of which sometimes suggested the cackle of a robin. All this he repeated again and again with the utmost fervor. He could not have been more enthusiastic if he had been making the sweetest music in the world. And I confess that I thought he had ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... is ushered in by the cackle of the flicker among the oaks on the hill-side, and a new dynasty begins ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... nearly one boy's work, for instance, to take care of the Guinea fowls,—the handsome, mottled hens, that never knew when they were well off, but were always running away and getting lost. If it had not been for their shrill, silly cackle, their hiding-places would never have been found. Master Sunshine pursued them every time they strayed, and brought them home triumphantly. I think he loved his sturdy family of Cochin Chinas best; for the great rooster, with his well-feathered legs and scarlet comb, ...
— Master Sunshine • Mrs. C. F. Fraser
... years? Do you see through me? Do you know me?—No: don't speak: I see your answer already—Your own love blinds you! Ha! I am a good man!—I don't drink, I don't swear, I am respectable, I don't blaspheme like Bletchley! Oh yes, and I am a scholar: I can cackle in Greek: I can wrangle about God's name: I know Latin and Hebrew and all the cursed little pedantries of my trade! But do you know what I am? Do you know what your husband is in the sight of ...
— The Servant in the House • Charles Rann Kennedy
... Fortune, such thy Doom. Swift the Ghouls gathered at the Poet's Tomb, With Dust of Notes to clog each lordly Line, Warburton, Warton, Croker, Bowles, combine! Collecting Cackle, Johnson condescends To INTERVIEW the Drudges of your Friends. Thus though your Courthope holds your merits high, And still proclaims your Poems POETRY, Biographers, un-Boswell-like, have sneered, And Dunces edit him ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... git on 'way from dar and look atter his own wuk, dat her and Aunt Julia could run dat loom house. Marster, he jus' laughed den and told us chillun what was hangin' round de door to jus' listen to dem 'omans cackle. Oh, but he was a good old ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... were breaking and the light of the November sun shone in. The little room was almost cheerful. There were no sounds except those from without, the neigh of George Washington from his stall, the cackle of the hens, the hungry grunts of Patrick Henry, the pig, in his sty beside ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... laughed, an unpleasant, sarcastic cackle. Bob turned. Four or five of the punchers, mounted and ready for the day's work, were sitting at ease in their saddles ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... although both had noticed the new ornament instantly, wild horses could not have drawn the question from them; her desire to be asked was too obvious. With her gay plumage, her "nods and becks and wreathed smiles," and her cheerful cackle, Huldah closely resembled ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... letters had been merely the cackle of the feminine goose who likes writing to an advertised person, I would have torn them up, but they were sometimes signed by men, and often expressed the opinions of ...
— My Impresssions of America • Margot Asquith
... ill news. Each of us two-legged fowls without feathers embraces all these subdivisions in himself to a greater or less degree, for none of us so much as lays an egg, or incubates a chalk one, but straightway the whole barn-yard shall know it by our cackle or our cluck. Omnibus hoc vitium est. There are different grades in all these classes. One will turn his telescope toward a back-yard, another toward Uranus; one will tell you that he dined with Smith, another that he supped with Plato. In one particular, all men may be considered as belonging ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... Indian. Also there is all the refinement of civilized life in the woods under a sylvan garb. The wildest scenes have an air of domesticity and homeliness even to the citizen, and when the flicker's cackle is heard in the clearing, he is reminded that civilization has wrought but little change there. Science is welcome to the deepest recesses of the forest, for there too nature obeys the same old civil laws. The little red bug on the stump of a pine,—for it the wind shifts and the ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... cackle of sound recalled them from the thrill of this adventure, and the attenuated and lanky figure, with its ashen, blotchy face that glared at them from the doorway, reminded them that this excursion into space was none of their desire. They were prisoners—captives ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... was of an incredible age. She was senile with age. Her cracked cackle never ceased for an instant. She talked to the dog and the cat; she talked to the walls of the room; she spoke out through the window to the weather; she shut her eyes in a corner and harangued the circumambient darkness. The eldest sister ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... cackle over the promise of their inchoate offspring, doomed to perish unfeathered, before fate has decided whether they shall cluck or crow, for the sole use of the minions of the sun and the feeders of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... in the mind to suffer" was not a point by which he, "more an antique Roman than a Dane," was at all troubled. Never had he given ear to that cackle which is called Public Opinion. The judgment of his peers—this, he had often told himself, was the sole arbitrage he could submit to; but then, who was to be on the bench? Peerless, he was irresponsible—the captain of his soul, the despot of his future. ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... come up from the west, covering the horizon. After careful reconnoitring, requiring a circuit of the clearing, Jack ventured to make directly for the dark outlines of the cabin. War had obviously not visited the place, for as they passed a low outhouse the startled cackle of chickens sounded toothsomely, and Barney ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... overlooking Gobstown, and there I sat me down. The sight of Gobstown rose the gorge in me. Nothing came out of it but weak puffs of turf smoke from the chimneys—little pallid thin streaks that wobbled in the wind. There, says I, is the height of Gobstown. And no sound came up out of it except the cackle of geese, and then the bawl of an old ass in the bog. There, says I, is the depth of Gobstown. And rising up from the green hill I made up my mind to save Ireland from Gobstown even if I lost my own soul. I would put a bullet in the perfect heart ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... embroidered covers the dalagas arrange in bright-hued glass dishes different kinds of sweetmeats made from native fruits. In the yard the hens cackle, the cocks crow, and the hogs grunt, all terrified by this merriment of man. Servants move in and out carrying fancy dishes and silver cutlery. Here there is a quarrel over a broken plate, there they laugh at the simple country girl. Everywhere there is ordering, whispering, shouting. ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... the clouds came and went, the grey-green, cobweb-chastened, light ebbed and flowed over the walls and ceiling; to watch the fitfulness of its streams was a sufficient occupation. A hen laid an egg outside and began to cackle—it was an event of magnitude; a peasant sharpening his scythe, a blacksmith hammering at his anvil, the clack of a wooden shoe upon the pavement, the boom of a bumble-bee, the dripping of the fountain, all these things, with such concert ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... and if so, Stumps, I shall continue to cackle a little longer on deck while they are ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... little malevolent cackle as he spoke, and the three boys named laughed too, though with no great heartiness, and shifting the while uneasily ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... with a cackle of laughter, "Why, there's nobody knows it, but I'm rich!" But immediately the sorry joke lost flavour. The old woman sighed, and into her wrinkled face and filmed eyes there came her usual look of ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... men how to get out of their difficulties," said Mr. Asquith the other day. It was a statement wrung from him by a deputation which was inflicting on him the familiar talk about lawyers and the need of "business men" to run our affairs. I suppose there has been no more banal cackle in this war than the cackle about a "business Government" and the pestilence ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... a French horn. It was a slovenly, greasy, convictionless laugh, with uncertain tones and ill-defined edges. Its effect was due to its volume, readiness, and long continuance. Swelling up of the puffy form, and reddening ripples of the broad face heralded it, it began with a contagious cackle, it deepened into a flabby guffaw, and after all the others roundabout had finished their cachinnatory tribute it wound up with what was between a roar and the lazy drone ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... he is now in his ninetieth year. "An old man's withered and wilted apple," quoth Uncle John, "keeps a good while." Mr. S——— says his grandfather lived to be a hundred, and that his legs became covered with moss, like the trunk of an old tree. Uncle John would smile and cackle at a little jest, and what life there was in him seemed a good-natured and comfortable one enough. He can walk two or three miles, he says, "taking it moderate." I suppose his state is that of a drowsy man but partly conscious of life,—walking ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... it," fibbed Hooker. "Didn't you hear those chumps cackle with glee? That's what made me sore. Then what's the use for me to try to pitch if Eliot isn't going to give me any sort ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... could I feel in viewing a cottage that was the same colour as 'the second from the miller's' in some place where I had never been, and of which I had not previously heard? I am ashamed to complain, but there were moments when my juvenile and confidential friend weighed heavy on my hands. His cackle was indeed almost continuous, but it was never unamiable. He showed an amiable curiosity when he was asking questions; an amiable guilelessness when he was conferring information. And both he did largely. I am in a position to write the biographies of Mr. Rowley, ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Porphyrius, more and more at his ease, without ceasing to indulge in his little laugh, whilst continuing his perambulation about the room. "You may be right. God has given me a face which only arouses comical thoughts in others. I'm a buffoon. But excuse an old man's cackle. You, Rodion Romanovitch, you are in your prime, and, like all young people, you appreciate, above all things, human intelligence. Intellectual smartness and abstract rational deductions entice you. But, to return to the SPECIAL CASE we were ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... The shrill cackle was answered by a slow, unctuous chuckle, as of a fat and wheezy person; then a door was closed, and ...
— "Some Say" - Neighbours in Cyrus • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... flung away the blood, as it sprung out in a most copious stream. Two-thirds, indeed we might say three-fourths of his party, were convulsed with suppressed laughter, nor could they prevent an occasional cackle from being heard, when forcibly drawing in their breath, in an effort not to offend their leader. The discovery of the mistake was, in itself, extremely ludicrous, but when the home truths uttered by Biddy, and the indescribable bitterness'caused by the disappointment, ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... course of acquaintanceship with stage heroes has been, so far as we are concerned, to create a yearning for a new kind of stage hero. What we would like for a change would be a man who wouldn't cackle and brag quite so much, but who was capable of taking care of himself for a ...
— Stage-Land • Jerome K. Jerome
... are quite interesting. As you grow older, you will spend many an hour in trying to discover where the dividing line between INSTINCT and REASON is. It is SOMEWHERE. If you hatch some chickens by heat, miles away from any other fowls, the hens will cackle, and the cocks will crow, all the same, although no one has taught them. ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... instant an icy blade was driven deep between his shoulders; he felt his blood slowly congeal; heard the senile cackle of the perennial Spaniard; saw the Plaza rise and reel till the zenith crashed into the horizon—and ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... in surprise. He continued to keep up the cuckoo sound, trying to laugh, and yet totally unable to accomplish even a cackle, as if some internal force clutched the diaphragm and mocked him, so that his efforts were reduced to a gurgling as in cynanche—like a dog choking with a rope round his craig, the sounds coming jerking out in barks, and dying away again in yelps ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... a thing I have seen." Silly pretentious women have favoured me with ill-digested scraps from magazine articles, coming out of their little beaks like the written remarks of characters in a comic paper. I have heard fat, good natured Madame Ancelin, a woman as stupid as anything, cackle with admiration at the epigrams of Danjou, regular stage manufacture, about as natural as the ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... there was another hush. Then it was broken by a man's voice, an old man's voice with a cackle of derision and shrewd amusement in it. "By gosh!" said this voice, resounding through the whole room, "that strange young woman has bought ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... to be plenty—do take it." Under this encouragement, Grandy took the egg—while he was greatly enjoying it, suddenly there was a flutter in the corner of the hut. An old hen flew up from behind a box in the corner, lit on the side of the box and began to cackle loudly. The Major turned to Grandy and said, "I-I t-t-told you there was going to be a plenty. I invited you to dinner today because this was the day for the hen to lay." He went over and got the fresh egg from behind the box, cooked and ate it. So each of the diners ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame
... comes back with a rush—the pewter dinner service, and spotless parlour, smelling of lavender and soap, the cackle of hens and lowing of cows. Eleanor pushes aside the dish of bananas, "Let us go out in the moonlight," she says. "It is lovely in the garden, and you can smoke. Let me light your cigar?" striking a match on the sole of her velvet slipper, and narrowly escaping burning ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... company with the rattle of the dice, that the luck was not going even. One of the three won the throw, time after time, and crowed so loud at each success, that the others (as was only natural), turned first surly, then angry. But the winner heeded not their wrath, but continued to cackle insultingly, until their patience being all spent, they knocked over the table, and fell to blows. Now, surely, thought I, is the time for us. But my comrade still lay low, and signed to me to do the same. For we ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... stalwart old peasants Were chuckling together; They'd two hundred roubles In notes, the old rascals! 260 Safe hidden away In the end of their coat-tails. They both had been yelling, ''We're beggars! We're beggars!'' So carried them home. ''Well, well, you may cackle!'' I thought to myself, ''But the next time, be certain, You won't laugh at me!'' The others were also 270 Ashamed of their weakness, And so by the ikons We swore all together That next time we rather Would die of the beating ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... derived from Kaak-aki, or place of wild geese, "aki" in Indian signifies place and it is singular to find the Indian word "Kaak" so near to the English "cackle"). Two miles north Stuyvesant Landing is seen on the east bank, the nearest station on the New York Central & Hudson River Railroad, by carriage, to Valatie and Kinderhook. The name Kinderhook is said to have had its origin from a point on ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... theirs; for they are the last specimens of heroism which it is likely to beget—if indeed it did in any true sense beget them, and if their gallantry was really owing to their creed, and not to the simple fact of their being—like others—English gentlemen. Well may Jacob's chaplains cackle in delighted surprise over their noble memories, like geese who have ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... with the treble of Sammy, which was of the thinnest description, and the treble of Martha, which was full and sure, and the treble of Jimmie, which dangerously bordered on a cracked bass, and what with Matilda's cackle and Skipper Jonas's croak and my own hoorays and the doctor's gutteral uproar (which might have been mistaken for a very double bass)—what with all this, as you may be sure, the shout of the wind was nowhere. Then we joined hands—it was the doctor who began it by ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... and speculated as to what the bird might be. One said, "It is surely a waterfowl, a duck, or it may be a goose; if we took it to the water it would swim and gabble." But another said, "It has no webs to its feet; it is a barn-door fowl; should you let it loose it will scratch and cackle with the others on the dung-heap." But a third speculated, "Look now at its curved beak; no doubt it is a parrot, and can crack nuts!" But a fourth said, "No, but look at its wings; perhaps it is a bird of great flight." But several cried, "Nonsense! No one has ever seen it fly! Why should it fly? ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... a certain reluctance, "I undertook to provision the camp on spec, last winter, and—well, you know, I always run a little on food for the brain,"—Bartley broke into a reminiscent cackle, and Kinney smiled forlornly,—"and thinks I, 'Dumn it, I'll give 'em the real thing, every time.' And I got hold of a health-food circular; and I sent on for a half a dozen barrels of their crackers and half a dozen of their flour, ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... sacks of mussels were turned upside down, and their contents poured into hampers, while others were emptied with shovels. And there was a ceaseless procession of basket-trays containing skate, soles, mackerel, conger-eels, and salmon, carried backwards and forwards amidst the ever-increasing cackle and pushing of the fish-women as they crowded against the iron rails which creaked with their pressure. The humpbacked crier, now fairly on the job, waved his skinny arms in the air and protruded his jaws. Presently, seemingly lashed into a state of frenzy ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... country a short distance, out on the Bloomfield pike. She found he was from Bloomfield and trilled away in a high, shrill cackle that she loved every stick and stone in that adorable country. And when she found that he was the nephew of Mrs. Mosby, or, rather, Loraine Fawcette, that was, her ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... into a sudden loud cackle of laughter. "Why! the feller tole me 'at this here Pigeon place was all three rings when it come t' history. Yessir! Tall, thin feller he was, in a three-button cutaway, English make, and kind of red-complected, with a sandy MUS- tache," pursued the pedestrian, apparently ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... your own small boy might utter. The Indian talks of blood and wounds and death in a commonplace, matter-of-fact way that may startle you. But these things used to be a part of his daily life; and even to-day you may sometimes hear a dried-up, palsied survivor of the ancient wars cackle out his shrill laugh when he tells as a merry jest, a bloodcurdling story of the torture he inflicted on some enemy ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... "Guess we can't do no better," he said doubtfully. "I mean," he added in answer to the shout of laughter from the team—"Aw, shut up, can that cackle. We know the Master hates football an' this is goin' to be a real fightin' game. He'll get all knocked about an' I don't want that. You know he'll be takin' all kinds ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... palace-like retreat. So, soon tiring of this, they fell to talking of other things and forgot the creature; till, suddenly, from within the temple came a crow that beat even Herbert's noisy ones. It was so loud and so sudden, and was so closely followed by a jubilant cackle, that all of them were a trifle startled while Wun Sing threw himself down ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... sackcloth and ashes and stand responsible for it. He had such a comfortable thing of it! But he went too far. In an evil hour he slaughtered the simple geese that laid the golden egg of responsibility for him, and now they will uncover their customary complacency, and lift up their customary cackle in his behalf no more. And so, at last, he finds himself in the novel position of being responsible to God for his acts, instead of to the Ministerial Union of Elmira. To say that this is appalling is to state it with a degree of mildness ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... us go to our ducks and hens," said the pope. "The people have made a bugbear of me, before which they fall upon the earth. But the good animals, who understand nothing of these things, they cackle and grunt, and gabble at me, as if I were nothing but a common goose-herd and by no means the sainted father of Christendom! Come, come to my dear brutes, who are so frank and sincere that they cackle and gabble directly in my face ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... mule, hinny, ass]; mew, mewl [kitten]; meow [cat]; purr [cat]; caterwaul, pule [cats]; baa^, bleat [lamb]; low, moo [cow, cattle]; troat^, croak, peep [frog]; coo [dove, pigeon]; gobble [turkeys]; quack [duck]; honk, gaggle, guggle [goose]; crow, caw, squawk, screech, [crow]; cackle, cluck, clack [hen, rooster, poultry]; chuck, chuckle; hoot, hoo [owl]; chirp, cheep, chirrup, twitter, cuckoo, warble, trill, tweet, pipe, whistle [small birds]; hum [insects, hummingbird]; buzz [flying insects, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... was attended by old maids and dowagers, and fed on muffins and bohea. "Milksop!" roars Harry Fielding, clattering at the timid shop-shutters. "Wretch! Monster! Mohock!" shrieks the sentimental author of Pamela;(154) and all the ladies of his court cackle out an affrighted chorus. Fielding proposes to write a book in ridicule of the author, whom he disliked and utterly scorned and laughed at; but he is himself of so generous, jovial, and kindly a turn that he begins to like the characters which he invents, can't help ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... repeated Mrs. Chatterton, paying scant attention to the rest of the information. Then she gave a scornful cackle. "Haven't you gotten over that nonsense yet, ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... statues that looked at me, but I knew that the living animals inside of them were tickled at my singing, strumming, and pirouetting. Cla-cla was, however, an exception, and encouraged me not infrequently by emitting a sound, half cackle and half screech, by way of laughter; for she had come to her second childhood, or, at all events, had dropped the stolid mask which the young Guayana savage, in imitation of his elders, adjusts to his face at about the age of twelve, to wear it thereafter all his life long, or only to drop ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... finally each of them telling exploits of his favorite heroes of outlawry. I could hear Herman, busy among his pots and pans. Then he mounted the tongue of the mess-wagon and called out, "We haf for breakfast cackle-berries, first vot iss come iss served, und those vot iss sleep ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... remained recalcitrant. They systematically cannibalized. A cackle from the layer brought all the rest to the spot; and I simply couldn't stay there all day to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 21, 1919. • Various
... up and relieved her of any share in it; and Will, seeing that she was suffering, told some funny stories which made the old people cackle in ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... the Fields, a young lady adorned with every accomplishment that can give happiness to the married state. Or we are told, amidst our impatience for the event of a battle, that on a certain day Mr. Winker, a tide-waiter at Yarmouth, was married to Mrs. Cackle, a widow lady of great accomplishments, and that as soon as the ceremony was performed they set out in ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... to let me understand that his vision received something of my outline, though he would fix his eyes either to left or right of me, as though he was not able to see if he looked straight; and this and his mournful cackle and his nodding head, bowed form, propped hands, and diminished face made him as distressful and melancholy a picture of Time as ever mortal man viewed. He broke off in his rambling to ask for more brandy, taking it for granted that ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... Jake Carson's shrill cackle cut through a low rumble of laughter. "That's passing it to him straight," said the old cattleman. "What's the ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... old saying: "For the wide world old Miriam grieves, and at home without bread her children she leaves." He's sorry for the girl, but not sorry for his own son! Sling her round your neck and carry her about with you! That's enough of such empty cackle! ...
— The Power of Darkness • Leo Tolstoy
... of iron, scrubbed her face with his handkerchief, dabbed it thickly with powder from a small silver box, threw back her head and went up two stairs at a time. On the second floor there was a cackle of laughter, but doors were shut. On the third all was quiet. But on the fourth the tall, thin, Raphael-headed man was drunk again, arguing thickly in the usual cloud of smoke, which drifted sullenly into the passage ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... detachment in single file scaled the hill on which the capitol stood, so silently that the foremost man reached the summit without being challenged; but while striding over the rampart, some sacred geese were disturbed, and by their cackle aroused the guard. Marcus Manlius rushed to the wall, and hustled the Gaul ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... A slight cackle emanated from the ledger, but immediately died away. A dead silence reigned in the office, broken only by the distant sound of the sea, and by the hard breathing of Alphonso, who had suddenly begun ...
— The Mission Of Mr. Eustace Greyne - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... they began to cackle. From a drawer Josephine got out a pack of cards, which the Flirt promptly seized, while Julie, leaning familiarly on her ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain
... January we heard a faint cackle outside, and, opening the kitchen door, found our poor widow in a sorry plight. One foot was frozen, her feathers were all rough and dirty, her wings drooping, her bright comb changed to a dull red. How she escaped from the hen-house, ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning
... over, pretending. They were almost too weak to haul in a fish over four pounds had they caught one, and for two days their throats had been parched so that speech came with difficulty. Of a sudden Jarvis let out 'Tibe!' with a sort of ghostly cackle, and Prout cackled 'Tibe!' in an echo even thinner. . . . And, with that Jarvis stood up and started raving of what he would do when the money came to him, as he allowed it would, after all. Mighty queer ways of spending wealth he mentioned, too, before Prout was up and, yelling ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... laughed broke again into a high cackle. "What we'd oughta do," he chortled, "is send 'em word to hereafter turn in lead ropes with every hoss we take off 'n their hands. And by rights we'd oughta stip-ilate that all hosses must be broke ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... heard him laugh, a high, uncertain cackle. The girl said nothing, but she stared at him with level, blazing eyes. Also for the first time I began to take ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... help thee, boy, we are not they Who only go to damn a play, And cackle in the pit; Like good Sir William Curtis{2} we Can laugh at nous and drollery, Though of ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... Cackle and lay, cackle and lay! How many eggs did you get to-day? None in the manger, and none in the shed, None in the box where the chickens are fed, None in the tussocks and none in the tub, And only a little one out in the scrub. Oh, I say! Dumplings ...
— A Book for Kids • C. J. (Clarence Michael James) Dennis
... behind the high fence, he knew, was the garden. The log barn, with its plastered chinks, had not altered a particle, and the cow might have been the same one he had milked, so like her she appeared as she munched at the trailing wisps of hay hanging from the loft. The outspoken cackle of hens also added to the rustic environments. It filled his heart with gladness to see the old place, but it was not complete. The quaintest figure of all was missing—his mother, tall and white-headed, standing ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer
... been made of the bright side of child-life among the lower races. But from even the most primitive of tribes all traces of the golden age of childhood are not absent. Powers, speaking of the Yurok Indians of California, notes "the happy cackle of brown babies tumbling on their heads with the puppies" (519. 51), and of the Wintun, in the wild-clover season, "their little ones frolicked and tumbled on their heads in the soft sunshine, or cropped the clover on all-fours like ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... The cackle of a hen when she lays an egg, says a scientist, is akin to laughter. And with some of the eggs we have met we can easily guess what the hen ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 17, 1920 • Various
... agreeable to his ears, Arthur returned no answer than a cackle of great delight. Ralph, throwing himself into a chair, they both sat waiting in profound silence. Ralph was thinking, with a sneer upon his lips, on the altered manner of Bray that day, and how soon their fellowship in a bad design had lowered his pride and established a familiarity ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... existence, and his consequent horror of ennuyering his world—in short, to perceive the joke of life is rarely given to our people, whilst it forms the mainspring of the Parisian's savoir plaire. The finesse of the Frenchman, acquired in long loafing and clever cafe cackle—the glib go and easy assurance of the petit creve, combined with the chic of great habit—the brilliant blague of the ateliers—the aptitude of their argot—the fling of the Figaro, and the ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... lips for his little speech of welcome but the first sound died with a cackle in his throat, leaving his mouth agape. He stared at the little creature and beyond her at Cornelius Allendyce, who was superintending the unloading of ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... Irishman would be gratified. He had just sense enough to realize that he must make some pretence at laughing. It was, of course, impossible for him to regard disrespectful remarks about the German navy as a joke, but he succeeded in giving a kind of hoarse cackle. ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... earth were at the foot of a waterfall from which a river was leaping from on high—were hurled over the land. The shrieking of the wind had a wild and maniacal sound, the sound which Jamaicans have christened "the hell-cackle of a hurricane." This squall lasted longer, five minutes or more, and when it passed, the wind dropped somewhat, but did not die down. It raged furiously, its shriek dropped to a sullen and ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... "Oh, cut the cackle," he said impatiently. "Tell me what you want me to do, and make it plain, very plain, for I can tell you there's a good deal about all this I don't understand, and I'm not inclined to trust you far. For one thing, what are ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon
... Jean gave a curious cackle, and continued: "Ah, those wasps—they have a sting so nasty!" He paused an instant, then he added in a lower voice, and not quite so gaily: "Yon is the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... first in the house to wake up, and at dawn began to cackle vigorously. Germaine hastened to her, bringing a quantity of corn which the hen, doubtless owing to her fast of the day ...
— The Curly-Haired Hen • Auguste Vimar
... jumped and tumbled, And the ship and all the ocean Woke up in wild commotion. Then the wind set up a howling, And the poodle dog a yowling, And the cocks began a crowing, And the old cow raised a lowing, As she heard the tempest blowing; And fowls and geese did cackle, And the cordage and the tackle Began to shriek and crackle; And the spray dashed o'er the funnels, And down the deck in runnels; And the rushing water soaks all, From the seamen in the fo'ksal To ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... into Mayfair or the Tyrol, signalled by the slide from its mast of a crested index of Aeolian caprice, blazon of their presence, give the curious a right to spin through the halls and galleries under a cackle of housekeeper guideship—scramble for a chuck of the dainties, dog fashion. There is something to be said for the ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... but one must not flinch When asked the task to tackle; And he's no Frenchman true who, at a pinch, Cannot both crow and cackle. Ah, Vive, once more, the Gallic Cock—and hen! These Talking-Tours are trying, But 'tis with windy flouts of tongue or pen, We keep ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 17, 1892 • Various
... glass of sherry, please, James," said the Professor over his shoulder, and the warder, who evidently had joked with him before, broke into a cackle of laughter. ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... which keep up New England hearts in December. The short, dark days seemed shorter and darker than usual that year, but one morning the sky had a look of Indian summer, the wind was in the south, and the cocks and hens of the Packer farm came boldly out into the sunshine, to crow and cackle before the barn. It was Friday morning, and the next day was the ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... to locality, laying from eight to twelve creamy white eggs under a bamboo clump or some dense thicket where a few leaves have been scratched together for a nest. The hen announces the laying of an egg by means of a proud cackle, and the chicks themselves have the characteristic "peep, peep, peep" of the domestic birds. After the breeding season the beautiful red and gold neck hackles of the male sometimes are molted and replaced ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... moment of silence; then a cackle of words from several of them together. The Greek's hands on his shoulders tightened. He heard the man's purring voice ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... around the ranch. Never had it appeared more peaceful and pastoral to Jean. The grazing cattle and horses in the foreground, the haystack half eaten away, the cows in the fenced pasture, the column of blue smoke lazily ascending, the cackle of hens, the solid, well-built cabins—all these seemed to repudiate Jean's haste and his darkness of mind. This place was, his father's farm. There was not a cloud in ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... insincerity, more or less, of all literary work is a fact of which he had not thought. I am speaking of the mere 'author,' the writer-tradesman, the amateur's superstition; not of men of genius, who, despite cackle, cannot disappoint. If they seem to do so, it must be that we have not come close enough to know them. But the man of genius is rarer, perhaps, in the ranks of authorship than anywhere: you are far more likely to find him on the exchange. They are as scarce as Caxtons: London ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... what had happened, but when I caught sight of Skinny sitting in the water I just roared. Skinny sat there with his head above water making no attempt to move, but when I laughed he looked up indignantly and said, "Blime, mite, you'd cackle if a fellar broke his bleedin' neck," and then while I continued laughing he cursed the Germans with every variety of oath to which he could lay his tongue, vowing what he was going to do to get even, but all the ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien
... reserve. But with the appearance of spring she showed signs of lonesomeness. With none of her kind to love, she turned to Rex and on him lavished all of her affection. When Rex was admitted to the house of a morning, she ran to meet him with a joyful cackle,—an utterance she did not use on any other occasion,—and with soft cooing sounds she followed him about the house. If Rex appeared bored with her attentions and walked away, she followed after, and persisted in tones that were surely ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... artists in frauds. Don't you remember their stand at the first Paris Exhibition? They had imitations there of every celebrated stone; but I never expected anything made by man could delude Mr. Acton, never!" And she went off into another mocking cackle, and all the idiots round her haw-hawed knowingly, as if they had seen the joke all along. I was too bewildered to reply, which was on the whole lucky. "I suppose I musn't tell why I came to give quite a big sum in francs for this?" she went on, tapping her closed lips with ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... rams, And shepherd of a lot of fine tub sheep And a lot of pretty little lambs. Oh, he lives with his five and forty wives, In the city of the Great Salt Lake, Where they breed and swarm like hens on a farm And cackle like ducks to ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various
... within the scope of their judgment the verdict of the great mass of men is infinitely more trustworthy than that of any small body of men, no matter how cultivated. Of plenty of that narrow judgment of select circles which mistakes the cackle of its little coterie for the voice of the world, Cooper was made the subject, and sometimes the victim, during his lifetime. There were any number of writers, now never heard of, who were going to outlive him, according to literary prophecies then (p. 271) current, ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... new bird I saw in Maine was the pileated woodpecker, or black "log cock," called by Uncle Nathan "wood cock." I had never before seen or heard this bird, and its loud cackle in the woods about Moxie was a new sound to me. It is the wildest and largest of our northern woodpeckers, and the rarest. Its voice and the sound of its hammer are heard only in the depths of the northern woods. It is about as large as a ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... reason to be satisfied with my disguise,—if such it could be called. Captain Selover at first failed to recognise me. Then he burst into his shrill cackle. ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... shrill senile cackle that was really good to hear. As they grow old most men lose that capacity for a hearty laugh, but Cappy's perversity had kept him young at heart. The tears of mirth cascaded down his seamed old countenance now, and he had to sit down ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... best of them—are birds Of passage; where their instinct leads They range abroad for thoughts and words, And from all climes bring home the seeds That germinate in flowers or weeds. They are not fowls in barnyards born To cackle o'er a grain of corn; And, if you shut the horizon down To the small limits of their town, What do you but degrade your bard Till he at last becomes as one Who thinks the all-encircling sun Rises and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... this encouraged young George to join in too, and that made a failure of it; because George's voice was just "turning," and when he was singing a dismal sort of bass it was apt to fly off the handle and startle everybody with a most discordant cackle on the upper notes. George didn't know the tunes, either, which was also a drawback to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... The mirthless, bilious cackle of Jankiel interrupted. "I know a thing or two," he exclaimed; "I knew that you, Abraham, would not easily agree to it. I shall ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... were organised in the evenings, Mr Lathrope developing an almost forgotten talent he possessed, and coming out as a comic singer. He absolutely bewitched even the "Major," with his version of "Buffalo Gals," and the "Cackle, cackle, flap your wings and crow," chorus of the Christy Minstrels, who certainly, in his person, did perform on this ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... his face, both hands now clasping the telephone—his right being completely numbed—he called upon the gods to witness the foolishness of mortals. Suddenly a hideous cackle of mosquito-laughter filtered through and, by some diabolical contrivance of the signals, the tiny voice swelled into a bellow ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, October 31, 1917 • Various
... old custom, to the point of riddles. And good humor sounds in the manly words: "What shall I do? I cannot recant. In our century full of intellect and beauty, which might put Cicero into a corner, I am only an unlearned, limited, poorly educated man! But the goose must needs cackle among the swans." ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... said: "Friend, he that labors for the sparrow-hawk Has little time for idle questioners." Whereat Geraint flash'd into sudden spleen: "A thousand pips eat up your sparrow-hawk! Tits, wrens, and all wing'd nothings peck him dead! Ye think the rustic cackle of your bourg The murmur of the world! What is it to me? O wretched set of sparrows, one and all, Who pipe of nothing but of sparrow-hawks! Speak, if ye be not like the rest, hawk-mad, Where can I get me harborage for the night? And arms, arms, arms to fight the enemy? Speak!" Whereat the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... herself insulted. "These United States," she cried, "they cackle over the word 'freedom' like so many hens that have each of them laid an egg and go strutting and boasting while the housewife empties their nests. The housewife represents the natural course of events, and in this case ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... Lubin sagely. "The old hen feels herself badly off when the egg teaches her to cackle. That's human nature, that is. And then she was riled because she was afraid I shouldn't have time to get the garden-things in order by to-morrow, when it seems there's some sort o' company expected. I told ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... scaring of doves from their cozy nests, Such hunting for eggs in the lofts so high, Till the frightened hens, with a cackle shrill, From their hidden treasures are fain ...
— Harper's Young People, May 4, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... when the French King and his wickedness may come upon us; what with one thing and another, indeed, a maiden may be pleased to find even a plebeian protector.' Thus she rambled on in her sharp voice, yet there was cause for her anxiety, and truth lay beneath her cackle, but the wisdom of age is ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... I'd catch her wrong yet," he seemed to be saying to himself. "As soon as she's made a bit of money, she wants everybody to have it. It's the hen and the egg all over again—they've simply got to cackle." ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... sounds the barnyard suddenly awakens. I hear my horse whinnying from the barn, the chickens begin to crow and cackle, and such a grunting and squealing as the pigs set up from behind the straw stack, it would do a man's ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson
... eyes and nodded. "You cackle like an old woman, Galitsin; you would talk a cricket dumb. Send me up Bobo, if you see him, ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... anybody know it was hens! Never cackle about contrivances. Things mustn't be contrived; they must happen. Woman and her accidents,—mine are ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... excited person, met them in the hall with a cackle of alarm. "I'm awfully glad you've come," she exclaimed. "Your father has been taken ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... with a dry cackle, nursing his feet which were wrapped in rags. True as gospel. Kings we were, with crowns upon our headsme and Dravot poor Danoh, poor, poor Dan, that would never take advice, not though I ...
— The Man Who Would Be King • Rudyard Kipling
... in answer to this mental question a peal of elfish laughter greeted his ear,—a mirthless, falsetto cackle, like that of a parrot, and half hidden behind one of the great marble lions in the shade of the loggia he discerned a grotesque little creature, with the figure of a child and a woman's face, old in its expression of ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... cackle of surprise and laughter among the steamer's officers, in which Frank and some of the passengers joined, and the saucy little "fishing-boat" came steadily on in the wake of her ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... began to cackle. "Praise be to Allah you are come! I was persuaded to bring the young ladies here. They would make me do it. Yes, sir. It is not my fault. They pay me. I have to obey. Then we get caught, like we was some rats. No ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... the blue sky above him, but a neat white ceiling, where several flies buzzed sociably together, while from without came, not the tramping of horses, the twitter of swallows, or the chirp of early birds, but the comfortable cackle of hens and the sound of two little ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... of this eternal cackle about books," said Jephson; "these columns of criticism to every line of writing; these endless books about books; these shrill praises and shrill denunciations; this silly worship of novelist Tom; this silly hate of poet Dick; this silly squabbling over playwright Harry. There ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... out into such a noisy demonstration that you are glad to escape from her, no matter what spoils you leave on her hands; just as a mastiff will slink away from a bantam hen all heckled feathers and screeching cackle, and tremendous assumption of doing something terrible if he does not look out. Any way the little woman is unconquerable; and a tiny fragment of humanity at a public show, setting all rules and regulations at defiance, ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... of Antonio Malagueita. I was awakened a little after midnight, as I lay in my little cabin, by a heavy blow struck at the sides of the canoe close to my head, which was succeeded by the sound of a weighty body plunging into the water. I got up; but all was again quiet, except the cackle of fowls in our hen-coop, which hung over the side of the vessel about three feet from the cabin door. I could find no explanation of the circumstance, and, my men being all ashore, I turned in again and slept until morning. I then found my poultry ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... are toiling slowly out of the breaks of the river. After a ride of a few hours we come to a creek with no water but plenty of wood. Here dinner is announced. This is camping in earnest. This is not play. Camping in the East is generally within sound of the cackle of the hen and the low of the cow. But here you must live off of the land or out of your mess-chest. We combine the two. Many hotels and families could learn a good lesson from an experienced traveler ...
— American Missionary, Volume 44, No. 1, January, 1890 • Various
... When the cackle of females strikes my ear, I jest vamose, for they make me skeered, And I sorter suspicion I skeer them too, with my hulking form, and my ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 18, 1891 • Various
... the men under Quinnox stood their ground; a solid, defiant line that fired with telling accuracy into the struggling horde. On the walls two Gatling guns began to cackle their laugh of death. And still the mercenaries poured through the gap, forming in haphazard lines under the direction ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... escape the stranger's hearing, for, full of his bottle, he now rubbed his somewhat sallow hands over it, and with a strange kind of cackle, meant to be a chirrup, cried: "Good wine, good wine; is it not the peculiar bond of good feeling?" Then brimming both glasses, pushed one over, saying, with what seemed intended for an air of fine disdain: "Ill betide those gloomy skeptics who maintain that now-a-days pure wine is unpurchasable; ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... voice—especially the female voice—is a target which has been hit hard many times, and very justly. A ladies' luncheon can often be truly and aptly compared to a poultry-yard, the shrill cackle being even more unpleasant than that of a large concourse of hens. If we had once become truly appreciative of the natural mellow tones possible to every woman, these shrill voices would no more be tolerated than ...
— Power Through Repose • Annie Payson Call
... for him. He had never been known to carry anything, not even himself if he could help it, since the day his mother died and ceased to force him to carry in wood and water for her at the end of a hickory switch. He glanced uneasily round with a slight cackle of dismay as he arrived in the unaccustomed plush surroundings and tried to find some place to dump his load. But the well-groomed Herbert strode down the long aisle unnoticing and took possession of the section he had secured as if ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... the body was placed on the right side, and the head of the goose on the left side of the hall: he recited what he recited from his book of magic, the goose began to hop forward, the head moved on to it, and, when both were united, the goose began to cackle. A pelican was produced, and underwent the same process. His Majesty then caused a bull to be brought forward, and its head was smitten to the ground: the magician recited what he recited from his book of magic, the bull ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... wonder the bride did not refuse, as there is present possession too of a very handsome person; the only thing his father has ever given him. His grandfather, Lord Granville, has always told him to choose a gentlewoman, and please himself; yet I should think the ladies Townshend and Cooper would cackle a little. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... as she laughingly freed herself, "suppose we cut the cackle and get to the bosses. I think I've ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... awoke, arrows of gold were shooting through the holes in the old barn, and outside, the bird life, the twittering and chirping, the fluent whistle and the warble, the cackle and the pompous crow, were in ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... for to-day our chance and hope were lost. Then the darkness grew deeper, and a star shone through my casement, and feet went up and down upon the stairs, but no man came near me. Below there was some faint cackle of mirth and laughter, and at last ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... said Carnehan, with a dry cackle, nursing his feet, which were wrapped in rags. "True as gospel. Kings we were, with crowns upon our heads—me and Dravot—poor Dan—oh, poor, poor Dan, that would never take advice, not though I begged ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... another place a lion was seen half dressed in a fox's hide, while a wolf in a sheep's mask was conversing very amicably with a young lamb. Here again might be seen the geese stretching out their necks from the Roman Capitol in full cackle, while the stout invaders were beheld in the distance, running off as hard as they could. In short, in all these quaint entablatures some pithy sarcasm was symbolically conveyed; only over the mantel piece was the design graver and more touching. It was the figure of a man in a pilgrim's ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... must distress you. But surely when nothing more happens, and nothing comes of what has happened, the wonder and the gossip must die away? I know you believe every word I have said, and that you trust me, papa. Please, for my sake, be patient with all this gossip and cackle.' ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... seeing, it is seeking that is delightful Judge only by appearances, and never enquire into the causes Kisra called wine the soap of sorrow Learn early to pass lightly over little things Learn to obey, that later you may know how to command Like the cackle of hens, which is peculiar to Eastern women Man has nothing harder to endure than uncertainty Many creditors are so many allies Medicines work harm as often as good Money is a pass-key that turns any lock No good excepting that from which we expect the worst No ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... she said, with an apologetic cackle, "it ain't to be suppose as miraculs can be performed with regard to cookin', the fire havin' gone out, not bein' kept alight on account of the 'eat of the day, which was that 'ot as never was, tho', to be sure, bein' a child in the early days, I ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... To study Simian speech, which in our age May be o'erheard on Platform or in Pub, And studied 'mid the comforts of a Club? And yet perchance your forest apes would shrink From Smoke-room chat of apes who never think, But cackle imitatively all round, Till their speech hath an automatic sound. Put the dread name of GL-DST-NE in the slot SMELFUNGUS calls his mouth, and rabid rot Will gurgle forth in a swift sewer-like gush Of coarse abuse would make a bargee blush. SMELFUNGUS ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 1, 1892 • Various
... signal name is this, upon my word! Great Juno's geese saved Rome her citadel. Another drowsy Manlius may be stirred And the State saved, if I but cackle well. ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... Cousin Ronald contrived to add not a little to the fun by timely efforts in his own peculiar line; the very little ones were delighted to hear their toy dogs bark, roosters crow, hens and geese cackle, ducks quack, horses neigh ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley
... Nicky White I dare say I was the only party in Little Silver that didn't raise an upstore and cackle about it, because to the common mind it was a proper shock, while to me, in my far-seeing way, I knew that, just because it was the last thing on earth you might have thought Jenny would do, it might be looked for pretty confident. She could have had the pick of the basket, for ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... vividly purple with a subtle illusive deep-crimson glow beneath, while the sky above their tops, a saffron dome rose almost to the zenith. These mystical things are here joined: The trill of black-birds near at hand, the cackle of barn-yard fowls, the sound of hammers, a plowman talking to his team, the pungent smoke of burning leaves, the cool, sweet, spring wind and the glowing down-pouring sunshine—all marvelous and satisfying to me and ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... what is feasible I know that I am of use Like the cackle of hens, which is peculiar to Eastern women Think of his wife, not with affection only, but with pride Those whom we fear, says ...
— Quotations From Georg Ebers • David Widger
... Juan's head, that not a drop touched him, and yet he had the appearance of having been ducked. At which bit of sleight-of-hand the whole court-yard, young and old, babies, cocks, hens, and turkeys, all set up a shout and a cackle, and dispersed to the four corners of the yard as if scattered by a volley of bird-shot. Hearing the racket, the rest of the maids came running,—Anita and Maria, the twins, women forty years old, born ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... thing that met his own approval Sol Rollin would cackle most cheerfully and then crack a knuckle by twisting a finger. His laugh was mostly out of register also. It had a sad lack of relevancy. He laughed on principle rather than provocation. Some sort of ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... right: there was the hideous, unearthly cry of the laughing-jackass, called often the bushman's clock; the screaming cry of thousands of parrots flying here and there through the forest; there was the cackle of the wattle-bird, the clear notes of the magpie, and the confused chattering of thousands of leather-heads; while many other birds added their notes to the discordant chorus, and speedily banished sleep from the ...
— The Gilpins and their Fortunes - A Story of Early Days in Australia • William H. G. Kingston
... These windows were opened a little at the top, and through the openings came soft sounds of Spring, the wind racing among the budding branches, the sudden call of a bird, and occasionally the crooning, sleepy cackle of hens from a distance. Now and then a cloud drifted by, across the sun, dimming the interior for a moment, so that the minister's voice seemed to come from farther off. The sunlight through the stained glass projected colored ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... of carrying it on was upon him, and gosh! they don't mind silences in this man's island, do they? he commented desperately to himself, thinking how different it was from America. Why, there they acted as if silence was an egg that had just been laid, and everyone had to cackle at once to cover it up. But here the talk constantly fell to the ground, and nobody but himself seemed concerned to pick it up. His attempt to praise Chev had not been successful, and he could understand ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... was nearly dark already, and in the nebulous middle-distance a laughing jackass was indulging in his evening peal. Cairns jerked his head in the direction of the unearthly cackle. "Lots of 'em down here in Vic, I believe," said he, and at length turned his attention to the bound man. "You see, I wanted to land him alive and kicking without spilling blood," he continued, opening his knife. "That was why I had to let him tie ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... you bind them wrist to wrist— Foot to foot the truants shackle, From your toils away they twist Into air with giddy cackle. ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... a cackle. "You're the traffic man of this outfit: do you know the rates on coal from the mines to ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... talent is proportioned to my ambition. The things I like to write are the things I like to read. I prefer the lesser poets to the greater, the cackle of the barnyard fowl to the scream of the eagle. I ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... or lay them always in a red sea of claret? Does a man sleep the better who has four-and-twenty hours to doze in? Do his intellects brighten after a sermon from the dull old vicar; a ten minutes' cackle and flattery from the village apothecary; or the conversation of Sir John and Sir Thomas with their ladies, who come ten moonlight muddy miles to eat a haunch, and play a rubber? 'Tis all very well to have tradesmen ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray |
