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More "Quaver" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... simple songs they sang. Meg had a voice like a flute, and she and her mother led the little choir. Amy chirped like a cricket, and Jo wandered through the airs at her own sweet will, always coming out at the wrong place with a croak or a quaver that spoiled the most pensive tune. They had always done this from the time ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... could see the glow of the great camp-fire burning warmly through the shore-side trees. Some one was singing, a dull, old, droning sailor's song, with a droop and a quaver at the end of every verse, and seemingly no end to it at all but the patience of the singer. I had heard it on the voyage more than ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in the way of sense or sentiment it was impossible to discover as the three pages of music appeared to consist of variations upon that one line, ending with a prolonged quaver which flushed the musical brow and left the youth quite breathless when he ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... Mr. Lockwood, with a quaver in his voice, "do you really think I am not doing my duty by ...
— The Girls of Central High on Lake Luna - or, The Crew That Won • Gertrude W. Morrison
... Over most of them he laughed with us himself—a great gusty laugh that made the cheap glass ornaments upon the mantelpiece to tremble; but now and then a recollection came to him that spread a sudden gravity across his jovial face, bringing a curious quaver into ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... and the fumes of choice tobacco scent the air. There, snuff and cigars and German pipes and flutes, and violins and violoncellos, divide the supremacy between them. It is the region of song and smoke. Street bands are on their mettle in Golden Square, and itinerant glee singers quaver involuntarily as they raise their voices ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... flashed over Coleman as if it had come from an electric storage. He had known the professor long, but he had never before heard a quaver in his voice, and it was this little quaver that seemed to impel him to supreme disregard of the dangers which he looked upon as being the final dangers. His own voice ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... to describe the service in detail. There was a discouraging droop and quaver in the singing, and the mournful-looking deacon who passed the collection-plate seemed inured to disappointment. The prayer had in it a note of despairing appeal which fell like a cold hand upon ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... and other significant objects, and especially at the small table set out for tea, to which the servant who had admitted her now returned with a steaming kettle. "Isn't it charming here? Will there be any one else? Where IS Mr. Van? Shall I make tea?" There was just a faint quaver, showing a command of the situation more desired perhaps than achieved, in the very rapid sequence of these ejaculations. The servant meanwhile had placed the hot water above the little silver lamp and left ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... followed by carols in which the other voices joined—Porter's and Barry's and Leila's; General Dick's breathy tenor, Aunt Isabelle's quaver, Aunt Frances' dominant note—with Susan Jenks and the colored maid who helped her on such occasions, piping up like two melodious ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... the buzzing of drone-flies, or humble bees, in the tones of its sympathetic strings, which often numbered as many as twenty-four. These violas recall the Hardanger peasant fiddle of Norway, of unknown origin and antiquity, whose delicate metallic under strings quaver tremulously and mysteriously when the bow sets in motion the ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... French Pete's gal!" he exclaimed, cordially, though there was a quaver in his voice. "Da'tter of my old friend what diskivered this here mine an' then lost it. Killed, he was, by a gunman, twenty years gone. Gents, say howdy to ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... the straps of the rifle-case with unnecessary care, but there was a quaver in his voice that ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... read the gazette, his clear voice pronouncing every word with a sort of quaver in it, resembling the tic-tac of our clock in the middle of the night, and it could be distinctly heard in the square. The reading lasted a long time, for the commandant omitted nothing. I remember it commenced ...
— Waterloo - A sequel to The Conscript of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... detection. The German woman supposed that I was the mother of the child, but knew there was a secret, and did not seek to disturb it. At the end of the six months, your—your—brother died." (There was here a slight quaver in her voice, almost instantly passing away.) "Soon after this, my mother died, and the last of our family estate was spent on her burial." (Another tremor in the voice, but brief. The woman seemed to have ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... profitless, equally monotonous; the struggle for existence just as keen, the interest in this or that pupil just as superficial, the interest in obtaining pupils perhaps the greatest of all. But the drudgery of teaching the young mind to distinguish between crotchet and quaver, and mark time, mark time, wore Von ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... the farthest corner. The place was rather large, and everywhere dark except within the narrow circle of the candle-light. In a quiet voice, with a little quaver in it, ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... himself, and Mandy and the children, quite as well as our father did us, if he had wanted to work, for we had the biggest family of the neighbourhood. So we children made fun of him and we had to hold our mouths shut when he got up all tired and teary-like, and began to quaver: ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... clamped to the building would serve, in case of a bolt's striking the church, to drive its whole force into the building. As a loud crash burst over the village in the midst of his sermon, and showed how frightfully near the storm was, his voice broke into a shrill quaver, as he faltered out, "Yes, my brethren, let us be calm under all circumstances, and Death will ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... quite thrilling, isn't it?" she said, and there was still a quaver of indignation in her voice. ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... taken the precaution to open both doors of the cabin wide, after his hosts were safely asleep, letting in the moonlight and a little breeze that smelled keenly of pine woods. Now and then a faint bird-note broke the hush, or the mournful quaver of a screech-owl. The situation was not without picturesque piquancy for a ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... can't see that you are much changed." There was a suggestion of a quaver in her voice, and the shadows did not prevent him from seeing the quick mist that ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... voice was always low and gentle, with a quaver and hesitancy in the utterance; now it was tender and comforting with the comprehension of one in suffering, the extraordinary tact, which the old of his race nearly all come to possess. "Li'l chicken-wing on piece brown ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... and the bull fiddle—they umpah ump along. Underneath the quaver and whine of the jazz they beat the time, they make the tuneless rhythm. The feet dancing on the crowded cabaret floor listen cautiously for the trombone, the bassoon and the bull fiddle. They have a liaison ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... self-consciousness of our own boys and girls? He had been one of the wise men in the spectacle, and he still wore his white beard and turban and his long blue and red robes. Yet he wasn't in the least fussed; he simply made a bow, said what he had to say, made another bow, with never a blush or a quaver or giggle. His mother was there, and she was so happy—she is a widow, and sews in the neighborhood, plain sewing, ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... score and the piano arrangement (for two pianofortes) for convenience in looking it over. If the concluding figure (Letter M., Moderato pomposo) seems to make a better effect in the instrumentation by following the piano arrangement with the simple quaver figure [Liszt illustrates with a brief musical score excerpt] instead of the triplets, according to the score, I have not the slightest objection to it, and beg you altogether, dear friend, to feel quite free to do as ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... the voice, still fainter, Sinking almost to a whisper, With a hesitating quaver, As the picture came before her Of her disappearing people. Then I rose and piled more branches Of the redwood on the campfire, And the flames and sparks leaped upward, Lighting up the mournful forest, Driving back the ...
— The Legends of San Francisco • George W. Caldwell
... movement to her breast, a quaver in her voice, of which she seemed slightly ashamed, for she turned ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... the last word in a long-drawn quaver which gave it a horrid sound—especially in the woods, after dark. And Turkey Proudfoot felt chills a-running up and ...
— The Tale of Turkey Proudfoot - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... join your friend—see everything, enjoy everything, learn everything, and write me an excellent letter, brimming over with your impressions. I'm extremely fond of the Dutch painters," she added with the faintest quaver in the world, an impressible break of voice that Longmore had noticed once or twice before and had interpreted as the sudden weariness, the controlled convulsion, of a spirit self-condemned to ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... the house without further words, and Mrs. Forbes called to her son in a voice that had a wrathful quaver. ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... she saw its significance. She might not have perceived it so quickly even then had it not been for the second of hesitation before Drusilla answered and the quaver in her voice when ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... put his hand on her shoulder, and with a "I'll just trouble you—this way please," and not so much as a quaver in his voice, led her into ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... soldiers marched into that cold ocean water, dreading it with all their souls but soldiers to the core, without a quaver, eyes to the front, heads up, chests out, unflinchingly, up to their knees, up to their waists, up to their chins, when the captain shouted "As you were!" and such a hilarious, shouting, laughing, splashing, jumping, yelling, fun-filled hour as followed the world never saw. The gleaming ...
— Soldier Silhouettes on our Front • William L. Stidger
... he laughed, with a little quaver of excitement in his voice, which he had been careful to master in the announcement to the bank president. "We live, pappy; we live and win! Get word to the men to come up here at three o'clock for their pay. Tell them we blow in again to-morrow, and they can ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... were any snakes around here," said Grace wonderingly, and, it must be admitted, still with a little quaver in her voice. ...
— The Outdoor Girls at the Hostess House • Laura Lee Hope
... seemed—not young, indeed—but a kind of new contrivance of Mother Nature in the shape of man, whom age and infirmity had no business to touch. His voice and laugh, which perpetually re-echoed through the Custom-House, had nothing of the tremulous quaver and cackle of an old man's utterance; they came strutting out of his lungs, like the crow of a cock, or the blast of a clarion. Looking at him merely as an animal—and there was very little else to look at—he was a most satisfactory object, from the thorough healthfulness ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... parlor organ with the quaver in its tongue, Seemed to tremble in its fervor as the sacred songs were sung, As we sang the homely anthems, sang the glad revival hymns Of the glory of the story and the light ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... prevailing metrical unit, or foot, within the line has been frankly given over. Iambs, dactyls, and their ilk receive scant courtesy from the composer of folk-song, who without qualm or quaver will stretch one syllable, or even an utter silence (caesura), into the time of a complete bar; while in the next breath he will with equal equanimity huddle a dozen syllables into the same period. Consequently, this item, ...
— A Syllabus of Kentucky Folk-Songs • Hubert G. Shearin
... astonished because she could be so calm after all that she had passed through, but the mother was very strong and patient. When any one spoke to her of her two sturdy children, she only said: "I shall soon lose them also," without a quaver in her voice or a tear in her eye. She had accustomed herself ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... wonder and romance. I am writing, as usual, by my window, the moonlight brighter in its whiteness than my mean little yellow-shining lamp. From the mysterious greyness, the olive groves and lanes beneath my terrace, rises a confused quaver of frogs, and buzz and whirr of insects: something, in sound, like the vague trails of countless stars, the galaxies on galaxies blurred into mere blue shimmer by the moon, which rides slowly across the highest heaven. The olive twigs glisten in ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... fear clutched at his heart. In those first few notes was a weak quaver, a huskiness that ought not to have been there. His whole body grew tense with effort as mind and heart sent winging to her a silent message. "You must not fear! You must believe!" Another was sending her the same word. But David ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... for by the author. Voltaire naturally enough danced with rage, screamed all manner of unpleasant things about robbery and the like, cashiered the secretary, and was, we see no reason to doubt, really afraid of a pirated edition. This time his cry of wolf must have had a quaver of sincerity in it. Herr Stahr, who can never keep separate the Lessing as he then was and the Lessing as he afterwards became, takes fire at what he chooses to consider an unworthy suspicion of the Frenchman, and treats himself to some rather cheap ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... boy, running the words together and speaking with a parrot-like monotony in an unnaturally high-pitched key. Then his voice began to quaver a little till he stopped short with a cry of despair—"I cannot mind the words, I cannot say my prayers. Oh! will nobody say them for me? If mother, as is not in Lon'on, were here, she would do it fast," he ended, flinging out one thin arm and clutching ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... sharply, but with a dry quaver in his voice that betrayed the panic that was coming over him on account of this threatened miscarriage of his plans. Mackenzie was convinced by Reid's manner that Swan had read him right. ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... stood watching him, his eyes keen to detect the slightest quaver, but the little man seemed suddenly to have forgotten him; he moved about absently, mechanically, dropping nothing, burning nothing, yet far away, as in ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... beside her aunts, not hearing the strains of the last hymn nor the quaver of Aunt Anne's trembling voice ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... change in Samson?" inquired old Caleb Wiley of a neighbor, in his octogenarian quaver. "The boy hes done got es quiet an' ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... air? A thrush on a bough below began to flute softly, trying its tones before it burst forth, giving full voice to its enthusiasm in one clear call, eloquent of life and love and longing, and all expressed in just three notes—crotchet, quaver, crotchet and rest—which shortly shaped themselves to a word in my heart, a word of just three syllables, the accent ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... chop and alter, to twist and change, according to their infinitely divers and no less Odd Humours and Fancies. I have myself paused twice in one note to take breath. No two Men in the Congregation quaver alike or together, it sounds in the Ears of a Good Judge like five hundred different Tunes roared out at the same Time, with perpetual Interfearings with ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... of little, had voracious appetites. And when, in addition to this, the worn-out huskies pulled weakly, Hal decided that the orthodox ration was too small. He doubled it. And to cap it all, when Mercedes, with tears in her pretty eyes and a quaver in her throat, could not cajole him into giving the dogs still more, she stole from the fish-sacks and fed them slyly. But it was not food that Buck and the huskies needed, but rest. And though they were making poor time, the heavy load they dragged ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... the keys in obedience to her own impulses he was even more charmed, although the melody was usually without much meaning. She was also endowed with the rudiments of a fine voice, and would often strike notes of surpassing sweetness and power; but her tones would soon quaver and break, and she complained that it tired her to sing. That ended the matter, for anything that wearied her was not to ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... in April. There should be a flageolet, whence the Cigarette, with cunning touch, should draw melting music under the stars; or perhaps, laying that aside, upraise his voice—somewhat thinner than of yore, and with here and there a quaver, or call it a natural grace-note—in rich ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... you for these words about my brother," she said very gently, and with a little pathetic quaver in her voice. "They have given me a comforting association with that awful day. Oh, I thank God for the thought. Remembering what Mrs. Yocomb said, it reconciles me to it all, as I never thought I could be reconciled. If Herbert believed that it was his duty to be there, it was ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... important engagement. I'm keepin' it for—for the Infant. And give the Infant the credit, Chief; give it all to him, he's earned it: he's paid for it in full." Then the snap of a switch cut off the sound of Danny's voice before it showed a tell-tale quaver. ...
— The Hammer of Thor • Charles Willard Diffin
... was a slight quaver in the Senator's voice, although he tried to speak with easy grace. "I assure you, I do and I shall be very grateful to you"—his anxiety was crowding out his discretion—"if you will help ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... with much deliberation, "we have; but I think it will no longer be possible for us to do so. No, we must certainly give up having anything to do with it." "Dear me!" said I, almost breathless, and with a queer quaver in my voice, that I could hardly command, "may I ask why, pray?" "The language it uses——" "It!—the language it uses!" ejaculated I. "Yes," she pursued, with increasing solemnity, "the language it uses is so reprehensible that it will be quite impossible for us to consult or have anything ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... the remainder of the party had come up. But soon a remark which was let fall started him very wide awake indeed, and at the same time he recognized that the voices were not those of his present companions, but of strangers. From a certain quaver or hesitancy in the tones, he judged them to be the voices of ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... way, is the old formula to which my uncle has always been faithful. I heard Madeleine answer, with a quaver in her voice: ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... goes, thence takes his way to a roof, and so on, changing his place every few minutes, but never losing a note. His favorite perch is the top spire of a pointed tree, low cedar or young pine, where he can bound into the air as already described, spread his wings, and float down, never omitting a quaver. It seems like pure ecstasy; and however critical one may be, he cannot help feeling deep sympathy with the joyous soul that thus expresses itself. With all the wonderful power and variety, the bewitching charm, there is not the "feeling," the heavenly melody, ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... London. You want to hear the latest news of your Pa and Ma, eh? You're not angry with them, I hope? Oh, it would be wrong of you to be angry with them still! They're very fond of you, you know. They cried when you went away, Lily. Your ... going away," Jimmy insisted, with a quaver in his voice, "was ... a great blow ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... ever be married, Jim Volsky!" she told him, and even to her own surprise there was not the suggestion of a quaver in her voice. "We won't ever be married. I'm surprised at you ...
— The Island of Faith • Margaret E. Sangster
... corners were passed, and then other well-remembered spots where former bumps had been made, and still Miller made no sign; on the contrary, he looked gloomy and savage. The St. Ambrosian shouts from the shore too changed from the usual exultant peals into something like a quaver of consternation, while the air was rent with the name and laudations of ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... that," Maraton replied. "These are just the words which you yourself cannot fail to understand. Neither you nor I hold life so dearly that the thought of losing it need make us quaver. I am here only to say this one word—to tell you that the heavens have never opened more surely to let out the lightning, than will your death be a charge upon me if you should vary even a hair's-breadth from ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the successful accomplishment of what was to come after. Miles was a minute later in coming, because he had been attending to a customer. "What is the matter; is Father very bad?" he asked, with a quaver of fear in his tone. Accidents, or sickness of any kind, always seemed so much worse in winter, and then death and disaster had already worked ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... first words I discovered that his education had been frightfully neglected, that he was ignorant of the most vulgar notions of the divine art, and that he scarcely knew the difference between a sharp and a quaver. It was really the A, B, C, which he wished me to teach him. Laborious task, ungrateful labor! But he manifested so much shame at his ignorance, and so much desire to be instructed, that I felt moved in his favor. ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... objectless step. The pallor of his countenance had assumed, if possible, a more ghastly hue—but the luminousness of his eye had utterly gone out. The once occasional huskiness of his tone was heard no more; and a tremulous quaver, as if of extreme terror, habitually characterized his utterance. There were times, indeed, when I thought his unceasingly agitated mind was laboring with some oppressive secret, to divulge which he ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Edna, paralyzed with fright, looked on with affrighted eyes, but presently found voice to quaver out, "Please don't ...
— A Dear Little Girl's Thanksgiving Holidays • Amy E. Blanchard
... large drooping moustache—decidedly worn. He turned pale. This meeting was terrible after all those years, for nothing in the world was so terrible as a scene. They met and crossed hands without a word. Then, with a quaver in his voice, the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... that you can be very brave and generous," she answered. "What I want to know is whether I can serve you—now or afterward," she added, with a quaver. ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... shake of her head and a smile in her eyes, even while the loveliest notes were flowing forth from her melodious throat. The listeners could hear the noble lord's "by Jove," in the midst of the music, and even detect the slight quaver of laughter which followed in Bice's ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... to the farther bank, paused for a moment to arrange their hair, like wood nymphs of the Golden Age, then wound their gorgeous kains about them and vanished amid the trees. From somewhere on the distant hillside came the sweet, shrill quaver of a reed instrument. The driver said it was a native flute, but I knew better. It was the ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... this time. His grandmother did not seem to notice that he was in a forbidden place, but asked, with an anxious quaver in her voice, ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... his profession." He was requested by Dr. Burney to sing; rather unfortunately, it would appear, for the company, which included Johnson and the Grevilles, was by no means composed of musical enthusiasts, and Mrs. Thrale, in particular, "knew not a flat from a sharp, nor a crotchet from a quaver." However, he complied; and Mrs. Thrale, after sitting awhile in silence, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... back in the chair, and the sudden quaver of his face, the deep breath that he drew, ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... ain't sleepy. I don't mind a little mist and I'm plenty warm." This cheerful assertion was belied by the miserable quaver in which ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... Constables kept cowering in the bar-room down-stairs, crying out to us to surrender in the King's name,—I believe that one poor creature, the Justice of Peace, after getting himself well walled up in a corner with chairs and tables, began to quaver out the King's Proclamation against the Blacks,—the plaguy Soldiers came blundering up both pair of stairs, and fell upon us Billy Boys tooth and nail. 'Slid! my blood simmers when I think of it. Over went the tables ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... said, with a quaver of disappointment, which she vainly strove to hide. "How did you ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... humble nest where it has first seen light is for many days a happy home to the tender songster, soon left behind, when the first wing-strokes waft the small body upwards to the sky, and forgotten as the first glad trill and quaver of the new-found voice roll out the prelude to the glorious life-long hymn of praise. The heart of man—your heart, my dear friend—gave a great leap from earth to sky, when first it felt the magic of the other life. The grosser scales of material vision fell away ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... one would hope for from a General, even a Postmaster General, is that one resents it in oneself, that in an important opening for a man like being called foolish, one stops all one's thinking-works, and slumps ingloriously, automatically and without a quaver ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee
... that crawled, and crept, and frightened us ever so much," I told him, with a quaver ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... In the quaver of his voice was a remembering of long muletrains jingling through the gate, queens in litters hung with patchwork curtains from Samarcand, gold brocades splashed with the clay of deep roads, stained with the blood of ambuscades, bales of silks from ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... quaver of laughter, "now who'd have thought it?" and smiled a consciously American smile at himself ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... started off on the 200-mile trip together. We had the smoker of the Pullman all to ourselves, and after I had recited some furlongs of Burns to him, he began to sing "Jockey's Ta'en the Parting Kiss" in a sort of thin and whimpering quaver of a tenor that cut through the noise of the train like a violin note through silence. I thought I knew the poem, but it seemed to me I had never dreamed what was in it, with the wail of a Highland woman pouring plaintive melody through the flood gates of her heart. And he knew every one of them ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... closed the stable door and turned to his dwelling. A light streamed from a chink in the closed kitchen shutter like a gold arrow shot into the night. From within came the long-drawn quaver of William Vibard's performance of the Arkansas Traveller. He was sitting bowed over the accordion, his jaw dropped, his eyes glazed with the intoxication of his obsession. Rose was rigidly upright in a straight chair, her hands crossed at the ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... ancestors have already cast off to the foreigner as too old to be of any service to them. Your poets are entirely at the disposal of your famous musicians; one declares that he cannot sing without there is in his air the word felicita; the tenor must have tomba; while a third singer can only quaver upon the word catene. The poor bard must make these different whims agree with dramatic situation as well as he can. This is not all; there are actors who will not appear immediately treading the boards of the stage; they must first be seen in a cloud, or they must descend ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... glad," said Jessie, with a quaver in her voice; "but I should like to come and talk to you as often as I can." Then presently she added, in a conflicting tone, "I don't know what to call your mother. I don't like to say 'Mrs. Lang,' it seems so— so silly and—stuck-up, ...
— The Story of Jessie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... boarding-house at Shawnee was the site of another house-wren's nest. While I stood quite close watching the little mother, she fed her bantlings twice without a quaver of fear, the youngsters chirping loudly for more of "that good dinner." At this place barn swallows were describing graceful circles and loops in the air, and a sheeny violet-green swallow squatted on the dusty road and took a sun-bath, which she did by fluffing up all her plumes ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... woods, You who dare. Nothing harms beneath the leaves More than waves a swimmer cleaves, Toss your heart up with the lark, Foot at peace with mouse and worm. Fair you fare. Only at a dread of dark Quaver, and they quit their form: Thousand eyeballs under hoods Have you by the hair. Enter these ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... of the cat family. Early settlers in the Eastern States record the existence of this treacherous beast in their conquest of the forests. The cry of the "painter," as he was called, rang through the dark woods and caused many hearts to quaver and little children to run to mother's side. Once in a while stories came of human beings having met their doom at the swift stealthy leap of this dreaded beast. He was bolder then than now. Today he is not less courageous, but ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... was seated facing Davy on the footstool. There were lines in her face that Davy had never seen, a near quaver in her voice that he had never heard. The Sir Galahad of the Sawdust Ring had surely found a maiden in dire distress. He wriggled on ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... wilderness; and the voices of its wild dwellers were as familiar to him as were the voices of his fellow men; and something in the first hoot of that owl had awakened his suspicions. It did not sound exactly right. There was a false quaver at the end. In a minute the hoot was repeated, still with that unnatural quaver ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... enjoyment. "The wicked bend their bow," began the rasping voice; but when he cleared his throat, preparatory to the main argument, my thoughts went wandering far from the reader on the steps. As one whose dream is jarred by outward sound, I heard his tones quaver. ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... lights went out and the violins began to quaver their long D against the rude figure of the basses, Mrs. Harsanyi saw her husband's fingers fluttering on his knee in a rapid tattoo. At the moment when SIEGLINDE entered from the side door, she leaned toward ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... now," he said to Butler, with a perceptible quaver in his voice. "Just you wait while I go in and tell her ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... Mary, where are ye, child?" came a call in a high, sweet old quaver of a voice from down the garden path, and Miss Amanda hove in sight, hurrying along on eager but tottering little feet. Her short, skimpy, gray skirts fluttered in the spring breezes and her bright, ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... selling much, and I hear nothing but admiration, save the usual quaver in the song about the part on miracles. Apropos, . . . I think that the explication of the miracles must be a moot and not a test point, and I would not break with the [161] "Christian Examiner" upon it; and yet ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... fright, looked on with affrighted eyes, but presently found voice to quaver out, "Please don't ...
— A Dear Little Girl's Thanksgiving Holidays • Amy E. Blanchard
... then, what is't that ails thee now? It seems to me I sing as well as thou; For mine's a song that is both true and plain,— Although I cannot quaver so in vain As thou dost in thy throat, I wot not ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... attempt to describe the service in detail. There was a discouraging droop and quaver in the singing, and the mournful-looking deacon who passed the collection-plate seemed inured to disappointment. The prayer had in it a note of despairing appeal which fell like a cold hand upon one's living soul. It gave one the impression ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... which had brought that situation about. And I must say that Levy looked no less alive to his own enormity; he quailed in his bonds with a guilty fearfulness strange to witness in so truculent a brute; and it was with something near a quaver that his voice ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... Throndhjem," answered Fitz. "We were going to Throndhjem," rejoins Wilson, "but we ain't now—the vessel's course was altered two hours ago. Oh, Sir! we are going to Whirlpool-to WHIRL-RL-POOO-L! Sir!" in a quaver of consternation,—and so glides back to bed like a phantom, leaving the Doctor utterly unable to divine ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... proceeded to secrete them in the fallen leaves. Squatted upon the ground, he was too busily engaged to note the sound of approaching footsteps, and started violently when a rough voice accosted him. He mustered courage, however, to quaver:— ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... an anxious little quaver in her voice as she dismounted and, going in front of Texas, took his head between her hands. There was no longer any doubt that the horse was sick, and very sick. His eyes closed sleepily, and his head dropped low. Then he suddenly began to sway ...
— Southern Stories - Retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... nature. Everybody liked her. Many were astonished because she could be so calm after all that she had passed through, but the mother was very strong and patient. When any one spoke to her of her two sturdy children, she only said: "I shall soon lose them also," without a quaver in her voice or a tear in her eye. She had accustomed herself to expect ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... A little quaver came into Ben's voice as he spoke, and a sudden motion made his hat-brim hide his eyes, for the thought of the happy times that would never come any more was almost too much ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... fumble with her foot for a stone and stoop hastily—for you are at a disadvantage with ghosts and with Toms when you stoop—and pick it up and hurl it promiscuously in the direction of the footsteps, and quaver, in a voice that belied its message, "Go away, Tom Hamon! I can see you,"—which was a little white fib born of the black urgency of the situation;—"and I'm not the least bit afraid,"—which was ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... all their worshippers. Go join your friend—see everything, enjoy everything, learn everything, and write me an excellent letter, brimming over with your impressions. I'm extremely fond of the Dutch painters," she added with the faintest quaver in the world, an impressible break of voice that Longmore had noticed once or twice before and had interpreted as the sudden weariness, the controlled convulsion, of a spirit self-condemned to ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... defending Allison in that libel case and we started off on the 200-mile trip together. We had the smoker of the Pullman all to ourselves, and after I had recited some furlongs of Burns to him, he began to sing "Jockey's Ta'en the Parting Kiss" in a sort of thin and whimpering quaver of a tenor that cut through the noise of the train like a violin note through silence. I thought I knew the poem, but it seemed to me I had never dreamed what was in it, with the wail of a Highland woman pouring plaintive melody through the flood gates of her heart. And he knew ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... out the last word in a long-drawn quaver which gave it a horrid sound—especially in the woods, after dark. And Turkey Proudfoot felt chills a-running up ...
— The Tale of Turkey Proudfoot - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... a curious quaver in her voice, "I've had to give in at last. The Lord knows best. He has given me many a happy year with you; yet I have never forgotten the folks over yonder. I shall be glad to see them again,—your father, Jack, and the rest. 'Then they came to the land of Beulah, where the sun shineth day ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... Miss Scudder!—that silk must be cut exactly on the bias"; and Miss Prissy, hastily finishing her last quaver, caught the silk and the scissors out of Mrs. Scudder's hand, and fell down at once from the Millennium into a discourse on her own particular ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... is most unusual; the males frequently utter the most varied and astonishing cries. They are jarring in the extreme, and are produced in the most leisurely manner, growing louder and louder and finally ending with a slow quaver. At other times, they grunt like small pigs. Hudson says that any quick noise, like the report of a gun, produces a most startling effect among these little animals. As soon as the report is broken on ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... with a slight shake of her head and a smile in her eyes, even while the loveliest notes were flowing forth from her melodious throat. The listeners could hear the noble lord's "by Jove," in the midst of the music, and even detect the slight quaver of laughter which followed ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... resolutely, but with a strange quaver in her voice, "I love David Cabarreux. I never can marry you. If there is anything else that I ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... a little falter in his voice. Could he have pleaded better in a thousand fine speeches, he who had seen his men wither about him on the Somme, than by that little timorous quaver in his voice? "Joan, I have something to ask of you to-night. I meant to ask it during a dance, when you couldn't run away. But I am going to ask ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... of a boarding-house at Shawnee was the site of another house-wren's nest. While I stood quite close watching the little mother, she fed her bantlings twice without a quaver of fear, the youngsters chirping loudly for more of "that good dinner." At this place barn swallows were describing graceful circles and loops in the air, and a sheeny violet-green swallow squatted on the dusty road and took ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... don't stand still I'll shoot," she said, a quaver in her voice despite all her efforts to speak calmly. "I've got this thing aimed at just about where your ...
— Billie Bradley at Three Towers Hall - or, Leading a Needed Rebellion • Janet D. Wheeler
... broken out?" inquired Marcolina from the window. She had turned round; her face betrayed nothing, but there was a slight quaver in her voice which no one ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... and especially at the small table set out for tea, to which the servant who had admitted her now returned with a steaming kettle. "Isn't it charming here? Will there be any one else? Where IS Mr. Van? Shall I make tea?" There was just a faint quaver, showing a command of the situation more desired perhaps than achieved, in the very rapid sequence of these ejaculations. The servant meanwhile had placed the hot water above the little silver ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... anything than that Geoffrey was badly hurt," he exclaimed with a quaver in his voice. To the Chinaman, who brought the stranger in, he gave the order, "Get him some supper and tell Fontaine ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... that the writers and speakers of plain English, and of their mother-tongue in every vernacular, might take example from the conscientious creator, who would not put a particle of cant into the crooked marks and ruled bars which are such a mystery to the uninitiated, blot with one demi-semi-quaver of falsehood his papers, or leave aught but truth of the heavenly sphere at a single point on any line! Then our sternest utterance with each other would be concord, our common questions and answers more melodiously responsive than chants ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... chorus. The monster raised his head and flared the fiery eyeballs upon her, then fretted the imprisoned claws a moment and was quiet; only the breath like the vapor from some hell-pit still swathed her. Her voice, at first faint and fearful, gradually lost its quaver, grew under her control and subject to her modulation; it rose on long swells, it fell in subtile cadences, now and then its tones pealed out like bells from distant belfries on fresh sonorous mornings. She sung ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... fair face, and white hair surmounted by a battered black bonnet, a mouth set rather on one side, and a more observant and refined air than most of her neighbours. She sighed while she talked, and spoke in a delicate quaver. ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... interval of silence, while the warm blood flamed in the girl's face and the red lips trembled as she faced her tormentor. Then, with a quaver that escaped her control, "If Mr. Kirkwood asks me, I ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... we "weighed anchor" and I went on deck to take a last look at Dixie with the rest of the party. Every heart was full. Each left brothers, sisters, husband, children, or dear friends behind. We sang, "Farewell dear land," with a slight quaver in our voices, looked at the beautiful starlight shining on the last boundary of our glorious land, and, fervently and silently praying, passed ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... afford that irony its most precious smiles, who; vanquished by that irony, remain invincible—to these no blow of Fate, no reversal of their ideas, can long retain importance. The darts stick, quaver, and fall off, like arrows from chain-armour, and the last dart, slipping upwards under the harness, quivers into the heart to the cry of "What—you! No, no; I don't believe ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... right, Uncle Porges!" he nodded, his voice all of a quaver. "It's all right, now,—I've found the fortune I've prayed for,—gold, you know, an' banknotes—in a sack. Everything will be all right again now." And, while he spoke, he rose to his feet, and lifting the sack with ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... was more intensity in Dolly's accents than perhaps anybody knew but Mr. Copley; he had the key; and the low quaver in Dolly's voice did not escape him. He answered without letting himself meet ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... divinely, this ghostly flageoleteer, and knows his Handel to a demi-semi-quaver," ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... was plumbful of good cheer Till he struck that low-down year; Got so thin, so little to him, You could most see day-light through him. Never was his eye so bright, Never was his cheek so white. Seemed as if somethin' was wrong, Sort o' quaver in his song. Same old smile, same hearty voice: "Bless you, boys! let's all rejoice!" But old Doctor shook his head: "Half a lung," was all he said. Yet that half was surely right, For I heard him every night, Singin', singin' ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... be," she said, with a frightened quaver in her voice, but a quaver which the Prince recognised, with his large experience, as the tone ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... been very ill," responded Theron, as they shook hands and walked on together. He added, with a quaver in his voice, "I am still far from strong. I really ought not to be out at all. But—but the longing for—for—well, I COULDN'T stay in any longer. Even if it kills me, I shall be glad ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... weary feet the days drag by; the heart o' me is sad; The keenin' o' the wind at night, it nearly drives me mad; The cries o' children in the street, they quaver lorn an' thin, For there 's little gold in Ireland save that ...
— Sprays of Shamrock • Clinton Scollard
... our heart on first acquaintance, which he later ceases to deserve; but in the case of Mime I think it is never wholly withdrawn, even when he is shown to be an unmitigated wretch; he is, to begin with, so little, and he has a funny, fetching twist or quaver in his voice, indicated by the notes themselves of his rather mean little sing-song melodies. Alberich's nominal reason for indulging his present passion for hurting—he is haling Mime by the ear—is that the latter is overslow ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... scattered about the country who sung out of that when they were little. I wish a few of us old codgers might get together some time and with many a hummed and prefatory, "Do, mi, Sol, do; Sol, mi... mi-i-i-i," finally manage to quaver out the sweet old tunes we learned when we were little tads, each with a penny in his fat, warm hand: "Shall we Gather at the River?" and "Work, for the Night is Coming"; and what was the name of ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... see that you are much changed." There was a suggestion of a quaver in her voice, and the shadows did not prevent him from seeing the quick mist that flitted across her ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... a suspicious quaver in her voice that made Arthur's thoughts turn longingly to the safe shelter of his own room. What if he should have a weeping girl on his hands! He turned cold at the thought. "Oh, I'm sure you'll ...
— Glenloch Girls • Grace M. Remick
... he said, and the aged voice held a quaver of emotion which men were not accustomed to hearing it carry, "I wants ter talk with ye with ther severe freedom of an' old man counsellin' a young 'un—an' hit hain't ergoin' ter be in ther manner of a Doane argyfyin' with a Harper so much es of ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... of the world would have known the studied quaver in the voice—the throaty, stagey sweetness of it. What was to be expected of a yokel of genius who had been rushed through a hundred towns or so in everlasting association with De Vavasours and Montmorencys—rushed through London and through Paris under much the same inauspicious petticoat influences, ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... notice!" answered Brown, with a strange dry quaver in his voice. "Go down and bring her up, please! Take three or four men with you. It won't do to bring women and a child up here and let 'em see this awful fakir and these corpses. Take your time about bringing 'em ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... Italian, "had heard me spoken of, and came to apply for lessons. I questioned him; and from the first words I discovered that his education had been frightfully neglected, that he was ignorant of the most vulgar notions of the divine art, and that he scarcely knew the difference between a sharp and a quaver. It was really the A, B, C, which he wished me to teach him. Laborious task, ungrateful labor! But he manifested so much shame at his ignorance, and so much desire to be instructed, that I felt moved in his favor. Then his countenance was ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... it like that," Maraton replied. "These are just the words which you yourself cannot fail to understand. Neither you nor I hold life so dearly that the thought of losing it need make us quaver. I am here only to say this one word—to tell you that the heavens have never opened more surely to let out the lightning, than will your death be a charge upon me if you should vary even a hair's-breadth from our contract. If Maxendorf, the people's man, hides himself for only a moment in the ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... with them, I hope? Oh, it would be wrong of you to be angry with them still! They're very fond of you, you know. They cried when you went away, Lily. Your ... going away," Jimmy insisted, with a quaver in his voice, "was ... a great blow ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... the same woman who had spoken but one moment before? Did her voice ring with the same undaunted defiance? Was there not a note of despair in her tones, a barely perceptible quaver, the symbol of her wavering resolve? Was not the very fact that she must question her strength proof positive that her ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... her tears, and dry his damp brow with her glorious hair. Wide-eyed and silent, as the train came near, she moved along by the moat to meet the procession at the drawbridge, not understanding yet, but not letting one movement of the men, one flicker of the lights, one quaver of the deep chant, escape her reeling senses. Then all at once she was aware that Gilbert walked bareheaded before the bier, half wrapped in a long black cloak that swept the greensward behind him. As she turned the last ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... hiss of a light, quick breath and the intake and outgo of a heavier, slower one. And so suddenly, with such smothered intensity, that Norcross started in his seat, Mrs. Markham's voice emitted the first quaver of a musical note. She held it for a moment, before she began to hum over and over three bars of an old tune—"Wild roamed an Indian maid, bright Alfaretta." Thrice she hummed it, still sitting with her hand over her eyes.—"Wild ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... was dead what horrid people thought of one did not matter. It was said with infinite contempt; but something like a suppressed quaver in the voice made me look at her again. I perceived then that her thick eyelashes were wet. This surprising discovery silenced me as you may guess. She looked unhappy. And—I don't know how to say it—well—it suited her. The clouded brow, ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... warrant heard him quaver breathlessly, "I have the proof—the undeniable proof! They were intelligent beings. They did not die of disease. They were exterminated in war! They were ... but see for yourself!" There was a thud as he dropped something on the ...
— Watch the Sky • James H. Schmitz
... had been one of the wise men in the spectacle, and he still wore his white beard and turban and his long blue and red robes. Yet he wasn't in the least fussed; he simply made a bow, said what he had to say, made another bow, with never a blush or a quaver or giggle. His mother was there, and she was so happy—she is a widow, and sews in the neighborhood, plain sewing, and ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... it "deserves its name better than almost any one of the twenty-four; still I would rather call it improvisata. It seems unpremeditated, a heedless outpouring, when sitting at the piano in a lonely, dreary hour, perhaps in the twilight. The quaver figure rises aspiringly, and the sustained parts swell out proudly. The piquant cadenza forestalls in the progression of diminished chords favorite effects of some of our more modern composers. The modulation from C sharp minor to D major and back again—after the cadenza—is ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... Kelso! Both of them was sure bad enough. But I reckon Masten's got them both roped an' hog-tied for natural meanness." He turned to Owen. "I reckon I had to do it, old man," he said, a quaver ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... stand against the rail. The night is still very dark, the air motionless. Charlotte is remarking how far they can hear the dripping of the grove, when she gives a start and the captain an amused grunt; a soft, heart-broken, ear-searching quaver comes from just over yonder by the horses. "One of those pesky little screech-owls," he says. "Don't know as I ever heard one before under just these condi'—humph! there's ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... cannot be reproduced. It is F dotted crotchet, F quaver, F quaver, F dotted crotchet, D crotchet, E crotchet. This bar is ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless
... closed his eyes. "I've worked on this thing for years," he said tensely. "It was ... it means something to me. I invented it. I perfected it." His voice began to quaver just a little. "But if it's going to do ... to do all that—" He paused and took a deep breath. "All right. I'll smash my apparatus and destroy my plans and ...
— Damned If You Don't • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Creede stood watching him, his eyes keen to detect the slightest quaver, but the little man seemed suddenly to have forgotten him; he moved about absently, mechanically, dropping nothing, burning nothing, yet far ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... looked long into the clear dark eyes with an unmoved countenance. Then her face melted suddenly till she looked like her mother. She put her arms about the girl with a fervent gesture of tenderness. "Dear little Lydia," she murmured, with a quaver in her voice. ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... an' it canna be I sud ever forget yon face ye shawed me i' the coffin, the bonniest, sairest sicht I ever saw," returned Malcolm, with a quaver ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... enchanted woods, You who dare. Nothing harms beneath the leaves More than waves a swimmer cleaves, Toss your heart up with the lark, Foot at peace with mouse and worm. Fair you fare. Only at a dread of dark Quaver, and they quit their form: Thousand eyeballs under hoods Have you by the hair. Enter these enchanted ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... time. His grandmother did not seem to notice that he was in a forbidden place, but asked, with an anxious quaver in her voice, "Did mother ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... be hasty." Jerkline Jo had seen many a fight between big men of the outdoor life. It was no new experience, and there was not a quaver in her tones. She had been brought up where men settled matters with fists or guns or pick handles. "Listen, Hiram," she continued, "Mr. Drummond is telling the truth, I think, up to a certain point. When you boys were way ahead of me yesterday I heard a rumble behind me. Evidently ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... youth wasted by being chained to this rock. They spoke of Majorca as a place of joy; they recalled the provinces on the mainland, of which many of them were sons, as paradises to which they were eager to return. Women! It was a longing, a desire which made their voices quaver and brought a glow of madness into their eyes. The chaste Ivizan virtue, the exclusive islander, suspicious of foreigners, weighed upon them like the chain of an insufferable prison. There was no trifling with love here; no time was ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the death of me! Tartaglia in the flesh—how old Gozzi would have revelled in him! Those pathetic, oyster-eyes, that round, flabby face, that comic nose, and the bleating voice with the sentimental quaver in it, reeling off the live man's dying speech...." He wiped his brimming eyes. "Since the time when Boer spies hocussed him on guard—you remember that lovely affair?—he's registered a vow to impress me with his gallantry and devotion, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... and at least, Uncle Sol must be told,' thought Walter, with a sigh. And as Walter was apprehensive that his voice might perhaps quaver a little, and that his countenance might not be quite as hopeful as he could wish it to be, if he told the old man himself, and saw the first effects of his communication on his wrinkled face, he resolved ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... there was a quaver in her voice, and she turned her head aside. Cousin Kate put her hand under the resolute little chin, and tilted it until she could look into the eyes that dropped under her gaze "You have been crying," she said again, ...
— The Gate of the Giant Scissors • Annie Fellows Johnston
... o' a smile wud quaver athort The sleepin cheek sae broun, An' a tear atween the ee-lids wud stert, An' whiles rin ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... of all the saints, can I possibly answer your question, senor, unless you furnish me with the names of the men you refer to?" demanded the priest, with a valiant attempt to brazen the matter out, but there was a quaver in his voice which betrayed that he was beginning to feel anxious, if not actually apprehensive, concerning the outcome of ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... the side-curls with which she and all 'the sex' captivated the hearts of Charles Dickens and other novelists in their early youth. She has soft and indeterminate features, and when she speaks her voice, a little shaken by the quaver of age, is soft and indeterminate also. Gentle and lovable, you will be surprised to discover that she, also, has a will of her own; but for the present this does not show. From the dimly illumined corner behind the lamp her voice comes ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... proof; Upraised his bruised and batter'd hoof, And, with an amiable mien, His master patted on the chin, The action gracing with a word— The fondest bray that e'er was heard! O, such caressing was there ever? Or melody with such a quaver? 'Ho! Martin![6] here! a club, a club bring!' Out cried the master, sore offended. So Martin gave the ass a drubbing,— And so the comedy ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... decrepid, and lost all the beauty which had won her admiration, Eos became disgusted with his infirmities, and at last shut him up in a chamber, where soon little else was left of him but his voice, which had now sunk into a weak, feeble quaver. According to some of the later poets, he became so weary of his cheerless and miserable existence, that he entreated to be allowed to die. This was, however, impossible; but Eos, pitying his unhappy ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... toward the farthest corner. The place was rather large, and everywhere dark except within the narrow circle of the candle-light. In a quiet voice, with a little quaver in it, she ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... out of his reach, and placed her in a higher sphere. As you have seen the nymph in the opera-machine go up to the clouds at the end of the piece where Mars, Bacchus, Apollo, and all the divine company of Olympians are seated, and quaver out her last song as a goddess: so when this portentous elevation was accomplished in the Esmond family, I am not sure that every one of us did not treat the divine Beatrix with special honours; at least, the saucy little beauty carried her head with a toss of supreme ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... quoth she then, "what is't that ails thee now? It seems to me I sing as well as thou; For mine's a song that is both true and plain, - Although I cannot quaver so in vain As thou dost in thy throat, I wot ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... where are ye, child?" came a call in a high, sweet old quaver of a voice from down the garden path, and Miss Amanda hove in sight, hurrying along on eager but tottering little feet. Her short, skimpy, gray skirts fluttered in the spring breezes and her bright, old eyes peered out from the gray shawl she held over her head with tremulous excitement. ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... requires some familiarity with the customs of the country to distinguish one from the other. The music to-night is much better than the ordinary baile music. A native harpist adds the music of his many strings; and not bad music either, though he does not know a quaver from a semibreve, and his harp is of his own manufacture. The sameness, however, caused by playing always and everything in the same key is perceptible. But dancing critics are not disposed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... guillotine and sat in the chair, and the jubilant patentee told me that it was the quickest scheme for extinguishing life ever invented—patented Anno Christi Eighteen Hundred Ninety-five. Verily we live in the age of the Push-Button! And as I sat there I heard a laugh that was a quaver, and the sound of a stout cane emphasizing a jest struck against ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... from Margery Key's, having been delayed but a moment, and the quaver of her blessings was yet in my ears, when verily I did see that which I have never understood. As I live, there passed from the house of that ne'er-do-well next door, which was closed tightly as if to assure folk that all therein ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... Get her to her own apartment, and don't let her talk. I want you to pick a man to watch the morgue; to look up every case of reported suicide that by any chance might be Mrs. Marteen—here or in other cities." Gard felt the blood leave his heart as he said the words, though there was no quaver in his voice. "If they should find her, don't let her identity be known if there is any chance of concealing it, not until you reach me. Don't let Miss Marteen know. Put another man on the hotel arrivals. She left St. Augustine—Here—" He—jotted down times and dates on a slip. "Work ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... the voices of its wild dwellers were as familiar to him as were the voices of his fellow men; and something in the first hoot of that owl had awakened his suspicions. It did not sound exactly right. There was a false quaver at the end. In a minute the hoot was repeated, still with that unnatural quaver ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... their want of courage and of wit; Their hair as white as milk, and soft as down, (Which should be like the quills of porcupines, As black as jet, and hard as iron or steel,) Bewrays they are too dainty for the wars; Their fingers made to quaver on a lute, Their arms to hang about a lady's neck, Their legs to dance and caper in the air, Would make me think them bastards, not my sons, But that I know they issu'd from thy womb, That never look'd on ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. • Christopher Marlowe
... her little hands clasped, a pitiful quaver in her voice, so that I felt consigned to woe, indeed, for this misdoing, "you'll be a liar as ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... position would be painful to a degree. However in this particular Fortune stood my friend, which does not always happen to the virtuous. For presently I heard a voice which I recognized as that of Mr. Savage, asking, not without a certain quaver in its tone, ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... the music of that answering voice. There was a little quaver in it, a faint but fascinating breaking on the low notes, such as he had never heard in ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... scuttling out of sight at my approach. True, in Ohio many individuals also chose out-of-the-way places for habitats, but even then they were not timid, for often they would mount to the top of a bush or a sapling in plain sight and trill sweetly by the hour, with never a quaver of fear. At rare intervals a Kansas sparrow would visit the thicket on the vacant lot near my house, but, my! how shy he was! And as for singing, he would only squeak ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... has come to life again," said Martin with a slight quaver in his voice, for Martin was terribly ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... late before he went to the room allotted him, knowing that he could not hope for sleep. Seated there by his open window he heard the owl's tremolo rise, quaver, and die away in the moonlight; he heard the murmuring plaint of marsh-fowl, and the ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... madam, to offer you this kernel;" or, "Here, my dear, try that bit." And sometimes he pecked a little, with a loud quaver, evidently saying, "Come, come, children, behave yourselves, ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... Cornelia, never failed to affect her. If she had been planning the destruction of an enemy, she would have wept bitterly at the sight of that enemy's dead body; nay, even at a vivid account of his death. Sophie's words brought tears to her eyes at once, and a quaver into her voice. ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... blare of a steam clarion, and the bang of a steam-driven drum, sounded, and the naphtha lamps of the merry-go-round and the circus gleamed through the fog. The infernal noise jigged on his brain-pan as if every flying crotchet and quaver stamped like the hoof of a little devil in the surface of his brain. The smell of the lamps was in his nostrils, and with it odours of tar and ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... going?" "Why, to Throndhjem," answered Fitz. "We were going to Throndhjem," rejoins Wilson, "but we ain't now—the vessel's course was altered two hours ago. Oh, Sir! we are going to Whirlpool-to WHIRL-RL-POOO-L! Sir!" in a quaver of consternation,—and so glides back to bed like a phantom, leaving the Doctor utterly unable to divine the occasion of ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... Captain Marlow. These are the last words he spoke in the hearing of any living human being, sir." At this point the old chap's voice got quite unsteady. "He was afraid the poor brute would jump after him, don't you see?" he pursued with a quaver. "Yes, Captain Marlow. He set the log for me; he—would you believe it?—he put a drop of oil in it too. There was the oil-feeder where he left it near by. The boat-swain's mate got the hose along aft to wash down at half-past five; by-and-by he ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... McCarthy reached the tent a few minutes behind her friend. Jane threw her arms about Harriet, expressing her opinion of the whole affair in her own hot-headed way. Harriet's eyes were dry but her cheeks were hot. She was holding herself well in hand, yet when she spoke there was a slight quaver in her voice. She was not ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Under Canvas • Janet Aldridge
... Jessie, with a quaver in her voice; "but I should like to come and talk to you as often as I can." Then presently she added, in a conflicting tone, "I don't know what to call your mother. I don't like to say 'Mrs. Lang,' it seems so— so silly and—stuck-up, ...
— The Story of Jessie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... sent about to the cafes to earn their keep by singing ragtime songs and dancing buck dances. These two were desperately, pathetically homesick. One of them blinked back the tears when he told us, with the plaintive African quaver in his voice, how long they had been away from their own country and how happy they would be to get ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... that unlucky voice of mine to quaver in the way it did? Those few words, I was convinced, would tell more against me than the most circumstantial narrative. I clutched hold of the back of a chair near me, and made a desperate effort to steady myself as I proceeded. I gave an exact account of everything that had happened ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... was always low and gentle, with a quaver and hesitancy in the utterance; now it was tender and comforting with the comprehension of one in suffering, the extraordinary tact, which the old of his race nearly all come to possess. "Li'l chicken-wing ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... lined with the Reader's servants, clad in scarlet cloaks and white doublets; while above them stood the benchers, barristers, and students, music playing all the while, and twenty violins welcoming Charles into the hall with unanimous scrape and quaver. Dinner was served by fifty young students in their gowns, no meaner servants appearing. In the November following the Duke of York, the Duke of Buckingham, and the Earl of Dorset were admitted members of the Society of the Inner Temple. Six years after, Prince ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... had taken the precaution to open both doors of the cabin wide, after his hosts were safely asleep, letting in the moonlight and a little breeze that smelled keenly of pine woods. Now and then a faint bird-note broke the hush, or the mournful quaver of a screech-owl. The situation was not without picturesque piquancy for a collector ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... fell back on the arm-rack deliberately,—the men were at the far end of the room,—and took out his rifle and packet of ammunition. "Don't go playing the goat, Sim!" said Losson. "Put it down," but there was a quaver in his voice. Another man stooped, slipped his boot and hurled it at Simmon's head. The prompt answer was a shot which, fired at random, found its billet in Losson's throat. Losson fell forward without a ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... branches. He had been walking for a minute or two, trying to keep his path in the thickening twilight, when, far in the depths of the mist, a cannon thundered. Almost at once he heard the whistling quaver of a shell, high in the sky. Nearer and nearer it came, the woods hummed with the shrill vibration; then it passed, screeching; there came a swift glare in the sky, a sharp report, and the steel fragments hurtled ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... gal!" he exclaimed, cordially, though there was a quaver in his voice. "Da'tter of my old friend what diskivered this here mine an' then lost it. Killed, he was, by a gunman, twenty years gone. Gents, say ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... see the glow of the great camp fire burning warmly through the shore-side trees. Someone was singing a dull, old droning sailor's song, with a droop and a quaver at the end of every verse, and seemingly no end to it at all but the patience of the singer. I had heard it on the voyage more than ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... They possess the art (learned from the pulpit) of rounding an uneuphonious sentence by dwelling on a single syllable—of striking a balance in a top-heavy period by lengthening out a word into a melancholy quaver. Withal, they never cease to hope. Even at last, even when they have exhausted all their ideas, even after the would-be peroration has finally refused to perorate, they remain upon their feet with their mouths open, waiting for some further inspiration, ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... had been going about the world with a bright red patch on either cheek; and it would seem that on the third day, namely, the Sunday, things came to a crisis in her disturbed mind. At morning service her fervour was something astonishing—the quaver in her voice was more noticeable in the hymns than ever, and the space devoted to silent prayer after the blessing was so abnormally long that Stark, the sexton, had to rattle the keys twice, with all due respect and for the sake of his Sunday dinner, before she rose from ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... pillows with his white hair thrown back and his beard on his breast, he was a fine man to see—a picture of a good and a brave man. He read aloud from the Bible, and then prayed awhile, giving out his words grandly and without a quaver. Then he shook them all by the hand and bade each ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... man put his hand on her shoulder, and with a "I'll just trouble you—this way please," and not so much as a quaver in his voice, led her into ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... Governor spoke; and, though his words were seemingly irrelevant, they were to the point. His voice had a note of martyrdom running through its senile quaver. ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... much, and I hear nothing but admiration, save the usual quaver in the song about the part on miracles. Apropos, . . . I think that the explication of the miracles must be a moot and not a test point, and I would not break with the [161] "Christian Examiner" upon it; and yet I think the heterodox opinions of Ripley should have come into it in ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... room, INTO HIS ROOM—Mister Grannis's room. She had done this—she who could not pass him on the stairs without a qualm. What to do she did not know. She stood, a fixture, on the threshold of his room, without even resolution enough to beat a retreat. Helplessly, and with a little quaver in her voice, she ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... the church, to drive its whole force into the building. As a loud crash burst over the village in the midst of his sermon, and showed how frightfully near the storm was, his voice broke into a shrill quaver, as he faltered out, "Yes, my brethren, let us be calm under all circumstances, and Death will have ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... moustache—decidedly worn. He turned pale. This meeting was terrible after all those years, for nothing in the world was so terrible as a scene. They met and crossed hands without a word. Then, with a quaver in his voice, the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... other side? (whatever that may be;) and is that a small crescent moon of darkness swimming in its disc? or does the eye disclose a bright light from within, where his soul sits and enjoys bright day? Is he a point of admiration whose head is too heavy, or a quaver or crotchet that has lost his neighbors, and fallen out of the scale? Is he an aspiring Tadpole in search of an idea? What have been and what will be the fortunes of this our small Nigel (Nigellus)? Think of "Elia" having him sent up from the Goblin Valley, packed in wool, and ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... argument in their power. Often have they been heard, in the dusk of evening, singing behind a remote hedge that melancholy ditty, "Let us both be unhappy together;" which rose upon the twilight breeze with a cautious quaver of sorrow truly ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... hour in the blasted hole!" roared his guest, in a fierce quaver. Out of my way you fool! Where's Joan? Tell her to get up and come directly. I'm off, tell her. I'd as soon go to bed in the drifts as stop another hour in ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... the sun do shine on the just and the unjust alike," she answered, with a slight quaver in her voice. "But that's what books will not ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... Sabella? The little girl that was on board the Whatnot," asked Cap'n Cod, with a pitiful quaver in his voice. ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... them. After he had in this way assumed an attitude of humility, he kept a sad countenance for some time and shed tears: and when he at last managed to utter a sound, he spoke in a low fearful voice with a suggestion of a quaver. [The general subject is ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... pitiful little quaver in the last words by which Don Ruy was made ashamed of his threat, for despite his anger that the lad was over close in the confidence of the unknown Mexican maid, yet the stripling had been a source of joy as they rode side by side over ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... the subject of employing Mr. Rhythm to teach a singing-school was discussed. Mr. Quaver, a tall, slim man, with a long, red nose, had led the choir for many years. He had a loud voice, and twisted his words so badly, that his singing was like the blare of a trumpet. On Sundays, after Rev. ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... impulse was to take to his heels, but he was saved from this ignominious act by the timely recollection that he was an Englishman, whose glorious privilege it is to be born without fear. So he stood still, and in a voice which had something of a quaver ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... Markham's drawing-room, except the hiss of a light, quick breath and the intake and outgo of a heavier, slower one. And so suddenly, with such smothered intensity, that Norcross started in his seat, Mrs. Markham's voice emitted the first quaver of a musical note. She held it for a moment, before she began to hum over and over three bars of an old tune—"Wild roamed an Indian maid, bright Alfaretta." Thrice she hummed it, still sitting with her hand ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... want you to pick a man to watch the morgue; to look up every case of reported suicide that by any chance might be Mrs. Marteen—here or in other cities." Gard felt the blood leave his heart as he said the words, though there was no quaver in his voice. "If they should find her, don't let her identity be known if there is any chance of concealing it, not until you reach me. Don't let Miss Marteen know. Put another man on the hotel arrivals. She left St. Augustine—Here—" He—jotted down times and dates on a slip. ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... skill in his profession." He was requested by Dr. Burney to sing; rather unfortunately, it would appear, for the company, which included Johnson and the Grevilles, was by no means composed of musical enthusiasts, and Mrs. Thrale, in particular, "knew not a flat from a sharp, nor a crotchet from a quaver." However, he complied; and Mrs. Thrale, after sitting awhile in silence, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... another hour in the blasted hole!" roared his guest, in a fierce quaver. Out of my way you fool! Where's Joan? Tell her to get up and come directly. I'm off, tell her. I'd as soon go to bed in the drifts as stop another hour in ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... said Mr. Brand, with a little quaver in his voice. "If you have the advantage of me that is ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... two pianofortes) for convenience in looking it over. If the concluding figure (Letter M., Moderato pomposo) seems to make a better effect in the instrumentation by following the piano arrangement with the simple quaver figure [Liszt illustrates with a brief musical score excerpt] instead of the triplets, according to the score, I have not the slightest objection to it, and beg you altogether, dear friend, to feel quite free to ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... be of any service to them. Your poets are entirely at the disposal of your famous musicians; one declares that he cannot sing without there is in his air the word felicita; the tenor must have tomba; while a third singer can only quaver upon the word catene. The poor bard must make these different whims agree with dramatic situation as well as he can. This is not all; there are actors who will not appear immediately treading the boards of the stage; they must first be seen in a cloud, or they must ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... intellectual power, and yet withal a winning sweetness, unconquerable radiance, and hopeful joyousness. His voice is highly pitched and musical, with a timbre which is astonishing in an old man. There is none of the tremor, quaver, or shrillness usually observed in them, but his utterance is clear, ringing, and most sweetly musical. But it was not in any one of these features that his charm lay so much as in his tout ensemble, and the irresistible ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... door this time. His grandmother did not seem to notice that he was in a forbidden place, but asked, with an anxious quaver in her voice, "Did mother ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... waltz song and accompany themselves without making a terrible mess of the music; but Margaret did it well, and much more than well, for she was not only a singer with a beautiful voice but a true musician. There was not a quaver or hesitation in her singing from beginning to end, nor a false ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... Scudder!—that silk must be cut exactly on the bias"; and Miss Prissy, hastily finishing her last quaver, caught the silk and the scissors out of Mrs. Scudder's hand, and fell down at once from the Millennium into a discourse on her own particular way ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... inquired Marcolina from the window. She had turned round; her face betrayed nothing, but there was a slight quaver in her voice which no ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... wonderful life around it, whispering divine answers to the wooing breeze. The humble nest where it has first seen light is for many days a happy home to the tender songster, soon left behind, when the first wing-strokes waft the small body upwards to the sky, and forgotten as the first glad trill and quaver of the new-found voice roll out the prelude to the glorious life-long hymn of praise. The heart of man—your heart, my dear friend—gave a great leap from earth to sky, when first it felt the magic of the other life. The grosser scales of material ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... saying. Also, these poems employ numerous compound epithets and far-fetched conceits. (Dom Diego goes hunting with a "beast-dismembring blade" [p. 64], and Cinyras incestuous bed in The Scourge "doth shake and quaver as they lie,/As if it groan'd to beare the ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... Glynde had been going about the world with a bright red patch on either cheek; and it would seem that on the third day, namely, the Sunday, things came to a crisis in her disturbed mind. At morning service her fervour was something astonishing—the quaver in her voice was more noticeable in the hymns than ever, and the space devoted to silent prayer after the blessing was so abnormally long that Stark, the sexton, had to rattle the keys twice, with all due respect and for the sake of his Sunday dinner, before she rose from ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... awkward motion, And put his talents to the proof; Upraised his bruised and batter'd hoof, And, with an amiable mien, His master patted on the chin, The action gracing with a word— The fondest bray that e'er was heard! O, such caressing was there ever? Or melody with such a quaver? 'Ho! Martin![6] here! a club, a club bring!' Out cried the master, sore offended. So Martin gave the ass a drubbing,— And so the ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... among them, the rise and fall of his own breathing, somewhat quicker than its wont, served to render appreciable to Persimmon Sneed the fact that he possessed nerves which were more susceptible to a quaver of doubt than that redoubtable endowment called ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... painful to a degree. However in this particular Fortune stood my friend, which does not always happen to the virtuous. For presently I heard a voice which I recognized as that of Mr. Savage, asking, not without a certain quaver in its tone, ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... the knack of expressing himself clearly. Those concluding words rang like a knell. They even called Watts back from the slumber of unconsciousness; the "chief" stirred himself where he lay on the floor of the cavern, and began to quaver. ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... orthodoxy of the Non-conformists would he retained and preserved by the Independent congregations in England, after the Presbyterian had almost without exception become, first, Arian, then Socinian, and finally Unitarian: that is, the 'demi-semi-quaver' of Christianity, Arminianism being taken for ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... last word in a long-drawn quaver which gave it a horrid sound—especially in the woods, after dark. And Turkey Proudfoot felt chills a-running up ...
— The Tale of Turkey Proudfoot - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... felt her feet firmer. "I don't know if he's interesting or not; but I do know, my own," she continued to quaver, "that he's just as much interested as you ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... that it "deserves its name better than almost any one of the twenty-four; still I would rather call it improvisata. It seems unpremeditated, a heedless outpouring, when sitting at the piano in a lonely, dreary hour, perhaps in the twilight. The quaver figure rises aspiringly, and the sustained parts swell out proudly. The piquant cadenza forestalls in the progression of diminished chords favorite effects of some of our more modern composers. The modulation from C sharp minor to D major ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... the dimness of the carriage, that she had flushed quickly, and he did not know that she disliked to be reminded of certain things which, for her, were mitigations of the hard feminine lot. But the passionate quaver with which, a moment later, she answered him sufficiently assured him that he had touched ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... quaint old parlor organ with the quaver in its tongue, Seemed to tremble in its fervor as the sacred songs were sung, As we sang the homely anthems, sang the glad revival hymns Of the glory of the story and ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... my own trumpet." "Ay, is it so?" quoth the Governor; "why, then, let us have a relish of thy art." Whereupon the good Antony put his instrument to his lips, and sounded a charge with such a tremendous outset, such a delectable quaver, and such a triumphant cadence, that it was enough to make one's heart leap out of one's mouth only to be within a mile of it. Like as a war-worn charger, grazing in peaceful plains, starts at a strain of martial music, ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... a subject you didn't wish to be referred to. I only want to do so indirectly. It wasn't"—he faltered—"it wasn't because you were dissatisfied with me?" he concluded, with a quaver. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... breath fear clutched at his heart. In those first few notes was a weak quaver, a huskiness that ought not to have been there. His whole body grew tense with effort as mind and heart sent winging to her a silent message. "You must not fear! You must believe!" Another was sending her the same word. But David ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... a right-smart change in Samson?" inquired old Caleb Wiley of a neighbor, in his octogenarian quaver. "The boy hes done got es quiet an' ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... course, of course, poor old thing," says she, unable this time, however, to hide the quaver ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... themselves didn't dare it. It was as strange as one would: she recognized it when it came, but anything might have come rather—and it was coming by (of all people in the world) Murray Brush! It overwhelmed her; still she could speak, with however faint a quaver and however sick a smile. "You'll lie for me ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... said, "go—" Her voice and body shook, her arms slid limply over her mending, and she tumbled into her chair, crying with sobs that seemed to quaver for a long time in her breast. Miriam could not have imagined such a weeping, and it frightened her. With one finger she touched Helen's shoulder, and over and over again she said, "I'm sorry, Helen. I'm sorry. Don't cry. I'm sorry—" until she heard Rupert whistling ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... beside the road, and his ragged dress of muddy-brown corduroy so resembled the broken ground, on which he lay that he was not a very distinct object, even when looked at point-blank. Certainly Mr Sudberry thought him an extremely disagreeable object as he ended in an ineffective quaver and with a deep blush; for that man must be more than human, who, when caught in the act of attempting to perpetrate an amateur concert in all its parts, does ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... you will," he assured her, with a little quaver in his speech that was decidedly effective. "And in any event, I am not sorry that I have loved you, beautiful child. You have always been a power for good in my life. You have gladdened me with the vision of a beauty that is more than human, you have ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... with hurried, unequal, and objectless step. The pallor of his countenance had assumed, if possible, a more ghastly hue—but the luminousness of his eye had utterly gone out. The once occasional huskiness of his tone was heard no more; and a tremulous quaver, as if of extreme terror, habitually characterized his utterance. There were times, indeed, when I thought his unceasingly agitated mind was laboring with some oppressive secret, to divulge which he struggled for the necessary courage. At times, again, I was obliged to resolve ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... with his white hair thrown back and his beard on his breast, he was a fine man to see—a picture of a good and a brave man. He read aloud from the Bible, and then prayed awhile, giving out his words grandly and without a quaver. Then he shook them all by the hand ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... over," the old statesman said in a voice that had a faint quaver. "I'll have to think ...
— Suite Mentale • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the 200-mile trip together. We had the smoker of the Pullman all to ourselves, and after I had recited some furlongs of Burns to him, he began to sing "Jockey's Ta'en the Parting Kiss" in a sort of thin and whimpering quaver of a tenor that cut through the noise of the train like a violin note through silence. I thought I knew the poem, but it seemed to me I had never dreamed what was in it, with the wail of a Highland woman pouring plaintive ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... tantalize me by talking like that, you are much mistaken! Let him be as late as he will—or stay away altogether—I don't care,' said Sally. But a tender, minute quaver in the negation showed that there was something ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... slipped out before she saw its significance. She might not have perceived it so quickly even then had it not been for the second of hesitation before Drusilla answered and the quaver in her voice when ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... generously upon the scholarship of the 'Herald.' But for fifteen years I have tried to improve the art feeling in Plattville, and I may say that I have worked in the face of no small discouragement. In fact," (there was a slight quaver in Fisbee's voice), "I cannot remember that I ever received the slightest word or token of encouragement till you came, Mr. Harkless. Since then I have labored with refreshed energy; still, I cannot ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... disorderly Voices. Our tunes are left to the Mercy of every unskilful Throat to chop and alter, to twist and change, according to their infinitely divers and no less Odd Humours and Fancies. I have myself paused twice in one note to take breath. No two Men in the Congregation quaver alike or together, it sounds in the Ears of a Good Judge like five hundred different Tunes roared out at the same Time, with perpetual Interfearings with ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... benignant smile. Then they proceeded to business. There was one very important letter, which demanded some expenditure of time. The secretary was not altogether herself. Her hand trembled a little, and there was a slight quaver in her voice. Her employer noticed these signs of discomposure, and spoke of them in ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... intently. Ham had spent the greater part of his life in the wilderness; and the voices of its wild dwellers were as familiar to him as were the voices of his fellow men; and something in the first hoot of that owl had awakened his suspicions. It did not sound exactly right. There was a false quaver at the end. In a minute the hoot was repeated, still with that ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... virtuous frame of mind over a slight and unimportant, but bothersome duty performed. If he had had his wits about him he might have seen the feminine heads at the windows, he might have heard the quaver of Miss Bessy Dicky's voice over the club report; but he saw and heard nothing, and now he was seated in the midst of the feminine throng, and Miss Bessy Dicky's voice quavered more, and she assumed a ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Denner said, with an eager quaver in his voice. "Gifford, do you think—would you have any objection, Gifford, to permitting me to see your aunt? That is, if she would be so obliging and kind as to ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... it was the latter case, for often when he had received bad news from home we have heard his voice quaver with anxiety, while the old smile played on his round, brown ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson
... old Burgundy as red as a November sunset and as odorous as a violet in April. There should be a flageolet, whence the Cigarette, with cunning touch, should draw melting music under the stars; or perhaps, laying that aside, upraise his voice—somewhat thinner than of yore, and with here and there a quaver, or call it a natural grace-note—in rich ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... broken at length by the young man, who said, in a choking, depressed voice that betrayed a quaver ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... talk like that, my boy," he began, with never a quaver in his voice, "it's best for us to understand each other straight off. Once and for all let me tell you that I'll have none of your bounce. Whether or not this business is destined to come to anything, you may ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... to the miserable error of his confession. The whole ground was then gone over again, and again pardon with warning was given. Even a glad good-night was exchanged, the wheelman's voice rising in a quaver of grateful affection. Then he seemed to try riding off again, and then he was stayed as before by the victim, whose sense of public duty flamed up at the prospect of his escape. I do not know how the ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... Ralston, Doctor John Finley, Colonel George Harvey, Young E. Allison, William Allen White, George Ade, Ex-Senator Beveridge and Senator Kern. That night Riley smiled his most wonderful smile, his dimpled boyish smile, and when he rose to speak it was with a perceptible quaver in his voice that he said: "Everywhere the faces of friends, a beautiful throng ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... dear, boy dear!" she said, with a forlorn little quaver in her voice, "how could you be so foolish? Didn't you know there was something better in the world than grubbing after musty old tribes and customs and folk-songs? Oh, precious child, ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... of mine to quaver in the way it did? Those few words, I was convinced, would tell more against me than the most circumstantial narrative. I clutched hold of the back of a chair near me, and made a desperate effort to steady myself as I proceeded. I gave an exact account ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... one last instruction may be given. The 4/3 Morris step is occasionally varied, so as to make it exactly like the polka-step—that is, with the final hop danced like a dotted note; like a quaver, if the music be in common time. This is a variation practised occasionally by the Morris men themselves, and the enthusiastic amateur will find himself dropping into it occasionally, following his enthusiastic leader. No instructions for this changing of the step will be given in the Notation, ...
— The Morris Book • Cecil J. Sharp
... came and whisked his charmer away out of his reach, and placed her in a higher sphere. As you have seen the nymph in the opera-machine go up to the clouds at the end of the piece where Mars, Bacchus, Apollo, and all the divine company of Olympians are seated, and quaver out her last song as a goddess: so when this portentous elevation was accomplished in the Esmond family, I am not sure that every one of us did not treat the divine Beatrix with special honors; at least the saucy little ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... in a fit of deeper abstraction. Sitting there he could hear the murmur of the talk inside the hut, and he could distinguish the voices but not the words. Abdulla spoke in deep tones, and now and then this flowing monotone was interrupted by a querulous exclamation, a weak moan or a plaintive quaver of the old man. Yes. It was annoying not to be able to make out what they were saying, thought Babalatchi, as he sat gazing fixedly at the unsteady glow of the fire. But it will be right. All will be right. ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... people scattered about the country who sung out of that when they were little. I wish a few of us old codgers might get together some time and with many a hummed and prefatory, "Do, mi, Sol, do; Sol, mi... mi-i-i-i," finally manage to quaver out the sweet old tunes we learned when we were little tads, each with a penny in his fat, warm hand: "Shall we Gather at the River?" and "Work, for the Night is Coming"; and what was the name ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... heart did throb a little, and sink for a day, when this playfellow was shipped off for life, as you thought, and you did remember his funeral tears over his owl, and"—a quaver of voice and betrayed earnestness revealed the jealous pang shooting across the heart of the speaker; but her own was too heavy and deeply anxious to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... plaintive quaver in her voice, "won't you drive about a little with me? I must talk to some one. I must have advice and—and the sympathy that I know your generous heart will be only too ready to give. It may be unconventional to ask you, and I may be taking ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... something tangible, and the old man proceeded to secrete them in the fallen leaves. Squatted upon the ground, he was too busily engaged to note the sound of approaching footsteps, and started violently when a rough voice accosted him. He mustered courage, however, to quaver:— ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... part of Lord Fawn, who had seemed to Phineas to be bent on swearing away his life. He had borne himself very gallantly during that week, having in all his intercourse with his attorney, spoken without a quaver in his voice, and without a flaw in the perspicuity of his intelligence. But now, when Mr. Low came to him, explaining to him that it was impossible that a verdict should be found against him, he was quite broken down. "There is nothing left of me," ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... Canning in the Liberation War of Humanity. But my Thirty Years' War is over, and I die 'with sword unbroken, and a broken heart.'" His head fell back in ineffable hopelessness. "Ah," he murmured, "it was ever my prayer, 'Lord, let me grow old in body, but let my soul stay young; let my voice quaver and falter, but never my hope.' And this is how ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... the name of all the saints, can I possibly answer your question, senor, unless you furnish me with the names of the men you refer to?" demanded the priest, with a valiant attempt to brazen the matter out, but there was a quaver in his voice which betrayed that he was beginning to feel anxious, if not actually apprehensive, concerning the outcome ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... a call to "Bressfass! Duck cully and lice," he sang boldly, and then followed in a doubtful, hesitating quaver: "I—think—sausage. Must have sausage for Clisymus bress-fass," he said emphatically, as he ushered us to seats, and we agreed with our usual "Of course!" But we found fried balls of minced collops, which Cheon hastened to explain would have been sausages if only he had ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... hall when he was called to answer, evinced the doubt whether he would stand true to his self-impeachment. The doubt was soon solved. With a face on which no trace of fear could be perceived, with a voice in which there was no quaver, he swore that it was he who signed the draft and sent Effie for the money. The oscillation of sympathy, which had for a time been suspended, came round again to the thin pale girl, who sat there looking wistfully and wonderingly into the face of the witness, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... Cherry Blossom seemed to have difficulty in articulating. There was a quaver in her voice when ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... of good cheer Till he struck that low-down year; Got so thin, so little to him, You could most see day-light through him. Never was his eye so bright, Never was his cheek so white. Seemed as if somethin' was wrong, Sort o' quaver in his song. Same old smile, same hearty voice: "Bless you, boys! let's all rejoice!" But old Doctor shook his head: "Half a lung," was all he said. Yet that half was surely right, For I heard him every night, ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... suggestion of the buzzing of drone-flies, or humble bees, in the tones of its sympathetic strings, which often numbered as many as twenty-four. These violas recall the Hardanger peasant fiddle of Norway, of unknown origin and antiquity, whose delicate metallic under strings quaver tremulously and mysteriously when the bow sets in ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... these city-builders is most unusual; the males frequently utter the most varied and astonishing cries. They are jarring in the extreme, and are produced in the most leisurely manner, growing louder and louder and finally ending with a slow quaver. At other times, they grunt like small pigs. Hudson says that any quick noise, like the report of a gun, produces a most startling effect among these little animals. As soon as the report is broken on the stillness of the night a perfect furore ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... last seen him. He seemed older and more shriveled, and there was a querulous, pinched expression in place of the firmness and almost nobility Dave had come to expect. His old eyes bored into the younger man, and he nodded. His voice had a faint quaver now. "All right. You're not much to look at, but you're the best we could find in the Ways we can ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey
... said Myrtle, in a weak quaver. She rose and, keeping her tear-stained face aloof, lifted the lid off ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... little quaver in the last words by which Don Ruy was made ashamed of his threat, for despite his anger that the lad was over close in the confidence of the unknown Mexican maid, yet the stripling had been a source of joy as they rode side by side over ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... she answered, a quaver in her voice and a sudden suffusion of tears in her eyes. "I loved my mother. No one that ever lived could have loved more truly and more ardently than I loved her; but there it began and ended. I never deceived you as ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... cried Dodo, "I want to pick everything." She began to fill her hands with dandelions. "Only I wish that mother was here"—and a little quaver shook the ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... for these words about my brother," she said very gently, and with a little pathetic quaver in her voice. "They have given me a comforting association with that awful day. Oh, I thank God for the thought. Remembering what Mrs. Yocomb said, it reconciles me to it all, as I never thought I could be reconciled. If Herbert believed ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... winter came on, the subject of employing Mr. Rhythm to teach a singing-school was discussed. Mr. Quaver, a tall, slim man, with a long, red nose, had led the choir for many years. He had a loud voice, and twisted his words so badly, that his singing was like the blare of a trumpet. On Sundays, after Rev. Mr. Surplice read the hymn, the people were accustomed to hear a loud ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... to his elder brother is a pardonable mistake, if we may judge by the works that have been reprinted. But the statement, which continues to be repeated in standard works of reference, that "he was one of the first of Italians to use the quaver and its subdivisions" is incomprehensible. Quavers were common property in all musical countries quite early in the 16th century, and semiquavers appear in a madrigal of Palestrina published in 1574. The two brothers ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... contrary, was without a quaver or a sign of huskiness. He had been speaking in the open air exactly as much as Douglas, but it was perfectly fresh, not a particle strained. It ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... [Footnote: "Afferi's wife has a most beautiful voice, but sings so softly on the stage that you really hear nothing at all. A sister of Lolli, the great violinist whom we heard at Vienna, acts Irene; she has a"] very harsh voce, e canta sempre [Footnote: "Voice, and always sings"] a quaver too tardi o troppo a buon' ora. Granno fa un signore, che non so come si chiame; e la prima volta che lui recita. [Footnote: "Slow or too fast. Ganno is acted by a gentleman whose name I never heard. ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... back against the wall beside the window, letting her hand drop in a hopeless gesture. The sample answer had hurt her, who could never see, by its mere thoughtlessness and by the joy that made her sister's voice quaver. The music grew louder and louder, and now there came with it the sound of a great multitude, cheering, singing the march with the trumpets, shouting for Don John; and all at once as the throng burst from the street to ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... an aroused memory. She strained her dim eyes towards the singer, and then bent her head, that the one ear yet sensible to sound might avail of every note. At the close, groping forward, she murmured with the high-pitched quaver ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... God bless you! For I love him, my dear Piney! Bless you, for I love him, my dear Piney!" he kept saying over and over, with an hysterical quaver in his voice, his lips pale and moving constantly. "Oh, may God bless you, for I love him, my dear Piney!" It was what Salome Madeira had said to him when he had left her, a white, angelic figure, swaying a little toward him, there in the garden ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... cannot be," she said, with a frightened quaver in her voice, but a quaver which the Prince recognised, with his large experience, as ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... it would be impolite to still refuse, Bea walked to the piano, with her fingers growing cold as ice, and a die-away feeling in her throat. It took a few minutes to spin up the stool and decide what to sing, then in a voice that would quaver, she began a little Scotch song, and was just through the first verse when things began to look strange. Was it because she was so nervous, or was it growing dark? She played a few rambling chords, then she stopped and looked at the lamp with ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... nominal betters which English cabmen never part with except in a dispute about fares and distances. We stayed him as well as we could with some grapes and pears, which we found we did not want after our lunch, and which we handed him up through his little trap-door, but a plaintive quaver grew into his voice, and he let his horse lag in the misgiving which it probably shared with him. Nothing of signal interest occurred in our progress except at one point, near a Methodist chapel, where we caught sight of a gayly painted blue van, lettered over with many ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... their song, which, like that of the choristers in the legend of the Witch of Berkley, died away in a quaver of consternation; and, like a flock of chickens disturbed by the presence of the kite, they at first made a movement to disperse and fly in different directions, and then, with despair, rather than ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... smiled gently at being spoken of. She had a long fair face, and white hair surmounted by a battered black bonnet, a mouth set rather on one side, and a more observant and refined air than most of her neighbours. She sighed while she talked, and spoke in a delicate quaver. ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Her fingers trembled on the arms of her chair. "N-no...." Then, with a sort of quaver, she added, "Oh, why can't we go on like this?—till the snow goes and I can ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... anchor" and I went on deck to take a last look at Dixie with the rest of the party. Every heart was full. Each left brothers, sisters, husband, children, or dear friends behind. We sang, "Farewell dear land," with a slight quaver in our voices, looked at the beautiful starlight shining on the last boundary of our glorious land, and, fervently and silently praying, ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... voice had an ominous quaver, "or you'd a learned long ago that you can't knock that young man in my hearin'. I haven't forgot if you have, that the only real money that's been in the camp all Summer has come up from ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... repeated with a most pathetic quaver in the rendering, and then big Captain Sartell broke down, with a helpless gulp in his voice, and I, who believed myself of too superior and refined a nature to be moved by such tawdry sentiment, was further dismayed ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... animated, of that marvelous sympathy that exists between all phases of life, whether in humanity or in external nature. His natural outbursts of feeling are rare, but delicious as caviare, with a certain quaver of piquancy. 'Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous. The dawn is my Assyria; the sun-set and moon-rise my Paphos and unimaginable realms of faerie; broad noon shall be my England of the ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... I'll shoot," she said, a quaver in her voice despite all her efforts to speak calmly. "I've got this thing aimed at just about where your heart is, ...
— Billie Bradley at Three Towers Hall - or, Leading a Needed Rebellion • Janet D. Wheeler
... time arrived when the Psalms of King David should be hymned unto the same tunes to which he played them upon his harp, so I was informed by my singing-master, a man right cunning in Psalmody. Now was our over-abundant quaver and trilling done away, and in lieu thereof was instituted the sol-fa in such guise as is sung in his Majesty's Chapel. We had London singing-masters sent into every parish like ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... jar, quake, shiver, totter, brandish, joggle, quaver, shudder, tremble, flap, jolt, quiver, sway, vibrate, fluctuate, jounce, reel, swing, wave, flutter, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... robbing this same lawyer of a good deal of rest recently, and he was trying at a mile a minute to catch up with his sleep. I could feel the sleeper slam her flanges against the ball of the rail as we rounded the perfectly pitched curves, and the little semi-quaver that tells the trained traveller that the man up ahead is moving the mile-posts, at least one every minute. At the first stop, twenty-five miles out, the fat drummer snapped his watch again, but he did not say, "Huh." We ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... other well-remembered spots where former bumps had been made, and still Miller made no sign; on the contrary, he looked gloomy and savage. The St. Ambrosian shouts from the shore too changed from the usual exultant peals into something like a quaver of consternation, while the air was rent with the name and ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... But sometimes I draw back—don't you see what I mean?—I don't quite see where I shall be landed. I only want to be quiet, after all," Miss Ambient continued as if she had long been baffled of this modest desire. "And one must be good, at any rate, must not one?" she pursued with a dubious quaver—an intimation apparently that what I might say one way or the other would settle it for her. It was difficult for me to be very original in reply, and I'm afraid I repaid her confidence with an unblushing platitude. I remember, moreover, ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... with them. After he had in this way assumed an attitude of humility, he kept a sad countenance for some time and shed tears: and when he at last managed to utter a sound, he spoke in a low fearful voice with a suggestion of a quaver. [The general subject is speechmaking.] (Mai, ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... way to St. Paul now?" Griswold said to the newspaper man. Broffin, whose ears were skilfully attuned to all the tone variations in the voice of evasion, thought he detected a quaver of anxious impatience in the ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... company were paired off and sent about to the cafes to earn their keep by singing ragtime songs and dancing buck dances. These two were desperately, pathetically homesick. One of them blinked back the tears when he told us, with the plaintive African quaver in his voice, how long they had been away from their own country and how happy they would be to get back ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... books, pictures and other significant objects, and especially at the small table set out for tea, to which the servant who had admitted her now returned with a steaming kettle. "Isn't it charming here? Will there be any one else? Where IS Mr. Van? Shall I make tea?" There was just a faint quaver, showing a command of the situation more desired perhaps than achieved, in the very rapid sequence of these ejaculations. The servant meanwhile had placed the hot water above the little silver lamp and left ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... girls? He had been one of the wise men in the spectacle, and he still wore his white beard and turban and his long blue and red robes. Yet he wasn't in the least fussed; he simply made a bow, said what he had to say, made another bow, with never a blush or a quaver or giggle. His mother was there, and she was so happy—she is a widow, and sews in the neighborhood, plain sewing, and they are ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... hearty aspect, altogether he seemed—not young, indeed—but a kind of new contrivance of Mother Nature in the shape of man, whom age and infirmity had no business to touch. His voice and laugh, which perpetually re-echoed through the Custom-House, had nothing of the tremulous quaver and cackle of an old man's utterance; they came strutting out of his lungs, like the crow of a cock, or the blast of a clarion. Looking at him merely as an animal—and there was very little else to look at—he was ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... ever leads the morning in, I heard the happy children shout In rapture at the toys turned out Of bulging little socks and shoes— A joy at which I could but choose To listen enviously, because I'm always just "Old Santa Claus,"— But ere my rising sigh had got To its first quaver at the thought, It broke in laughter, as I heard A little voice chirp ...
— Songs of Friendship • James Whitcomb Riley
... the larger, and one inch at the smaller end. The right hand is folded round the smaller end for a mouthpiece; into this the caller grunts and roars and bellows, at the same time swinging the trumpet's mouth in sweeping curves to imitate the peculiar quaver of the cow's call. If the bull is near and suspicious, the sound is deadened by holding the mouth of the trumpet close to the ground. This, to me, imitates the real sound more accurately ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... bar-room down-stairs, crying out to us to surrender in the King's name,—I believe that one poor creature, the Justice of Peace, after getting himself well walled up in a corner with chairs and tables, began to quaver out the King's Proclamation against the Blacks,—the plaguy Soldiers came blundering up both pair of stairs, and fell upon us Billy Boys tooth and nail. 'Slid! my blood simmers when I think of it. Over went the tables and settles! ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... Simmons fell back on the arm-rack deliberately, - the men were at the far end of the room, - and took out his rifle and packet of ammunition. "Don't go playing the goat, Sim!" said Losson. "Put it down," but there was a quaver in his voice. Another man stooped, slipped his boot, and hurled it at Simmons's head. The prompt answer was a shot which, fired at random, found its billet in Losson's throat. Losson fell forward without a ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... now getting old—faster and faster. I cannot help my gray hairs, nor the wrinkles that gather so slowly yet ruthlessly; no, nor the quaver that will come in my voice, not the sense of being feeble in the knees, even when I walk only across the floor of my study. But I have not got used to age yet. I do not FEEL one atom older than I did at three-and-twenty. Nay, to tell all the truth, I feel a good deal younger.—For then I only felt ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... look into her face that transformed and transfigured her. "My boy was in Ann Arbor. He was killed on the train on his way home one day." She stopped, for fear of breaking into a quaver, and smiled brightly. "That's why I always like college boys. They all stop here with me." She rose hastily. "Well, you'll excuse me, won't you, and I'll ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... on, the subject of employing Mr. Rhythm to teach a singing-school was discussed. Mr. Quaver, a tall, slim man, with a long, red nose, had led the choir for many years. He had a loud voice, and twisted his words so badly, that his singing was like the blare of a trumpet. On Sundays, after Rev. Mr. Surplice read the hymn, the people were accustomed to hear a loud Hawk! from Mr. Quaver, ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... Hopklns had great qualms, When they did quaver David's Psalms; "Which made their hearts full glad. But had the prophet back been sent, To hear them SING,—and you COMMENT, They surely had ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... can't go and leave Fellowes here all alone," he said stoutly, though he could scarcely keep a suspicious quaver out of his voice. "When I was going to be alone, Fellowes wrote and asked his mother to let me go home with him, and she couldn't, because his sister has got scarlet fever, and they daren't have either of us; and he's got to stay here—and he's never been away at ...
— The Christmas Fairy - and Other Stories • John Strange Winter
... mother she's sure lost her best friend. It's up to her paw to see she gets a square deal." There was a quaver of emotion in Tolliver's voice. "I don't reckon he can make up ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... handkerchief, showing a white face, whose expression matched the quaver in her voice, as she said breathlessly: "But how if I meet a man and feel I cannot live without him, and he is already—" she brought it out squarely in the sunny peace,—"if he is already as ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... celerity as unusual as the quaver in his voice. "Indeed thy words are white, O mightiest of magicians. What are indeed the evil eyes of savages against the power of thy magic, ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... hurried, unequal, and objectless step. The pallor of his countenance had assumed, if possible, a more ghastly line—but the luminousness of his eye had utterly gone out. The once occasional huskiness of his tone was heard no more; and a tremulous quaver, as if of extreme terror, habitually characterized his utterance. There were times, indeed, when I thought his unceasingly agitated mind was laboring with some oppressive secret, to divulge which he struggled for the necessary courage. At times, again, I was obliged ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... sold," said Daphne, with a small quaver in her voice, "just this afternoon. I came over to say good-by to it, and to get some mint and lavender ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... straps of the rifle-case with unnecessary care, but there was a quaver in his voice that was ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... back into the chamber, and then down the worn stone steps cut out of the rock, which seemed to lead down and down into the bowels of the earth. As we hurried down, leaping lightly on the tips of our toes, the quaver of the tune came after us, so clearly that I even made a ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... think you're trying to cheat us—to lead us out of the way toward your breed friends—you're going to have a chance to learn it better," she went on, never a quaver in her voice. "I won't wait to make sure—I'll shoot you through the neck as easy and as quick as I'd shoot a grouse. I haven't forgotten what you did last night; I'm just eager for a chance to pay you for it." Her voice grew more sober. "This is a warning—the ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... hold dignity and happiness for her. He would fight that she might have those rights, if necessary; but he would rather have her lose her voice entirely, than to hear her sound a bass note so long as a demi-semi-quaver. ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... odorous as a violet in April. There should be a flageolet, whence the Cigarette, with cunning touch, should draw melting music under the stars; or perhaps, laying that aside, upraise his voice—somewhat thinner than of yore, and with here and there a quaver, or call it a natural grace-note—in rich and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Norman Douglas admirably puts it in South Wind, "Enclosed within the soft imagination of the homo Mediterraneus lies a kernel of hard reason. The Northerner's hardness is on the surface; his core, his inner being, is apt to quaver in a state of fluid irresponsibility." The comparative method of approach to the institution of marriage among Latins and among Anglo-Saxons illustrates this truth. And it serves also, perhaps, for an example that, in the midst of the terrors of war, the dim project of ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... appetites. And when, in addition to this, the worn-out huskies pulled weakly, Hal decided that the orthodox ration was too small. He doubled it. And to cap it all, when Mercedes, with tears in her pretty eyes and a quaver in her throat, could not cajole him into giving the dogs still more, she stole from the fish-sacks and fed them slyly. But it was not food that Buck and the huskies needed, but rest. And though they were making poor time, ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... your Pa and Ma, eh? You're not angry with them, I hope? Oh, it would be wrong of you to be angry with them still! They're very fond of you, you know. They cried when you went away, Lily. Your ... going away," Jimmy insisted, with a quaver in his voice, "was ... a great blow ... to them ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... long that I tried to find an explanation of it, she said, "You refer to my father?" There was a quaver in her voice which all her bravery could ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... The uncertain quaver in his voice brought Urquhart's eyes for a moment upon his face, that was always pale and was ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... to her breast, a quaver in her voice, of which she seemed slightly ashamed, for she turned suddenly and ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... said Jessie, with a quaver in her voice; "but I should like to come and talk to you as often as I can." Then presently she added, in a conflicting tone, "I don't know what to call your mother. I don't like to say 'Mrs. Lang,' it seems so— so silly and—stuck-up, and I don't like to call her 'mother,' because, you see, ...
— The Story of Jessie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... in mid-quaver stops, Just ere he sweeps o'er rapture's tremulous brink, And 'twixt the winrows most demurely drops, A decorous bird of business, who provides For his brown mate and fledglings six besides, And looks from right to left, a ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... Richard, with a quaver of comic regret. "Our civilization has so narrowed the times that murder is inexpressibly inconvenient. One thing I ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... you can be very brave and generous," she answered. "What I WANT to know is whether I can serve you - now or afterwards," she added, with a quaver. ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to the house without further words, and Mrs. Forbes called to her son in a voice that had a wrathful quaver. ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... manages to put the lonely quaver of the yellow-leg's call into that phrase "Look out for him! Look out for him!" with its four-note repetition is more than I know, but he always does, and you can see the big flock swing through the mist as he ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... she said, with a forlorn little quaver in her voice, "how could you be so foolish? Didn't you know there was something better in the world than grubbing after musty old tribes and customs and folk-songs? Oh, precious child, how ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... The quaver in her voice touched Mark's sympathy. "She was old and simple-hearted. She was Helen's aunt," and this, more than aught else, helped him to a decision. "She must be homesick in the Bowery; he should die if compelled to stay there long; he would take her to his mother's and ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... eyes to the reading, the quiet rhythm of the sentences, and the calm, deep music of his voice, sounding ineffably soothing, when a quaver, then a break in his voice, just as he repeated the last words, made me look toward him. The calm, strong man was weeping silently; and just then he broke into a paroxysm of sobs that shook his strong frame as by a palsy. Dear Lord! what hidden grief there is in the world! Who would ever ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... his heart had begun to pound so violently, (not from emotion, he told himself,—from a mere ridiculous sort of nervous excitement: what was there in the woman that should excite a sane man like that?) he was afraid to trust his voice, lest it should quaver and betray him. But fortunately this pounding of the heart lasted only a few seconds. The short business of getting the gate open, and of closing it afterwards, gave it time to pass. So that now, as they set forwards ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... in the dimness of the carriage, that she had flushed quickly, and he did not know that she disliked to be reminded of certain things which, for her, were mitigations of the hard feminine lot. But the passionate quaver with which, a moment later, she answered him sufficiently assured him that he had touched her at a ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... Eubanks, was "The Pathos of Charles Dickens." Marcella had taken unusual pains in its preparation, bringing with her two volumes of the author from which to read at the right moment the deaths of Little Nell and Paul Dombey. She had practised these until she could make her voice quaver effectively, and she had looked forward to a genuine ovation when ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... away over the city toward all four quarters of the sky, and quaver into silence. We come out from the gloom of the staircase into the dazzling light of the balcony which runs around the top of the minaret. For a few moments we can see little; but when the first bewilderment passes, we are conscious that all the charm and wonder of ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... Is he whose heart is the home of the great dead, And their great thoughts. Who can mistake great thoughts They seize upon the mind; arrest and search, And shake it; bow the tall soul as by wind; Rush over it like a river over reeds, Which quaver in the current; turn us cold, And pale, and voiceless; leaving in the brain A rocking and a ringing; glorious, But momentary, madness might it last, And close the soul with heaven as with a seal! In lieu of all these things whose loss ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... room, professional delicacy prompted the doctor to withdraw. As he bade her good-morning she became embarrassed, hesitated a moment, then abruptly throwing open the door which gave entrance to a parlor, she said with a suspicious quaver in her voice, "Won't you come in? I must thank you, and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... you are much changed." There was a suggestion of a quaver in her voice, and the shadows did not prevent him from seeing the quick mist that flitted ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... plumbful of good cheer Till he struck that low-down year; Got so thin, so little to him, You could most see day-light through him. Never was his eye so bright, Never was his cheek so white. Seemed as if somethin' was wrong, Sort o' quaver in his song. Same old smile, same hearty voice: "Bless you, boys! let's all rejoice!" But old Doctor shook his head: "Half a lung," was all he said. Yet that half was surely right, For I heard him every night, ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... with a slight quaver composed of anger—and something else; for there was a touch of the ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... she then, what is't that ails thee now? It seems to me I sing as well as thou; For mine's a song that is both true and plain,— Although I cannot quaver so in vain As thou dost in thy throat, I ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... was a curious quaver in her voice, "I've had to give in at last. The Lord knows best. He has given me many a happy year with you; yet I have never forgotten the folks over yonder. I shall be glad to see them again,—your father, Jack, and the rest. 'Then they came to the land of Beulah, where the sun shineth day and ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... country to distinguish one from the other. The music to-night is much better than the ordinary baile music. A native harpist adds the music of his many strings; and not bad music either, though he does not know a quaver from a semibreve, and his harp is of his own manufacture. The sameness, however, caused by playing always and everything in the same key is perceptible. But dancing critics are not ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... be good enough," Madame de Sevenie interposed in a fretful quaver—"and if it would not be taking him too far out of his way—it is night, anything may happen, the car might break down, and I am an old woman, monsieur, with ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... plaintive. His wife behind him smiled gently at being spoken of. She had a long fair face, and white hair surmounted by a battered black bonnet, a mouth set rather on one side, and a more observant and refined air than most of her neighbours. She sighed while she talked, and spoke in a delicate quaver. ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... stood stock still, raised his nose, and emitted a long wail, a mournful, a ghastly sound, with a broken-hearted quaver at the end. Kate Cumberland shrank back still farther until the wall blocked her retreat. Black Bart had never acted like this before. He followed her with a green light in his eyes, which shone phosphorescent and distinct through the growing shadows. And most terrible of all was the sound which ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... mother-tongue in every vernacular, might take example from the conscientious creator, who would not put a particle of cant into the crooked marks and ruled bars which are such a mystery to the uninitiated, blot with one demi-semi-quaver of falsehood his papers, or leave aught but truth of the heavenly sphere at a single point on any line! Then our sternest utterance with each other would be concord, our common questions and answers more melodiously responsive than chants in great cathedrals, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... sooner have heard anything than that Geoffrey was badly hurt," he exclaimed with a quaver in his voice. To the Chinaman, who brought the stranger in, he gave the order, "Get him some supper and tell Fontaine I ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... disinclination, it had occurred to him that he might make one, and return to his study in a virtuous frame of mind over a slight and unimportant, but bothersome duty performed. If he had had his wits about him he might have seen the feminine heads at the windows, he might have heard the quaver of Miss Bessy Dicky's voice over the club report; but he saw and heard nothing, and now he was seated in the midst of the feminine throng, and Miss Bessy Dicky's voice quavered more, and she assumed a slightly mincing attitude. ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... profession." He was requested by Dr. Burney to sing; rather unfortunately, it would appear, for the company, which included Johnson and the Grevilles, was by no means composed of musical enthusiasts, and Mrs. Thrale, in particular, "knew not a flat from a sharp, nor a crotchet from a quaver." However, he complied; and Mrs. Thrale, after sitting awhile in silence, finding ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... piteous quaver in the treble voice, and, forgetting that he was no longer a school-boy, he brushed his eyes furtively with his coat-sleeve, as Jack pretended preoccupation ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... of these city-builders is most unusual; the males frequently utter the most varied and astonishing cries. They are jarring in the extreme, and are produced in the most leisurely manner, growing louder and louder and finally ending with a slow quaver. At other times, they grunt like small pigs. Hudson says that any quick noise, like the report of a gun, produces a most startling effect among these little animals. As soon as the report is broken on the stillness of the night a perfect furore of cries issues forth from ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... the Governor spoke; and, though his words were seemingly irrelevant, they were to the point. His voice had a note of martyrdom running through its senile quaver. ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... unskilful Throat to chop and alter, to twist and change, according to their infinitely divers and no less Odd Humours and Fancies. I have myself paused twice in one note to take breath. No two Men in the Congregation quaver alike or together, it sounds in the Ears of a Good Judge like five hundred different Tunes roared out at the same Time, with ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... and other preachers, busied themselves in their ranks, and prevailed on them to raise a psalm. But the superstitious among them observed, as an ill omen, that their song of praise and triumph sunk into "a quaver of consternation," and resembled rather a penitentiary stave sung on the scaffold of a condemned criminal, than the bold strain which had resounded along the wild heath of Loudon-hill, in anticipation of that day's victory. The melancholy melody soon ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... hoped, but something of what trivial and, heaven forgive them both, of what dismal order? Most of all, meanwhile, he felt the dire penetration of two or three of the words she had used; so that after a painful minute the quaver with which he repeated them resembled his-drawing, slowly, carefully, timidly, some barbed dart out of ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... of 3/8 andantino; and the time, 12/8 moderato or allegro, like the time, simple four in a bar. But if the movement be adagio, largo assai, or andante maestoso, either all the quavers, or a crotchet followed by a quaver, should be beaten, according to the form of the melody, ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... well-tutored voice, though modulated and repressed even in her present emotion, nevertheless had a tendency to quaver. "It's true. Frank Dowling was going to see her one evening and he saw Arthur sitting on the stoop with her, and didn't go in. And Ella used to go to school with a girl who lives across the street ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... were quite wary, usually scuttling out of sight at my approach. True, in Ohio many individuals also chose out-of-the-way places for habitats, but even then they were not timid, for often they would mount to the top of a bush or a sapling in plain sight and trill sweetly by the hour, with never a quaver of fear. At rare intervals a Kansas sparrow would visit the thicket on the vacant lot near my house, but, my! how shy he was! And as for singing, he would only squeak a ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... a rush-light in the other. Its glimmer fell across the bed upon Nick's tousled hair; and when the master-player saw the boy's head upon the pillow he started eagerly, with brightening eyes. "My soul!" he whispered to himself, a little quaver in his tone, "I would have sworn my own desire lied to me, and that he had not come at all! It cannot be—yet, verily, I am not blind. Ma foil it passeth understanding—a freed skylark come back to its cage! I thought we had lost ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... had been stripped of some of your old vesture By Monk, or another. Now you wore no frill, And at first you startled me. But I knew you still, Though I missed the minim's waver, And the dotted quaver. ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... that once one was dead what horrid people thought of one did not matter. It was said with infinite contempt; but something like a suppressed quaver in the voice made me look at her again. I perceived then that her thick eyelashes were wet. This surprising discovery silenced me as you may guess. She looked unhappy. And—I don't know how to say it—well—it suited her. The clouded brow, the pained mouth, the vague ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... country who sung out of that when they were little. I wish a few of us old codgers might get together some time and with many a hummed and prefatory, "Do, mi, Sol, do; Sol, mi... mi-i-i-i," finally manage to quaver out the sweet old tunes we learned when we were little tads, each with a penny in his fat, warm hand: "Shall we Gather at the River?" and "Work, for the Night is Coming"; and what was the name of ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... Voltaire naturally enough danced with rage, screamed all manner of unpleasant things about robbery and the like, cashiered the secretary, and was, we see no reason to doubt, really afraid of a pirated edition. This time his cry of wolf must have had a quaver of sincerity in it. Herr Stahr, who can never keep separate the Lessing as he then was and the Lessing as he afterwards became, takes fire at what he chooses to consider an unworthy suspicion of the Frenchman, and treats himself to some rather ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... still sound in praise of Oriana and of Phyllis and the country life. What are called 'waits' are but a poor travesty of those well-sung Elizabethan carols. We turn in our beds half pitying, half angered by harsh voices that quaver senseless ditties in the fog, or by tuneless fiddles playing popular airs without ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... doubled, and not having a sound peculiar to itself, is invariably heard, in English, with the power of k; and is always followed by the vowel u, which, in words purely English, is sounded like the narrow o, or oo,—or, perhaps, is squeezed into the consonantal sound of w;—as in queen, quaver, quiver, quarter, request. In some words of French origin, the u after q is silent; as ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... should fly from the bowstring like a bird, without quaver or flutter. All depends upon a ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... contains more than one beat—for instance, the minim in the first bar—is shown by taking one step forward for the first beat and by a slight bend of the knee for the second beat. The next two crochets are represented by one step for each. A step is also taken for each quaver, but twice as quickly; for the dotted crochet, a step and a slight spring before the last quaver—all this while the arms are beating a steady four. After a short practice of these two bars, the master will glide into yet another rhythm, the pupils still ...
— The Eurhythmics of Jaques-Dalcroze • Emile Jaques-Dalcroze
... would have given a good deal that he had not helped that simple youth into his difficulty. But things must now take their course. So amid a decorous silence, Dan Loftus lifted up his voice, and sang. That voice was a high small pipe, with a very nervous quaver in it. He leaned back in his chair, and little more than the whites of his upturned eyes were visible; and beating time upon the table with one hand, claw-wise, and with two or three queer, little thrills and ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the way, is the old formula to which my uncle has always been faithful. I heard Madeleine answer, with a quaver in her voice: ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... out with a quaver in my voice, "since you're not able to fill the bill, to be head of ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... devil-may-care, the bobolink, Remembering duty, in mid-quaver stops Just ere he sweeps O'er rapture's tremulous brink, And 'twixt the winrows most demurely drops, A decorous bird of business, who provides For his brown mate and fledglings six besides, And looks from right to left, a farmer mid ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... Margery Key's, having been delayed but a moment, and the quaver of her blessings was yet in my ears, when verily I did see that which I have never understood. As I live, there passed from the house of that ne'er-do-well next door, which was closed tightly as if to assure folk that all therein were sound asleep, a bright ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... minute Creede stood watching him, his eyes keen to detect the slightest quaver, but the little man seemed suddenly to have forgotten him; he moved about absently, mechanically, dropping nothing, burning nothing, yet far ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... and don't let her talk. I want you to pick a man to watch the morgue; to look up every case of reported suicide that by any chance might be Mrs. Marteen—here or in other cities." Gard felt the blood leave his heart as he said the words, though there was no quaver in his voice. "If they should find her, don't let her identity be known if there is any chance of concealing it, not until you reach me. Don't let Miss Marteen know. Put another man on the hotel arrivals. She left St. Augustine—Here—" He—jotted down times and dates ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... cowardly act, or betrayed a friend, or knowingly violated a trust, or broken his word, or forgotten a debt. He was always so entirely certain that he, Andrew Jackson, was in the right, his conviction on this point was so free from the least quaver of doubt, that he could always convince other men that he was right, and carry the multitude with him. His honesty, courage, and inflexible resolution, joined to his ignorance, narrowness, intensity, and liability to prejudice, rendered him at once the idol of his countrymen ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... the latter case, for often when he had received bad news from home we have heard his voice quaver with anxiety, while the old smile played on his round, ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson
... Maraton replied. "These are just the words which you yourself cannot fail to understand. Neither you nor I hold life so dearly that the thought of losing it need make us quaver. I am here only to say this one word—to tell you that the heavens have never opened more surely to let out the lightning, than will your death be a charge upon me if you should vary even a hair's-breadth from our contract. If Maxendorf, the people's man, hides himself for only ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... lovely?" cried Dodo, "I want to pick everything." She began to fill her hands with dandelions. "Only I wish that mother was here"—and a little quaver shook the merry voice. ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... thank you!" she said, with a quaver in her voice. And then, in obedience to Rainham's playfully threatening ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... his lip, and clenched his fists to keep from trembling. It was a moment before he could trust himself to speak without a quaver in his voice. "Nothing else I can do, I guess. Thanks, anyway. And by the way, there's enough credits in the ship's safe to pay for the ...
— Faithfully Yours • Lou Tabakow
... monotonous piece, composed of three tones, quite dissimilar to that composed by Rousseau. My sisters were near despair; but I told them it was not more uninteresting than the heath. Sometimes I made a little flight, a quaver; that was the heath-larks which flew up into the air. The introduction to the gypsy-chorus in 'Preciosa' signified the German gypsy-flock. Then came the thema out of 'Jeannot and Collin'—'O, joyous ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... where we are going?" "Why, to Throndhjem," answered Fitz. "We were going to Throndhjem," rejoins Wilson, "but we ain't now—the vessel's course was altered two hours ago. Oh, Sir! we are going to Whirlpool-to WHIRL-RL-POOO-L! Sir!" in a quaver of consternation,—and so glides back to bed like a phantom, leaving the Doctor utterly unable to divine ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... motion, And put his talents to the proof; Upraised his bruised and batter'd hoof, And, with an amiable mien, His master patted on the chin, The action gracing with a word— The fondest bray that e'er was heard! O, such caressing was there ever? Or melody with such a quaver? 'Ho! Martin![6] here! a club, a club bring!' Out cried the master, sore offended. So Martin gave the ass a drubbing,— And ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... "weighed anchor" and I went on deck to take a last look at Dixie with the rest of the party. Every heart was full. Each left brothers, sisters, husband, children, or dear friends behind. We sang, "Farewell dear land," with a slight quaver in our voices, looked at the beautiful starlight shining on the last boundary of our glorious land, and, fervently and silently praying, passed out ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... leaves, the rustle of the boughs as he pressed among them, the rise and fall of his own breathing, somewhat quicker than its wont, served to render appreciable to Persimmon Sneed the fact that he possessed nerves which were more susceptible to a quaver of doubt than that redoubtable endowment ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... hale and hearty aspect, altogether he seemed—not young, indeed—but a kind of new contrivance of Mother Nature in the shape of man, whom age and infirmity had no business to touch. His voice and laugh, which perpetually re-echoed through the Custom-House, had nothing of the tremulous quaver and cackle of an old man's utterance; they came strutting out of his lungs, like the crow of a cock, or the blast of a clarion. Looking at him merely as an animal—and there was very little else to look at—he was a most satisfactory object, from the thorough healthfulness ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... he shouted, and there was no longer any quaver in his voice. "That is not the word. I shouldn't be surprised if you were German spies. Get out ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... assisting one another, we could walk erect and more quickly. Bohren the younger, who was one of our porters and the youngest of the company, continued his merry song. In moments of peril his voice acquired a decided quaver, but he never paused in his march or in his cadences, and never ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... "Ay, is it so?" quoth the governor; "why, then, let us have a relish of thy art." Whereupon the good Antony put his instrument to his lips, and sounded a charge with such tremendous outset, such a delectable quaver, and such a triumphant cadence, that it was enough to make one's heart leap out of one's mouth only to be within a mile of it. Like as a war-worn charger, grazing in peaceful plains, starts at a strain of martial ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... experiences of every feeling soul that manifest a sense, imperfect yet animated, of that marvelous sympathy that exists between all phases of life, whether in humanity or in external nature. His natural outbursts of feeling are rare, but delicious as caviare, with a certain quaver of piquancy. 'Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous. The dawn is my Assyria; the sun-set and moon-rise my Paphos and unimaginable realms of faerie; broad noon shall be my England of the senses and the understanding, and night shall be my Germany of mystic ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... to me!" said Mr. Brand, with a little quaver in his voice. "If you have the advantage of me that is ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... attempted to ride off, when he was stopped and brought back to the miserable error of his confession. The whole ground was then gone over again, and again pardon with warning was given. Even a glad good-night was exchanged, the wheelman's voice rising in a quaver of grateful affection. Then he seemed to try riding off again, and then he was stayed as before by the victim, whose sense of public duty flamed up at the prospect of his escape. I do not know how the affair ended; perhaps it never ended; but exhausted nature sank in sleep, and ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... his big jaw worked and a faint spray of moisture came out on his face. Then, finally, with no change or quaver in his voice, he put ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... question carefully just as he had put it to father, but there was a quaver in his voice as ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... deepening ranks his dexterous cypher-train; And counts, as wheel the decimating bands, 130 The dews of AEgypt, or Arabia's sands, And then the third on four concordant lines Prints the lone crotchet, and the quaver joins; Marks the gay trill, the solemn pause inscribes, And parts with bars the undulating tribes. 135 Pleased round her cane-wove throne, the applauding crowd Clap'd their rude hands, their swarthy ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... Pete, without a quaver in his voice. "The varmints hev set fire to the building from ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... replied, with a little quaver in his voice, but looking steadily into her eyes, "because you are the living image of the woman who was once my wife. A little over thirty years ago—by the way, may I ask how old ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... pronounced naturally, without the alterations of dialect, are always in the same rhythm. The records taken in the studio of those five words, 'Can you hear me now?' are in the same general rhythm, but only the last three snakes show exact similarity, to each little quaver and turn. There was only the difference in shading: one was the voice of a women. The second of a man of perhaps forty, the third of an old man—all three taken at different times, and I thought from ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... the glow of the great camp-fire burning warmly through the shore-side trees. Some one was singing, a dull, old, droning sailor's song, with a droop and a quaver at the end of every verse, and seemingly no end to it at all but the patience of the singer. I had heard it on the voyage more than once, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
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