"Clatter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... along by the gale. Here the roadway is swept bare; and there, in sheltered places, the dust settles in little windrows. The erosive power of waste-laden currents of air is suggested as the sharp grains of flying sand sting one's face or clatter against the window. In the country one sometimes sees the dust whirled in clouds from dry, plowed fields in spring and left in the lee of fences in small drifts resembling in form those of snow ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... there long quarter hours, watching the electric cars. They announced themselves from a great distance by a low singing on the overhead wire; then with a rush and a rumble the big, lighted things dashed across the void, and rumbled on with a clatter of smashing iron as they took the switches recklessly. The noise soothed her; in the quiet intervals she was listening for sounds from upstairs. The night was still and languorous, one of the peaceful nights of large spaces ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... months. Or perhaps staring over the shoulder of Jade Hains, striving to copy the picture of a motion-picture star from a worn, dirty, months-old magazine; as excited as they over the tiny things in life, as eager to seek a bunk when eight o'clock came, as grudging to hear the clatter of alarm clocks in the black coldness before dawn and to creak forth to the watering and harnessing of the horses for the work of the day. Some way, it all seemed to be natural to Barry Houston, natural that he ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... this I could hear the rattle and clatter of the train running past the semaphores and switch points and slacking to ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock
... of smoke-dimmed men in the bar of the Bridge, discussing in awed whispers last night's affair of the Revenue cutter off Darby's Hole, hushed suddenly at the clatter and rushed out as he stormed past. He paid no heed. Those staring eyes saw nothing but the brown street sliding under him, a pair of sweating ears, a flapping mane, and before him a tumble of old roofs; while beyond in the harbour, ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... clatter. Even in the imperfect light of the early morning, the young aviator made out a great heap of clothing, silverware and jewelry, rattling down the steps ...
— Dave Dashaway and his Hydroplane • Roy Rockwood
... foe fled back the gates swung to, and I heard the bars clatter into their sockets, and Kynan came ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... the noise and clatter of the vanward rose up on the face of the heath, and men were exceeding joyous that they had come so far without mishap. Therewith came weaponed men out from under House- stone, and they came toward the ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... further, for just then there sounded a clatter on the outer steps, and a second later an American soldier burst into the mill-house. He was in tatters, and his left arm hung limply by his side, for he had been ...
— The Campaign of the Jungle - or, Under Lawton through Luzon • Edward Stratemeyer
... was standing in a long, low attic, amidst the whir and clatter of many looms. The meagre daylight peered in through the grated windows, and showed him the gaunt figures of the weavers bending over their cases. Pale, sickly-looking children were crouched on the huge crossbeams. As the shuttles dashed through the warp they ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... my gun under my pillow, locked and bolted the door, and arranged a string cunningly across the open window so that an intruder—unless he had extraordinary luck—could not have failed to kick up a devil of a clatter. I was young, bold, without nerves; so that I think I can truthfully say I was not in the least frightened. But I cannot deny I was nervous—or rather the whole situation was on my nerves. I lay on my back staring straight at the ceiling. I caught myself gripping ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... the foam of old lace, A half-languid smile upon each listless face,— A dreaming of roses and rose-leaf shades,— A medley of modern and Grecian maids. Such clatter and clink One scarcely can think Till he spies a shy nook where he lonely can sink,— For how can a bachelor be at his ease With such chatter and ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... Langley, the steward has brought aft the dishes containing the cabin supper. A savory smell issues from the open sky-light, through which also ascends a ruddy gleam of light, the sound of cheerful voices, and the clatter of dishes. After the lapse of a few minutes the turns of Mr. Langley in pacing the deck grow shorter, and at last, ceasing to whistle and beginning to mutter, he walks up to the sky-light and looks down into the cabin below. Gentle reader, place yourself by his side, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... over, a smoking stovepipe stuck through the roof, and a capped and aproned cook rested his arms on the window sill as they floated in. Men to the number of twenty or more clustered about both scows and the Panther's deck, busy with pipe and cigarette and rude jest. The clatter of their voices uprose through the noon meal. But when the donkey scow thrust its blunt nose against the beach, the chaff and laughter died ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... coin of the realm, in the shape of broken crockery, which was generally used in financial transactions on the stage, because when the virtuous maiden rejected with scorn the advances of the lordly libertine, and threw his pernicious bribe upon the ground, the clatter of the broken crockery suggested fabulous wealth. But after the play Miss Cushman, in the course of some kindly advice, said to me: "Instead of giving me that purse don't you think it would have been much more natural if you had taken a number of coins from your pocket, ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... creation will be glad to drop mere twaddle and converse as with their equals. Bless my heart!" cried Christie, walking about the room as if she had mounted her hobby, and was off for a canter, "how people can go on in such an idiotic fashion passes my understanding. Why keep up an endless clatter about gowns and dinners, your neighbors' affairs, and your own aches, when there is a world full of grand questions to settle, lovely things to see, wise things to study, and noble things to imitate. Bella, you must try the experiment, and be the queen of ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... a silence made only more impressive by the inarticulate thunders and mutters of the great seas, an utter stranger to the clatter of tongues, there comes the muscular little Fyne, the most marked representative of that mankind whose voice is so strange to him, the husband of his sister, a personality standing out from the misty and remote multitude. He comes and throws at him more talk than he had ever ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... three weeks ago; I couldn't hit them all. After you have broken a good many, the stones are apt to go through the holes you've already made. They only finished mending them the day before yesterday; I came out and asked the men when they were likely to get done;' and clatter! ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... herself. When she at last awoke from her uneasy slumbers she found Rosa standing before the little bit of looking-glass plaiting her hair, and from the yard came the clatter of wooden shoes and the rattle of the chain in the well as Jendrek drew up ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... smash the whole movement than proceed along undesirable lines. He would scorn victory that came through avenues not recognized by him. Certain words and phrases have completely captivated his imagination. With them he fences heroically and causes a sufficiency of clatter and noise. He is in deadly earnest and will brook no rivals. Parties within parties are formed, and the energies which should be directed towards fighting opponents are absorbed in combat ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... The clatter was abreast of, and behind me in the road when the imperative "Whoa!" again arrested it. I knew the voice now. A man leaped to the ground; hasty footsteps struck across the turf edging the highway; dry sticks cracked, my bushy covert was jarred, and Mr. Frank Morton stood before ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... beginning with an abattoir and ending with a steam-boat, which it seemed our fate to behold only at daybreak on winter mornings, when (in the days before continental railroads), just sufficiently awake to know that we were most uncomfortably asleep, it was our destiny always to clatter through it, in the coupe of the diligence from Paris, with a sea of mud behind us, and a sea of tumbling waves before. In relation to which latter monster, our mind's eye now recalls a worthy Frenchman in a seal-skin cap with a braided hood over it, once our travelling companion in the ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... chattered with a folly so incessant and intense, that even my wife could hardly keep her complacency (consummate hypocrite as her ladyship is), knowing the rage with which I was fuming at the other's clatter. I come to London. I show my tongue to Dr. Heberden. I pour out my catalogue of complaints. "Psha, my dear Sir George!" says the unfeeling physician. "Headaches, languor, bad sleep, bad temper—" ("Not bad temper: Sir George has the sweetest temper in the world, only he is ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... important as London, yes, while simple as the nursery. The same big questions of life and death, of battle, duty, love, ruled the peaceful inhabitants. Only the noisy shouting, the clatter of superfluous chattering and feverish striving had dropped away. Hearts and minds wore fewer clothes among these woods and vineyards. There was no nakedness though ... there were flowers and moss, blue sky and peace and beauty. ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... the reeds up to his mud-splashed withers, onward up the long slope of the Headland of the Hinds, down by the Nutcombe Gorge, slipping, blundering, bounding, but never slackening his fearful speed, on went the great yellow horse. The villagers of Shottermill heard the wild clatter of hoofs, but ere they could swing the ox-hide curtains of their cottage doors horse and rider were lost amid the high bracken of the Haslemere Valley. On he went, and on, tossing the miles behind his flying hoofs. No marsh-land could clog him, ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... her, and the graybeards standing aloof with some chagrin, would, I believe, in spite of me, since they outnumbered me vastly, have forced Catherine into that rude pageant as Maid Marion. But while I was thrusting them aside, holding myself before her as firmly as I might, there came a quick clatter of hoofs, and Mistress Mary had dashed alongside on Merry Roger. She scattered the merry revellers right and left, calling out to her sister to go homeward with a laugh. "Fie on thee, Catherine!" she cried out. "If thou art abroad on a May morning dressed like the queen of ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... his discovery he flung his arms and knocked off the desk his full stock of paperweight ammunition. Then he was convinced beyond doubt that the Morrison was daft. Stewart did not even raise his eyes from the book; he kept on dictating above the clatter of the rolling weights; his intentness on the matter in hand was that of a business man putting a proposition on paper for the purpose of making it definite ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... shop-door, leaving the entrance free—more than free—welcome, as if all were household friends—to every passer-by, whose eyes might be attracted by the commodities at the window. This last act Hepzibah now performed, letting the bar fall with what smote upon her excited nerves as a most astounding clatter. Then—as if the only barrier betwixt herself and the world had been thrown down, and a flood of evil consequences would come tumbling through the gap—she fled into the inner parlor, threw herself into the ancestral elbow-chair, ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... for the door of the lavatory between his compartment and the compartment of the manufacturer of Perpignan. He found the handle, and pressed it down slowly; without a creak or a whine of the hinges the door swung open towards him. Through the clatter he could hear that the manufacturer of Perpignan was snoring. But Hillyard did not put his trust in snores. He crept with bare feet across the washing-room, and, easing over the handle of the further door, locked the manufacturer out. Again ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... had stunned all who were within hearing of it, had only served to awaken the bold and inventive genius of the flower of majors-domo. Almost before the clatter had ceased, and while there was yet scarce an assurance whether the castle was standing or falling, Caleb exclaimed, "Heaven be praised! this comes to hand like the boul of a pint-stoup." He then barred the kitchen door in the face of the Lord Keeper's servant, ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... devotion of any man to any woman therein; but, as nobody liked to interfere too soon in what might only be, after all, a mere business arrangement, Greenfield contented itself with using its eyes, its ears, and its tongues, with one exception to the latter organ's clatter, in favor of Hitty Hyde; to her no one dared as yet approach with gossip ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... had he said the word, when clatter, clatter, rustle, rustle, what should come down the chimney but a link of the finest black pudding the heart of man ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... which commands universal esteem. The white man has scoffed at our religion and our morals, but has accepted the brown beverage without hesitation. The afternoon tea is now an important function in Western society. In the delicate clatter of trays and saucers, in the soft rustle of feminine hospitality, in the common catechism about cream and sugar, we know that the Worship of Tea is established beyond question. The philosophic resignation of the guest to the fate awaiting him in the dubious ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura
... heard a sudden clatter as of the drop of a knife and fork. "Well, you're a delicate sort of creature, if it IS your ugly name! I've been wandering about all day in this accursed city, ready to cry with homesickness and heartsickness and every possible sort of sickness, and thinking, in the absence of ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... stillness hung over the scene, that was broken only by the click of hoofs of horse and burro upon the rocks, and the clatter of the loose stones they dislodged that rolled and skipped down the side. Not a breath of air was stirring, and the sun blazed down from the zenith with such fierce and direct radiation that the wayfarer needed not to observe the shadows to note its exact position in the heavens. Singly among the ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... events, it was frightening. I shouted above its whine and the clatter of the pebbles: "Hold onto me! We'll get to ...
— Wandl the Invader • Raymond King Cummings
... the neck, first clatter, and was bleeding pretty badly; still I hung to my horse, and we stood 'em off till the teams made it out of the gulch; but just as we came out my horse fell and threw me—broke his leg. I yelled to ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... to the toys. There was a tiny sailboat with a little wooden sailor on deck; but Robin would always be dabbling in the water if he got that. A tin horse and cart caught his eye. That would make such a clatter on the bare ...
— Big Brother • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... Brughe suffered at Edinburgh, the quiet of the usually peaceful valley of the Devon was broken by the clatter of cavalry and the skirling of the pipes, as Montrose, having in his usual brilliant fashion outwitted Baillie, marched through, burning and plundering as he passed, leaving Muckhart, Dollar, and, above all, Castle ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... later on, to go into particulars with Isa. With the roar and clatter growing hourly more deafening in the tavern, Isa and Joyce, sitting on the back porch under the calm stars, spoke freely to ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... yelled horribly, and leaped hither and thither—terrifying everybody except the brave King, who pursued the Dwarf closely, till he, drawing a great knife with which he was armed, challenged the King to meet him in single combat, and rushed down into the courtyard of the palace with a terrible clatter. The King, quite provoked, followed him hastily, but they had hardly taken their places facing one another, and the whole Court had only just had time to rush out upon the balconies to watch what was going on, when suddenly the sun became as red as blood, and it was so dark that they could ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... days after the clipping, Helen did not choose to ride. So Pat was permitted the doubtful pleasure of loafing about in the inclosure. Then one morning, when the winter day was unusually warm, he awoke to a great clatter of hoofs outside the corral. Directly he saw a party of young people, men and girls under the chaperonage of a comely matron, dismounting in high spirits. As the party swung down he saw his mistress appear from the house, attired in her riding-habit, and, understanding ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... children's playground as long as any one could remember, but in the days of the blessed Frate Agnolo the Syndic was a grim, childless, irascible old man, terribly plagued with gout, which made him so choleric that he could not endure the joyous cries and clatter of the children at their play. So at last in his irritation he gave orders that, if the children must play at all, it would have to be in their own dull narrow alleys paved with hard rock, or outside ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... paces, I ran at it more Etonensi, at the top of my speed, planted the sole of my foot even and square against the key-hole, with the whole impetus of my charge, and had the satisfaction of feeling the door fly open in an instant, while a jingling clatter within showed that my entrance had been effected with no greater damage to the premises than the starting of the staple into which the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... to be taken back to Gangoil instead of to the mill. Perhaps he thought that Kate Daly might be a better nurse than his mother, or that the quiet of the sheep station might be better for him than the clatter of his own mill-wheels. It was midnight, and they had a ride of fourteen miles, which was hard enough upon a man with a broken collarbone. The whole party also was thoroughly fatigued. The work they had been doing was about as hard as could fall to a man's lot, and they ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope
... broad jest and merry story. Far from it. Here the company ate, drank, talked, laughed,—did all but sing, and certainly enjoyed themselves heartily. As for me, I was little more than a listener; and such was the crash of plates, the jingle of glasses, and the clatter of voices, that fragments only of what was passing around reached me, giving to the conversation of the party a character occasionally somewhat incongruous. Thus such sentences as the following ran foul of each ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... this young soldier came in I had caught bits of speech in the clatter and din From the fine men about me in life's dress parade Who were boasting the cash sacrifices they'd made; And I'd thought of my own paltry service with pride, When I turned and that ...
— Over Here • Edgar A. Guest
... how the great hunter who sleeps with his gun at his pillow is awake in an instant, with all his faculties alert, when the sacred spider breaks a twig in the jungle? You remember how the handsome highwayman, at the first far clatter of hoofs on the great North Road, is up and out on the scullery roof of the inn before you have turned the page, and is deep in Lonely Copse (wearing the serving-wench's stomacher) before his first fat ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, July 25, 1917 • Various
... machinery of knowledge rolls over one—one listens to It, to the soft clatter of ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... an amusing story of the house in Scotland he had come from, when an explosion happened at the other side of the fireplace. Loud coughing and choking, mixed with a clatter of teaspoons and china—and, amid a terrified silence, ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... possession of the brave and gifted Moslems in Spain. The people are half Moorish still, and from the barred windows look out deep almond eyes and patient faces that have no European feature. The narrow streets were empty as the travellers entered the town, and the clatter of the mules slipping and stumbling on the cobble stones brought but few to the doors of the low-built houses. To enter Ronda from the south the traveller must traverse the Moorish town, which is divided from the Spanish quarter by a cleft in the great rock that ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... their victuals stop their mouths." They used to eat as though it were a religious ceremony—a very solemn thing. Life should not be treated as a solemn matter. I like to see the children at table, and hear each one telling of the wonderful things he has seen and heard. I like to hear the clatter of knives and forks and spoons mingling with their happy voices. I had rather hear it than any opera that was ever put upon the boards. Let the children have liberty. Be honest and fair with them; be just; be tender, and they will make you ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... so, Jean could see them and ride to the house in time to prevent a surprise. The moments dragged by, and at the end of an hour Jean was in hopes that Blaisdell would soon come. These hopes were well founded. Presently he heard a clatter of hoofs on hard ground to the south, and upon wheeling to look he saw the friendly neighbor coming fast along the road, riding a big white horse. Blaisdell carried a rifle in his hand, and the sight ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... brought the crowd. There was the policeman. I can't make out how he got there. 'Now, what's your little game?' he said. That brought the buildings up with a rush, and broke the road into the usual clatter. ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... up most of the ground floor of Warren Hall. Eight long, roomy tables are arranged at intervals, with broad aisles between, through which the white-aproned waiters hurry noiselessly about. To-night there was a cheerful clatter of spoons and forks and a loud babel of voices, and Joel found himself hugely enjoying the novelty of eating in the presence of more than a hundred and fifty other lads. Outfield West and his neighbors in Hampton House occupied a far table, and there ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... already—any more bumps would have been too much, would they not? But the poor box itself was to be pitied; it had come open in the fall, and all that was in it had naturally tumbled out. That explained the noise and clatter. The box had held—indeed it had been made on purpose to hold them—two beautiful glass jugs, which had been sent to mother all the way from Italy! Baby had never seen them, because they were only used when mother and auntie wanted the dinner-table to look very nice, and of course Baby was ...
— The Adventures of Herr Baby • Mrs. Molesworth
... I answered; and the next moment the voice of the coxswain pealed out: "Oars! rowed of all!" followed by the clatter of the long ash staves as they were laid in on the thwarts, and the gig, still leading the other boats, swept up alongside the ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... off, and my heart went with him. What a joy it would be to clatter down a road once ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... last the desired break in the woods was reached; the trackers found themselves on the open side of Katahdin, surrounded by a tangled growth of alders and white birches struggling up between granite rocks; then the mountain artillery broke forth with terrifying clatter. ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... honey bees would prevent one from enjoying the singing of a skylark. Emboldened by what I saw the others doing, I left my seat and made my way across the floor to Yoletta's side, stealing through the gloom with great caution to avoid making a clatter with those abominable boots. ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... horse. "It's Bradley," declared Lefever decisively. Laramie said nothing. Kate instinctively drew closer to him. The horseman disappeared at that moment behind the railroad icing plant. The next, he whirled with a sharp clatter of hoofs into Main Street, and, dashing past Carpy's, pulled his foaming horse to its haunches in ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... dinner commenced almost at once. There was something excessively peaceful in the scene. The tables were so arranged that one heard nothing of the clatter of crockery. The murmur of voices came like a pleasant undernote. They talked lightly for some time of the English theatres, of the stage generally, some recent memoirs—anything that came into their heads. Then Julien was silent for several minutes. He leaned slightly across ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... sun shines. A perfumed, half crazy little poodle Casts exhausted eyes at the big world. In a window a boy catches flies. A badly soiled baby gets angry. On the horizon a train moves through windy meadows: Slowly paints a long thick stroke. Like typewriters hackney hooves clatter. A dust-covered, noisy athletic club comes along. Brutal shouts stream from bars for coachmen. Yet fine bells mix with them. On the fairgrounds where athletes wrestle, Everything is dark and indistinct. A barrel organ howls and scullery maids sing. ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... effort was just enough. But for the birch-tree it was just too much. The shallow earth by which it held gave way; and the next moment, with a clatter of loosened stones and a swish of leafy branches, it crashed majestically down into the crevice, closing one end of it with a mass of boughs and foliage, and once more frightening the imprisoned cub almost ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... those who pass. They were flames in the temple of the new god Mammon. They were the signs of hucksters who had goods to sell to the crowds at a profit. The profusion of light, the rush of eager throngs to the theatres, the flash and clatter of passing carriages, the streets piled with debris, the half-finished steel skyscraper whose black ribs stood out against the stars, all brought to his imagination this evening the impression ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... turned away from me, but I could see that her cheeks were pale and her lips trembling. She said nothing, I fancied because she dared not trust her voice. Above the tops of the trees the yellow moon was slowly rising; from a few yards away came all the varied clatter of the Boulevard. And around us little groups and couples of people were gay—gay with the invincible, imperishable gaiety of the Frenchman who dines. The white-aproned waiters smiled as with deft hands they served a different course, or ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... sounds that came down to Mrs. Brown made her laugh heartily. But it was a laugh of sympathy. She remembered that she had once been young herself. Presently the racket up-stairs subsided. Then came the clatter of noisy and eager feet on the stairs. And a moment later Henry and Willie skipped out of the door, tore through the gate, and went racing up the street toward ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... the stick-men followed us into the room, taking his apron off as he closed the door behind him, shutting out the roaring clatter of the casino. "Cross-roader!" he hissed at me. I should have known what was coming, but I missed it. He slapped me hard across the face, saving his knuckles, but not doing my jaw a whole lot of good. I ...
— Vigorish • Gordon Randall Garrett
... raillying and reparteeing of it—thrusting and parrying in one corner or another—there would be nothing but mischief among us—Chaste stars! what biting and scratching, and what a racket and a clatter we should make, what with breaking of heads, rapping of knuckles, and hitting of sore places—there would be no such ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... a lingering accent on the second word, as she caught the sound of a distant clatter of dishes and breathed in a ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... a loud laugh, the most startling of which was the Baronet's, which rattled out like a clatter of falling stones. ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... tones. Then, perhaps, the sullen, savage crowd had wrought their last act of anger and revenge on him, had it not been for a sudden change in that tide of ill fortune that now seemed to carry him forward to his doom. There came a sound of far-off cries, a distant clacking of hoofs, the clatter of steel, many shouts, entreaties and commands. The close-packed crowd which filled the open space in front of the hotel writhed, twisted, turned and would have sought to resolve itself into groups and individuals. Some cried out that the troops were coming. A detachment of the ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... with a sort of terrified obedience, rose on tiptoe, and struck a pane with her fist. The glass broke and fell with a loud clatter. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... with a final jerk that made the little craft tremble to her keel, the big single sail filled, and the felucca careened to her bearings, as her canvas caught the full pressure of the wind. At the same instant I heard an oar-blade clatter as it was hastily laid in, and an exultant cheer arise ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... different as possible in detail; but the fact that there are wanderings at all is remarkable, and there are other coincidences with Keats and differences from any classical form, which it might be out of place to dwell on here. Endymion is waked from his Latmian sleep by the infernal clatter of the dwellers at the base of the mountain, who use all the loudest instruments they possess to dispel an eclipse of the moon: and is discovered by his friend Pyzandre, to whom he tells the vicissitudes of his love and sleep. The early revealings of herself ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... instead of being clear sighted commentators of what passes under their noses. The English phrase-mongering philanthropists all with joy smacked their bloody lips at the, by them ardently wished and expected downfall of a noble, free and self-governing people. Tigers, hyenas and jackals! clatter your teeth, smack your lips! but you shall ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... members of the National Guard and the government, who slipped quietly out. The pastor, oblivious to this circumstance, went on with his sermon, but uneasiness arose in the congregation, and when at last the clatter of cavalry and the roll of artillery were heard passing the church all order was at an end. The worshippers rushed into the street in a mass, the preacher following. Within ten minutes a state of peace had been ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... always poetises. I hate a lukewarm artist. I have known actors—and some of them of Elliston's own stamp—who shall have agreeably been amusing you in the part of a rake or a coxcomb, through the two or three hours of their dramatic existence; but no sooner does the curtain fall with its leaden clatter, but a spirit of lead seems to seize on all their faculties. They emerge sour, morose persons, intolerable to their families, servants, &c. Another shall have been expanding your heart with generous ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... about that inexhaustible source of wonder and delight, the baby. But with Miss Granger always at hand, the dessert was as ceremonious as if there had been a party of eighteen, and infinitely more dreary, lacking the cheery clatter and buzz of company. She ate five hothouse grapes, and sipped half a glass of claret, with as solemn an air as if she had been making a libation to ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... softly. From the kitchen came the rhythmic beating of a wooden spoon against the side of a bowl; a melancholy chant—quite archaic, as Tish said—kept time with the spoon, and later a smell of baking flour and the clatter of dishes told us that our meal ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... matter a pin, In creating, the only hard thing's to begin; A grass-blade's no easier to make than an oak; If you've once found the way, you've achieved the grand stroke; In the worst of his poems are mines of rich matter, But thrown in a heap with a crash and a clatter; Now it is not one thing nor another alone Makes a poem, but rather the general tone, 540 The something pervading, uniting the whole, The before unconceived, unconceivable soul, So that just in removing this trifle or that, you Take away, as it were, a chief limb of the statue; Roots, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... Gram., p. 193. "The it, together with the verb to be, express states of being."—Cobbett's Eng. Gram., 190. "Hence it is, that the profuse variety of objects in some natural landscapes, neither breed confusion nor fatigue."—Kames, El. of Crit., i, 266. "Such a clatter of sounds indicate rage and ferocity."—Music of Nature, p. 195. "One of the fields make threescore square yards, and the other only fifty-five."—Duncan's Logic, p. 8. "The happy effects of this fable is worth attending to."—Bailey's Ovid, p. x. "Yet the glorious ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... stood grasping the poker by the middle, then he flung it with a clatter on the fender, and, sitting down, gazed moodily into the fire, without moving, until Shorely had ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... there they were, Laboring upon the gates, driving and banging, With their hard hatchet-beaks, and such a din, Such a clatter, as they made, hammering and hacking, In a perpetual peal, pelting away Like shipwrights, hard at work in the arsenal. And now their work is finished, gates and all, Staples and bolts, and bars and everything; The sentries at their posts; patrols appointed; ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... place to the distinct bellowing of cattle, the clatter of innumerable hoofs, and the yells of savage men, while at the same moment the edges of the opposite cliffs became alive with Indians and buffaloes rushing about in frantic haste—the former almost mad with savage excitement, the latter with blind ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... Ruth and Martha under his wing and kissing them, crying, "Take that one for luck—and that to grow on." Then he let out his laugh. But in vain did Emma Morton try to squirm from his grasp; in vain she tried to quiet his clatter. "Say, girls, cluster around Brother George's knee—or knees—and ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... There was a clatter of pails on the porch, and a tall, lanky boy peered wonderingly in through the screen door. He had a fair, gentle face and big gray eyes, and wisps of soft yellow hair hung down under his cap. Nils sprang ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... make them out, neither could they us. We shouted as boldly as if we had been a company, and in the clatter of their heels on the stones they could not count our feet. They knew not how many followers the darkness held. The group parted. Two men remained in hot combat close under the left wall. Across the way one sturdy fighter held off two, while a sixth man, crying on his ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... workroom, with the clatter of a forge close to them, they had not heard a commotion in the court outside. Dennet had been standing on the steps cleaning her tame starling's cage, when Mistress Headley had suddenly come out on the gallery behind her, hotly scolding her laundress, ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... conversing for some time in this strain, when the clatter of a horse's hoof was heard behind them, and turning their heads they saw the same Spaniard who had accompanied them on their way the day before. They told Morton, who turned his horse's head ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... of heavy metallic objects. The sounds came nearer, swelling in proportion, now clearly distinguishable; and so lying flat upon his stomach, he parted the bushes at the edge of the rock and peered over. There was a cloud of dust and the clatter of iron-shod boots against the flints of the road, and in a moment he made out long ranks of soldiers, marching rapidly to the northward into the Pass. Renwick knew that the northern end of the Pass was already strongly guarded, ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... generous, no, nor 'kind.' It shall be pure merchandise or nothing at all. Therefore determine!—remembering always how our 'ars poetica,' after Horace, recommends 'dare et petere vicissim'—which is making a clatter of pedantry to take advantage of the noise ... because perhaps I ought to be ashamed to say this to you, and perhaps I am! ... yet ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... 1682 the boy had an errand from his mother, which must be kept private from all, the father included in the first of them. Crossing the braes, he hears the clatter of a horse's shoes, and claps down incontinent in a hag by the wayside. And presently he spied his father come riding from one direction, and Curate Haddo walking from another; and Montroymont leaning down from the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Joe's rocking-horse, turned the little wheel faster than even I dared to turn it, tried on grandma's stays, and then, as a crowning feat, tried the rather dangerous experiment of riding down the garret stairs on a board! The clatter brought up grandma, and I felt some doubts about her relishing a kind of play which savored so much of what she called "a racket," but the soft brown eyes which looked at her so pleadingly were too full of love, gentleness, and mischief to be resisted, and permission for "one more ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... even Winchester Cathedral in this hasty record of a motor flight through Britain. And, speaking of the motor car, ardent devotee as I am, I could not help feeling a painful sense of the inappropriateness of its presence in Winchester; of its rush through the streets at all hours of the night; of its clatter as it climbed the steep hills in the town; of the blast of its unmusical horn; and of its glaring lights, falling weirdly on the old buildings. It seemed an intruder in the capital ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... what had occurred. The candle dropped from his hand, falling with a sharp clatter. There was a horrible pause, both of us standing there close to one another in the sudden blackness. I could hear his fast nervous breathing. I was myself unstrung I suppose, because I remember that I was dreadfully afraid lest Trenchard should ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... "Our people all went over to Holland, where the Dutch folk live and the little Dutch children clatter about with their wooden shoes. There thou wast born, Remember, and my own children, and there we lived in love ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... quiet downstairs and I heard nothing, but at midnight there was a sound of moving chairs and a clatter of crockery. So there was supper. Then the chairs moved again, and through the floor I heard a noise; they seemed to be shouting hurrah. Marya Gerasimovna was already asleep and I was quite alone in the whole upper storey; the portraits of my forefathers, cruel, insignificant people, looked ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... club was a pretty sight. The guests were all in their Pageant costumes, and as the various float groups mingled, the contrasts were effective. A Venetian gondolier escorted a fisher girl of the Seine, or a bold buccaneer from the Spanish Main clanked his sword in time with the clatter of the wooden ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... they were filled with amazement, and came to the King with the news that witchcraft must be going on in Martin's Tower, for, instead of dying of starvation, he was seemingly making merry to the sound of music, and to the clatter of plates, and glass, and knives and forks; and the music was so enchantingly sweet that all the passers-by stood still to listen to it. On this the King sent at once a messenger to the Starvation Tower, and he was so astonished with what he ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... officers, honest Englishmen, suspecting no evil and having confidence in their chief, saw nothing strange in this proceeding, and Sir William rode deliberately out of Zutphen. After he had been absent an hour or two, the clatter of hoofs and the tramp of infantry was heard without, and presently the commandant returned, followed by a thousand musketeers and three or four hundred troopers. It was still pitch dark; but, dimly lighted by torches, small detachments of the fresh troops picked their way through the black narrow ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of angels, one is apt to hear the rustling of their wings," added Rose, as a shrill whistle came up the avenue accompanied by the clatter ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... have turned black and the sky has faded. It grows so still on the water that the tinkle of a little Italian band reaches across the lake to Cadenabbia, a laugh rings out into the quiet air from one of the merry little rowboats, and even the slight clatter made by the fishermen, in putting their boats to rights for the night and in carrying their nets indoors, can be distinguished as one of many indications ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... did Polly hear her father's gouty footsteps approaching the parlor door, accompanied with the stiff clatter of Feathertop's high-heeled shoes, than she seated herself bolt upright, and innocently began ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... standing at the window of the wayside house, saw Sir Percy Blakeney once more mount the box of the chaise. This time he had Sir Andrew Ffoulkes beside him. The Clamette family were huddled together—happy and free—inside the vehicle. After which there was the usual clatter of horses' hoofs, the creaking of wheels, the rattle of chains. Chauvelin saw and heard nothing of that. All that he saw at the last was Sir Percy's slender hand, waving him ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... out of plumb; and then, when I was watching this miracle, rattle its chain and hang the other way. A regiment of boots on the floor—I suppose it was boots—would tramp to one corner, remain quiet for a while, and then clatter elsewhere in a body. Towards daybreak the skipper appeared in shining oilskins, tapped the barometer, glanced at me, and laughed because my pillow—which was a linen bag stuffed with old magazines—at that moment became ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... coil of line that we had made ready for the purpose, and hurled himself recklessly at a dark mass that at that moment came sliding close past what had been our lee side before I luffed the catamaran into the wind. I heard the splashing clatter of his boots as he landed upon certain objects that sounded like loose paddles lying washing about in the bottom of the canoe—for such I now saw the craft to be; saw him stoop, as though making fast the rope he had taken with him; and then he shouted: "All fast, sir; let her go off!" I put ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... seen an army officer in uniform in my life; at the Posta I saw hardly anything else. We were surrounded by lieutenants and captains and colonels, and as I watched them come and go with clank and clatter of spurs and swords, and military salutes at the door, and military cloaks thrown dramatically off and on, and gold braid shining, I began to think a big standing army worth the money to any country, on ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... bunch of cattle might shuffling along a dusty road. The night was so quiet you could hear things plain from a long ways off. It growed a little louder and a little nearer. And then it struck a plank bridge somewheres, and come acrost it with a clatter. Then I knowed it wasn't cattle. Cows and steers don't make that cantering kind of noise as a rule; they trot. It was hosses crossing that bridge. And they was quite ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... shelter of an open hallway directly opposite the point where the vehicle had halted. He stood there pondering as to his next move, when the sharp clatter of running footsteps ...
— The Boys of Bellwood School • Frank V. Webster
... where, amid the bales of peltries and the trading-trinkets of the Fur Company, a hidden voice is speaking and a young man listens. That young man is Alexander Mackenzie, a self-taught Scot, a Canadian bourgeois. In the noisy midday clatter of the fort he hears the voice, in the waking hours of dawn and "when evening shuts the deed off, calls the glory from the grey." He cannot get away from that haunting challenge, he would not if he could. There are interminable changes rung on the everlasting ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... form of pride, in the externals of humility and rotten with innate malignity, groaned audibly through his clenched teeth; and with shut eyes and crossed hands, as in prayer, sought to pass a practical rebuke upon the less devout exhibitions of those around him. The cant and the clatter, as it prevails in the crowded mart, were here in miniature; and Charity would have needed something more than a Kamschatka covering to have shut out from her eyes the enormous hypocrisy of many among ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... Marmalada, Giovanelli of the Bersaglieri, young Ponto of the K.O.B.'s, and myself—men who never give a thought save to the gold embroidery of their pantoufles or the exquisite ebon laquer of their Russia leather cricket-shoes. Suddenly we heard a clatter in the streets. The riderless chargers of the Bersaglieri were racing down the Santo Croce, and just turning, with a swing and shriek of clattering spurs, into the Maremma. In the midst of the street, under our very window, was a little thing like a butterfly, with yeux de pervenche. You ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... my ear is the clatter of chalk against blackboard, Not music's voluptuous swell; Alas! this is life,—so pass mortal pleasures, And,—thank goodness, there ...
— Point Lace and Diamonds • George A. Baker, Jr.
... We did not envy him this position. We simply forgot him in the general rush of seasonable sentiment, and put ourselves to all sorts of delightful inconvenience in discovering what his family would like. And when, later in the forenoon, as we were sitting round the studio stove, we heard a clatter of skates in the porch, and a single knock, as though some small person had stood atip-toe to reach the Canterbury Pilgrim, I am not ashamed to say we went down in a body to open the door. Messrs. Giuseppe Mazzini and Benvenuto Cellini stood without, the former ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... the old woodwork dried her throat. With her hand on the swing door that led into the dining-room, she paused in a delicious ecstasy of terror, as the imagined clink of glass and silver, the normal clatter of a cheerful meal, seemed to echo in ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... just what happened! In another moment the barrel on which Russ sat fell apart, and with a clatter and clash of staves he toppled in on Laddie. Then the chairs, behind the barrel, where Rose, Vi and Margy and Mun were sitting, toppled over. In another instant the whole steamboat load of children was all upset in the middle of the playroom floor, having ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Grandma Bell's • Laura Lee Hope
... Such a clatter as there was when they came to the barnyard; for every thing was just awake, and in the best spirits. Ducks were paddling off to the pond; geese to the meadow; and meek gray guinea-hens tripping away to hunt bugs in the garden. A splendid cock stood on the wall, and ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... former pace, while Nanty, with Sam Skelton, waited by the roadside till the rear came up, when Jephson and Fairford joined them, and, to the great relief of the latter, they began to proceed at an easier pace than formerly, suffering the gang to precede them, till the clatter and clang attending their progress began to die away in the distance. They had not proceeded a pistol-shot from the place where they parted, when a short turning brought them in front of an old mouldering gateway, whose heavy pinnacles were decorated in the style ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... the curtain was to be rung down on the end of the play, a mad clatter of boots was heard behind the scenes. Then a man, dressed in complete black, and excessively pale, jumped upon the stage. His black hair was tossed all over his head, and his black eyes were rolling wildly. Thus much all the spectators saw ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... trying to slip it into the cupboard, which he might have seen would never hold it, and in any case was a queer place for a tray, and stood there with it in his hands, brick-red and glowering at them. She was going to take it from him when he dunted it down on the window-seat with a clatter. "What for can he not go on with his good chop?" thought Ellen. "We're putting on grand company manners for this bit chemist body, surely," and she pulled forward a chair for the stranger and sat down in the corner with her note-book on ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... higher level of the hotel and began their clatter through the long street of the town, Lanfear noted that she seemed to feel as much as himself the quaintness of the little city, rising on one hand, with its narrow alleys under successive arches between the high, ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... night was aroused by a clatter, Each one in the house crying, 'Ho! what's the matter?' All jumped out of bed and ran hither and thither, Scarce knowing amid their alarm why or whither; But soon it was found 'mid the tumult and din That burglars were making attempts to break in. And now there arose o'er the turmoil ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Chitrasena's warriors rushing impetuously to the field the earth itself became soon covered by the Gandharva host. Then king Duryodhana, and Sakuni, the son of Suvala, and Dussasana, and Vikarna, and other sons of Dhritarashtra, seated on cars the clatter of whose wheels resembled the roars of Garuda, returned to the charge, following the lead of Karna, and began to slaughter that host. And desirous of supporting Karna, these princes invested the Gandharva army, with a large number of cars and a strong body of horses. Then the whole of the Gandharva ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... to my perch, and the horses (a bay And a brown) trotted off with a clatter; The driver look'd round in his humorous way, And said ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... in great surprise, which was much increased when he found the door of the gallery in question closed and locked. He listened, and heard quite distinctly, within the room, the noise of plates and dishes and the clatter of knives and forks. To this, after a time, succeeded the sound of shuffling cards and the rattle of money, as if thrown on the table in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... ahead than to turn back, now," broke in Joe, his teeth accompanying his words with the clatter of castanets. ...
— The Motor Boat Club and The Wireless - The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise • H. Irving Hancock
... "Then forth rushed the twain, and fought in front of the gates like wild boars that in the mountains abide the assailing crew of men and dogs, and charging on either flank they crush the wood around them, cutting it at the root, and the clatter of their tusks waxes loud, till one smite them and take their ...
— The Sportsman - On Hunting, A Sportsman's Manual, Commonly Called Cynegeticus • Xenophon
... she came to the queen and told her all. Alas, said the queen, where is that false knight become? Then the queen was nigh out of her wit, and then she writhed and weltered as a mad woman, and might not sleep a four or five hours. Then Sir Launcelot had a condition that he used of custom, he would clatter in his sleep, and speak oft of his lady, Queen Guenever. So as Sir Launcelot had waked as long as it had pleased him, then by course of kind he slept, and Dame Elaine both. And in his sleep he talked and clattered as a jay, of the love that had been betwixt Queen Guenever and him. And so as he talked ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... the way!" cried Vetch; but the next moment I heard a clatter of steel upon the cobbles; and guessed that the stranger had struck my enemy's sword from his hand. Then my neck was released, and looking up I saw my captor himself captive in the grip of a tall ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... bell tinkled, the two red eyes dilated and widened in the night, then with a clatter the horse was pulled up beside the curb, and Steel spread his hand ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... keeping an unostentatious eye upon the party on the top of the deck-house, turned and sauntered aft to the engine-room door, sneezing violently as he walked past it. The next instant there arose a perfectly hair-raising clatter and clash of metal down in the engine-room, and the engines abruptly ceased to revolve! So sudden and startling was the clatter that both ladies screamed, and clasped their hands convulsively, in the most ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... and closing of the street door precluded a reply. There was a clatter of feet upon the stairs, and into the room came Percy, followed by two men whose forms and features were concealed by their ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... There was a clatter of dishes and spoons. Mrs. Bentley and Mrs. Meade presided over this part of the ...
— The High School Boys' Canoe Club • H. Irving Hancock
... that article, removed it with some clatter, and put it back in the shop window; she then returned, and, putting her elegant elbows on the table, regarded the young man not ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... arraignment of a whole epoch at the bar of the conscience of a man who is intellectually honest and powerfully intellectual. George Ponderevo transgresses most of the current codes, but he also shatters them. The entire system of sanctions tumbles down with a clatter like the fall of a corrugated iron church. I do not know what is left standing, unless it be George Ponderevo. I would not call him a lovable, but he is an admirable, man. He is too ruthless, rude, and bitter to be anything but solitary. ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... and his manner confounded her for a moment. She could not at once make an answer, for she could not decide what to say. Then, of a sudden, she was robbed of her chance to answer. From down the trail came a yell like a shot. The clatter of hoofs rang out, and men on horses dashed from the entrance of the Gap toward them. De Spain could not make them out distinctly, but he knew Lefever's yell, and pointed. "There they are," he exclaimed ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... no pity. For the new-made Bride, Blithe with the promise of her life's delight, That wanders gladly by her Husband's side, He with the clatter of his drum doth fright; He scares the Virgin at ...
— The Dance of Death • Hans Holbein
... change into your glove before starting for church. When these poles had raked every pew, they were carried up the aisle to Dr. Lavendar, who, taking hold of the purple tassel on the bottom of each bag, turned the contents into a silver plate. The change came out with a fine clatter; we children used to keep awake on purpose to hear it. Once in a while a bill would rustle out with the silver and balance on the top. of the little heap in such an exciting way that Dr. Lavendar had to put his hand over it to keep ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... continued, in a tone so impressive, that, even amid the clatter of twenty machines around me, not a word was lost,—"you may be sure that this prejudice against women working for their own support will never die out. It is one of those excrescences of the human mind that cannot be extirpated. It is a distortion of the reasoning ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... way. At the second charge, when they advanced farther and were briskly engaged in the midst of the enemy's squadrons, by a method of fighting new to them, they were thrown into dismay. A number of the enemy, mounted on chariots and cars, made towards them with such a prodigious clatter from the trampling of the cattle and rolling of wheels, as affrighted the horses of the Romans, unaccustomed to such tumultuous operations. By this means the victorious cavalry were dispersed, through a panic, and men and horses, in their ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... beds, While visions of sugarplums danced in their heads; And mamma in her kerchief, and I in my cap, Had just settled our brains for a long winter's nap,— When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter, I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter. Away to the window I flew like a flash, Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash. The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow Gave a lustre of midday to objects below; When, what to my ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... whistled an inane marching tune, with the rhythm of which my steps could not but keep time. I have been the only man in a dining-room full of college girls. A hundred of them put down their knives and forks with a clatter as I entered, and a hundred pairs of mischievously solemn eyes followed my every movement. Voluntarily to go through such experiences alone a man must be in love. And certainly I was not in love with any girl at ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... up to answer it; but she heard the giantess going through the hall. There was a voice. Janice recognized it with a start. Then the giantess approached the living-room door, heavy footed, with a clatter ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... when we returned to Naples, the weather was perfect, the sky cloudless, the sea without a ripple. At three in the morning I was awakened by the windows of my room bursting open, their eighteen panes of glass falling upon the floor with a frightful clatter. I jumped out of bed, and felt that the house was shaking. I thought of Pliny the Elder, and having no desire for a similar fate, I hastily pulled on my clothes and hurried out into the corridor. My first impulse had apparently been that of all the inmates of the hotel, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... for me." "For me." "For me." She heard that echo of her thought through all the clamour of the streets, the shrill cries, the clatter of hoofs, the rattling of wheels over the cobble stones. She heard it as she climbed the stairs to her room. When she had taken off her hat and coat she poured some eau-de-cologne with water into a cup and drank it—not this time to Italy or the joy of life. She lay ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... opera in three acts—'Die beiden Neffen, oder der Onkel aus Boston' (The Two Nephews, or the Uncle from Boston), which had gone most successfully, and now Zelter held up his hand as a signal that he had something important to say. All eyes were turned to him, and the clatter of tongues ceased in a moment. The old musician's face was lighted up by a most unusual expression. His grumpiness had cleared away, and a look of benevolence beamed from his eyes, in which there was even a suspicion of moisture, as, lifting his ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... and then a kind of mocking laughter like a madman's meaningless merriment. Nor would he cease until my lord clouted him twice or thrice rudely on his ill-favoured crown with a "Hist, folly, stay thy devil's clatter." Now, this beast it was, one, I suppose, of those apes that King Solomon trafficked in, that gave rise to the saying that a familiar from Hell housed with my lord in Guernsey. But being of a bold ...
— The Fall Of The Grand Sarrasin • William J. Ferrar
... little that I care so little for it. The music I mean is what I hear, when, in a summer's afternoon, I carry my book out into the barn to read as I lie on a bed of hay. I don't read, but I listen. The cooing of the doves, the clatter even of the fowls in the barn-yard, the quiet noises, with the whisperings of the great elm, and the rustling of the brook in the field beyond,—all this is the music I like to hear. It puts me into delicious dreams, and stirs me, too, into ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... sending out horsemen to every village on either side of the river above and below us, for a circle of twenty miles. If horsemen have passed through, some villager or other is sure to have been awoke by the clatter of the horses. If we get news, we must follow up the traces wherever they go. If not, it will be strong proof that they are still here. In any case, our pursuit all over the country will lead them to think that we have no suspicion ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... of the rifles' clatter, The riveting racket machine guns gave, Until dawn comes and the clan must scatter As each one glides to his waiting grave; But here at the end of their last endeavor However their stark dreams leap the foam There is one set rule they will keep forever: "Death to ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... There was a clatter of china and glass and a clink of bottles, at the sound of which Bentwood looked around with a sudden spasmodic grin on his face. But Sartoris scowled at him furiously, and he turned his watery gaze in another ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... at Klosterneuburg. Bertha's ears were assailed by the sound of many clear voices and the clatter of hurrying footsteps. She looked out of the window. A number of schoolboys crowded up to the train and, laughing and shouting, got into the carriages. The sight of them caused Bertha to call to mind the days of her childhood, when her brothers used to come back from picnics ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler
... surge and a great clatter of feet the hunt was renewed. Past Trencher's refuge, with never a look this way or that, the policeman, the bearded man, all the rest of them, went pelting along the sidewalk, giving tongue like beagles. He could have put forth his hand and touched some of them as they sped ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... just before eight o'clock, to gulp down her breakfast, with one eye on the clock. The clatter of a cable car passing the corner meant that Susan had just time to pin on her hat, seize her gloves and her lunch, and catch the next cable-car. She flashed through the dreary little entrance yard, past other yards, past the bakery, and took her seat ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... breakfast-table each one was expatiating on the rare promise of the day. Even Mrs. Clifford, awakened by the half subdued clatter of the children, had seen the brilliant, ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... the meantime there was much clatter in and about the old Britt house, tumble of timbers and rip of wainscotings and snarl of drawing nails. Out from the gaping windows floated the powdery drift of the plastering which the broad shovels had tackled. The satirists said that it was noticeable that the statue of Tasper ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... press. There was nothing for him, recently promoted to a sub-editorship, to do after he had passed the column for which he was responsible; as a matter of fact he could have gone home before the machines began their clatter. But he generally hung about, trifling, until two o'clock came. On this occasion, the morning of the 22nd of June, 1912, he stopped longer than usual, chatting with Hacket, who had charge of the foreign ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... more tenderly and graciously than ever before. Her voice was like the bass of a deep organ, without the groan in it; like the most delicate of violin tones without the wail in it; like the most glorious of trumpet-ejaculations without the defiance in it; like the sound of falling water without the clatter and clash in it: it was like all of them and neither of them—all of them without their faults, each of them without its peculiarity: after all, it was more like his mother's voice than ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... every one, or nearly every one, seemed to have ceased talking. Into this strange silence, through the open windows, there floated the clear call of the whippoorwill,—only one, for the buzz and clamor and clatter of many voices surged up again instantly, and the violins began to scrape and screech themselves into tune, and no one seemed to have noticed either the silence or the whippoorwill. But I could not for ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... state of perfection they have arrived at is to be able to make and tie up a bundle of skewers, split a clothes-peg, tinker a kettle, mend a chair, see-saw on an old fiddle, rap their knuckles on a tambourine, clatter about with their feet, tickle the guitar, and make a squeaking noise through their teeth, that fiction and romance call singing. The most that can be said in their favour is, that a few of them have become respectable Christians and hard-working men and women, and have done something ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... and had scarcely touched the handle of the bell, when there was a deafening clatter of books and slates on the crude benches. Feet shod and feet bare pounded the floor. Merry yells rent the air. On the platform itself two of the arithmetic delinquents were boxing playfully, fiercely punching, thrusting, ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... London, its superior regularity and order, in my opinion, prevent its coming up to the scene I have just faintly traced, in the strange and excited feelings it calls up. Amidst all this, there is a constant clatter of tongues strongly recalling the confusion of Babel. A China-man never talks below his breath; and, if one may judge from the loud tones in which the whole community express their sentiments, whether in a house or shop or ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... a clatter of hoofs at which Jack and Nat turned their heads. If they expected to see some one coming to rescue them they were disappointed, for all they beheld was John, swinging his horse around on the trail and making ...
— Jack Ranger's Western Trip - From Boarding School to Ranch and Range • Clarence Young
... the incident that drew from Jimmy his extraordinary statement. I was smoking with him in his rooms one evening, when a clatter at his door was followed by a thud on the floor. I knew as well as Jimmy what had happened. In his pre-Saturday days he had no letter-box, only a slit in the door; and through this we used to denounce him on certain occasions when we called and he would not let us in. ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... growing dusk of evening, caused her to act on impulse, and first looking around her quickly, she pulled out the peg which fastened down the cover, and went on. The cover was lifted from within, and the pigeons flew away with a clatter that brought the chagrined poulterer cursing and swearing to ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy |
