"Rustling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... continually reverted to the open places along the Rim. At first, in her excitement, time flew by. Gradually, however, as the sun moved westward, she began to be restless. The soft thud of dropping pine cones, the rustling of squirrels up and down the shaggy-barked spruces, the cracking of weathered bits of rock, these caught her keen ears many times and brought her up erect and thrilling. Finally she heard a sound which resembled that of an unshod hoof on stone. Stealthily then she took her rifle and slipped ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... external decoration. A dignified and manly magnificence would not be unsuitable to the proceedings of the sanctuary of british laws, and the seat of unrivalled eloquence. What would a perfumed french legislator say, accustomed to rise in the rustling of embroidered silks, and gracefully holding in his hand, a cap of soft and showy plumes, to address himself to alabaster statues, glittering lustres, grecian chairs, festoons of drapery, and an audience of beings tricked out as fine as himself, were he to be suddenly transported into a ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... saw a huge cobra directly in front of him, bestirring himself as though he "meant business." The fellow stood up, and he looked mad enough to chew up the hunter. But before he had time to discharge his piece at the monster, for he looked as though he was six feet long, Felix heard a rustling in the bushes at his left, and a moment later a disturbance on ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... the mandrake's dreadful groans, By the lubrican's[12] sad moans, By the noise of dead men's bones In charnel-houses rattling; By the hissing of the snake, The rustling of the fire-drake[13], I charge thee thou this place forsake, Nor of ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... wild storm's rustling feet To martial music of the pines, And to her cold heart's muffled beat Wheeled ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... them, the dear, earnest, soul-lit grey eyes, gazing once more into mine; the loving little hand that penned each darling sentence. In fancy, I could mark the changing expressions that swept across the sweet Madonna face, whose every line I knew so well, as, down-bent on the rustling paper, some sad or happy recollection filled her mind for awhile, in detailing those little events of her daily life which she related to please me. She wrote to me easily and naturally, just as if she were talking ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... his sword or dagger. Most of these people wore bundles of palm-leaves, slit so as to allow red or black coloured strips of the same to be passed through to hold them together, which were attached to the belt or the right thigh. The rustling sound produced with every movement of the wearers of this singular ornament, increased by knocking against the cuirass or the buckler, with the addition of the tinkling of little bells, which also formed part of the warrior's equipment, altogether made ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... the cleft between the hills, where they had been the other day, but this time no one waited, with breaking heart, behind the rustling screen of leaves. Against the rock, with some simple woodcraft of stones and dry twigs, Alden made a fire, while Edith spread the white cloth that covered Madame's basket and set ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... more than a minute, but it wasn't much more, when the girls heard a rustling above them, and looked up to see Molly, fully dressed, ...
— Marjorie's Maytime • Carolyn Wells
... sleep, and watched like a dragon to guard against any disturbance, springing out with upraised finger when a soft gliding step and rustling of brocade was heard. 'Does she sleep?' said a low voice; and Veronique, in the pale thin face with tear-swollen eyes and light yellow hair, recognized the young Queen. 'My good girl,' said Elisabeth, with almost a beseeching gesture, 'let me ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... all eaten it was high time to be moving homeward, for when the dark comes down there are more comfortable places than a rustling maple wood and the precincts of a possibly enchanted spring. When we reached the foot of the orchard and entered it through a gap in the hedge it was the magical, mystical time of "between lights." Off to the west was a daffodil glow hanging ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... behind the dressing-table, and the valance at the top, and the draped curtains; and herself darkly in the glass. And she could feel the vista of the large, calm, comfortable room behind her, and could hear the coals falling together in the grate, and the rustling of the architect's paper, and Mrs. Orgreave's slight cough. And, in her mind, she could see all the other rooms in the spacious house, and the dim, misted garden beyond. She thought: "All this house ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... sound didn't carry far; it was controlled, suppressed; but Bruce had gone up the ladder for something or other, I forget just what, and, thinking Priscilla was in trouble, he kept on. The girl crying, face down in the hay, wasn't Priscilla. Very softly Bruce started to tiptoe away, but the rustling of the hay under his ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... the end of five minutes there was the rustling of garments, and Lady Gowan entered, in a loose morning gown, looking startled at being woke up by such ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... away, feeling unready for an encounter, and therefore couldn't be sure the author of "Shadowmere" noticed him. At all events he didn't come over though Miss Fancourt did as soon as she saw him—she almost rushed at him, smiling rustling radiant beautiful. He had forgotten what her head, what her face offered to the sight; she was in white, there were gold figures on her dress and her hair was a casque of gold. He saw in a single moment that she was happy, ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James
... opened the door of the loose box in which Rosa was kept, she saw her eyes shining in the dark as she lifted her head with a startled air. Then, recognizing a friend, she rose and came rustling through the straw to greet her late visitor. She was evidently much pleased with the attention, and rubbed her nose against Miss Belinda gratefully, but seemed rather dainty, and poked over the contents of the basket, ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Vol. 5 - Jimmy's Cruise in the Pinafore, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... where he happened to be quartered, every sound of nature, at that witching hour, fluttered his excited imagination—the moan of the whip-poor-will from the hillside, the boding cry of the tree toad, that harbinger of storm, the dreary hooting of the screech owl, to the sudden rustling in the thicket of birds frightened from their roost. The fireflies, too, which sparkled most vividly in the darkest places, now and then startled him, as one of uncommon brightness would stream across his path; ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... over the theatre resounded with the clapping of hands. Mariette rose, and holding up her rustling silk skirt, went into the back of the box and introduced ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... on their upward climb. Not a word was spoken, for all knew how far sound travels on a still night. There was, however, a slight breeze moving among the tree tops when they started, and in an hour this had so far increased that the boughs were swaying and the leaves rustling. ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... he heard some sort of rustling sound down on the island somewhere. He hoped that nothing was happening to Smithy; but of course it was utterly out of the question for him to call aloud, to inquire whether the tenderfoot scout ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... and fastening the cap together, he dropped it down, and, leaning forward, tried to catch the top of a young birch rustling close by the wall. Twice he missed it; the first time he frowned, but the second he uttered ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... incident as unexpected in its advent as startling in its terrors. Slavery, ever the preponderance of force, had hitherto reveled in a luxury heightened by a sense of security. Now, in the moaning of the wind, the rustling of the leaves or the shadows of the moon, was heard or seen a liberator. Nor was this uneasiness confined to the South, for in the border free States there were many that in whole or in part owned plantations ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... safer to walk in the shadow of the tall trees. Once she suddenly grasped a branch of a tree and swung herself up and looked about. She had heard a rustling in the underbrush. Long ago she had learned what such sounds meant. So she swung on the branches until she reached the river. She listened a moment in the tree. Then she slipped down and ran to the water's edge. She dipped up ...
— The Tree-Dwellers • Katharine Elizabeth Dopp
... showing on the hazels scattered among the oaks that form the chief substance of the coppices. Near Dunsford lies a sea of blue-green daffodil spears, with the pale gold flowers showing among them. These flowers push up among the rustling brown leaves, under interlacing branches overhead, but at a turn of the river a large flat meadow spreads out before one, and here the daffodils indeed 'dance' in their myriads. Just beyond is the bridge below Dunsford, and here are several tiny islands, each about large enough ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... after she had passed the statue of Achilles she had the rapt look of one brushing through crowds on a summer's afternoon, when the trees are rustling, the wheels churning yellow, and the tumult of the present seems like an elegy for past youth and past summers, and there rose in her mind a curious sadness, as if time and eternity showed through skirts and waistcoasts, and she saw people passing tragically to destruction. Yet, Heaven knows, ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... ears, however, heard sounds which she knew were not those of the rustling woods. She started to her feet and dried her eyes hastily. Straight before her now there lay the long broad path through the trees which led up to the gate of the mausoleum. The air was so exquisitely pure and still that the footfall of a person approaching could be ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... play. Of love they told each other honeyed stories, While with white hands they smote the stream, to wet Their sunbright hair in the pure rivulet. Gazing I crouched among thick flowering leafage, Till one who spied a rustling branch on high, Turned to her comrades with a sudden cry, And 'Go! Nay, prithee go!' she called to me: 'To stay were surely ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... staircase as best he could. He was tired, but contemptuous of his pains. His uninjured probe began to discharge matter. He lowered himself from step to step during what seemed an interminable time. The rustling and sighing of the trees grew louder as he approached the bottom; the air ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... disease must be apparent. Life frequently depends on tranquility and repose, and the least noise or confusion disturbs the sufferer and diminishes the chances of recovery. Nothing annoys sick or nervous persons more than whispering and the rustling of newspapers. If conversation be necessary, let the tones be modified, but never whisper. In sickness, when the vital forces are low, the more natural rest and sleep the patient obtains, the greater ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... a big one, too, Mr. Higgins. If she strikes it, there's an end of us!" said Captain Bottom, addressing the first officer, who seemed indifferent to the danger that threatened the ship. A rustling noise, as of strong tide-rips breaking ahead, was heard, the sound increasing every minute. The braces were now manned, the order to "go about" given, and the helm put down. But the ship had hardly begun to gather headway on the other tack, when she refused ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... to make endearing sounds. For Isabel was very fascinating to Mary Corbet. She had scarcely ever before been thrown so close to any one so serenely pure. She would come down to the Dower House again and again at all hours of the day, rustling along in her silk, and seize upon Isabel in the little upstairs parlour, or her bedroom, and question her minutely about her ways and ideas; and she would look at her silently for a minute or two together; and then suddenly laugh and kiss her—Isabel's transparency was almost ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... sat upright, and lowered his bare feet upon the flags. Outside, the blue firmament was full of stars sparkling unevenly, as though the wind were trying in sport to puff them out. In the eaves of the porch he could hear the martins rustling in the crevices—they had returned but a few days back to their old quarters. But what drew the man to step out under the sky was the cottage-window over ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... distinctly, above the sighing of the wind, they could hear a rustling, cracking noise. Day was just breaking, but the light was not sufficiently strong to show objects with ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty
... nerves must have been too overwrought for that, he said,—he shrank back as closely as possible against the wall on the other side. The thing, whatever it was, slipped past him with a sound of rustling and, retreating with light footsteps down the passage behind him, was gone. A breath of warm, scented air ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... of the music, I did not know which dazzled me most, the incomparable Piazza magnificently illuminated and filled with countless numbers of moving people, or the music that seemed to be borne away in rustling glory to the winds. Only one thing was wanting that might certainly have been expected from an Italian audience: the people were gathered round the band in thousands listening most intently, but no two hands ever forgot themselves so far ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... she said, in relating her flight in my interview with her in Canada. She led her two friends to the barn, from whence her sleeping children were removed; but by the time they reached the road they saw the lantern, and heard rustling of stalks by her pursuers. As her new friend was a well-known friend to slave-hunters, she and her children were still in great danger. She was dressed in men's clothing, and her girls dressed like boys, and they ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... may be presumed, pleases the female. When the female of the wild turkey utters her call in the morning, the male answers by a note which differs from the gobbling noise made, when with erected feathers, rustling wings and distended wattles, he puffs and struts before her. (49. C.L. Bonaparte, quoted in the 'Naturalist Library: Birds,' vol. xiv. p. 126.) The spel of the black-cock certainly serves as a call to the female, for it has been known to bring four or ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... There came a rustling, and a chinking, for some time, and then there was a silence, and Diamond felt somehow that all the Apostles were standing round him and looking down on him. And still he could ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... black angels and white angels ever do get to fighting in a human soul, just as they do down South? If so, they had a tussle in my bosom that morning, and the black fellow came out best, with a gorgeous silk dress a-floating and a-rustling out from his triumphant right hand, and the splendid shadow of a great Grand Duke ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... out of his mouth, when in came a band of men, and made a rustling with their spears and targets. Trimalchio leaned on his pillow, the Homerists ratled out Greek verses, as, arrogantly enough, they were wont to do, and he read a Latin book with a loud voice: whereupon silence being made, "Know ye," said he, "what ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... A light rustling on the tapestry door interrupted him; and he turned anxiously toward this door, which led directly to the chamber of the king, and through which he alone could enter. It was indeed Frederick. He entered the room of his private secretary with a ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... found. For a considerable distance it ran between a double row of magnificent mimosa-trees which met overhead at a height of fully one hundred and fifty feet, making a glorious canopy of green leaves and rustling branches. The rain had cooled the air and laid the dust, and but for the danger we were in (greater than we suspected) and the necessity we were under of being continually on the alert, we should have had a most enjoyable walk. Late in the afternoon we passed a ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... low, short bleats and murmurs of tenderness. When an owl hooted in the woods across the valley, she raised her head angrily and faced the sound, suspecting a menace to her young. When a mouse scurried past her, with a small, rustling noise amid the withered mosses of the hillock, she stamped fiercely, and would have charged had ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... long I waited. I crouched against the wall, huddled with terror. All this took much longer in the doing than in the telling. At last I could bear myself no longer. I tiptoed out on to the pavement—and, Monsieur will believe me, I expected to drop dead. But no one disturbed me. Then I heard a rustling. Doors everywhere were opening stealthily, ah, so stealthily! Some one else tiptoed out, and some one else, and some one else. We stood there staring, aghast at our daring. Suddenly we realised what had happened. The brutes had gone. We were free. It was indescribable, what followed—we ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... her knitting and went and sat in an arbour at the foot of the garden, for she never could bear to be cooped up indoors if she could possibly get out. She had not been sitting there very long when she heard a rustling amongst the bushes, but she took no notice of it, for she felt it was sure to be her lover, coming to have a talk with her; and now that she was so possessed with the thought of a fairy lover, she had ceased to ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... night lasted for so short a time: she went down again so soon that the moment in which I heard her climb the stairs, and then caught the sound of her garden dress of blue muslin, from which hung little tassels of plaited straw, rustling along the double-doored corridor, was for me a moment of the keenest sorrow. So much did I love that good night that I reached the stage of hoping that it would come as late as possible, so as to prolong the time of respite during which Mamma ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... blazing, rustling, marriage-house, but their softened hearts sought stillness; and a foreign touch, as in the blossoming vine, would have disturbed the flower-nuptials of their souls. They turned rather, and winded up into the churchyard to preserve their mood. Majestic ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... sat a moment longer before she was assailed by all sorts of fresh fears. First of all, the soft wind blowing gently through the dry stalks of the heather and its thousands of little bells raised a sweet rustling, which the princess took for the hissing of serpents, for you know she had been naughty for so long that she could not in a great many things tell the good from the bad. Then nobody could deny that there, ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald
... descending in long, steep steps from the hillside; water perfectly clear, bubbling along the yellow stones between the grassy banks and making now and then a little leap into a lower basin; along the stream great screens of reeds, sere, pale, with barely a pennon of leaves, rustling ready for the sickle; and behind, beneath the watery sky, rainy but somehow peaceful, the russet oak-scrub of the hill. Of spring there was indeed visible only the green of the young wheat beneath the olives; not a bud as yet had moved. And still, it is spring. ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... read La Beata [my first novel], and must tell you how charmed we have been with it. Nina herself is perfectly exquisite and individual, and her story is full of poetry and pathos. Also one feels a breath from the Val d'Arno rustling amid the pages, and a sense of Florentine life, such as one rarely gets out of books. The critical objection I should make to it, apart from minor points, is that often you spoil the artistic attitude by adopting ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... and lit a short clay pipe, and thrust his hands deep in his pockets, when there was a rustling noise in the hedge a little farther down, and a short man jumped out into the road—even jumping with his hands in his pockets. He saw Smith directly and came towards him, and sat himself on a heap of flints ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... disappointment were needed to rid men's minds of the notion that the jungles and the tropical forests were the most abundant hiding-places of gold and precious stones. The wild beauty of the tropics, the cloudless skies, the tangled thickets, ever green and rustling with a restless animal life, the content and amiability of the natives, combined in a picture irresistibly attractive to the adventurer. Surely where there was so much beauty, so much of innocent joy in life, there must be the fountain of perpetual youth, ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... same out of doors. I would suddenly be conscious, as I walked on the road, that I was being watched. If I made as if to walk into the roadside bush there would be a faint rustling, which told that the watcher had retired. The stalking was brilliantly done, for I never caught a glimpse of one of the stalkers. Wherever I went—on the road, on the meadows of the plateau, or on the rugged ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... opened his eyes, and with a cry of joy his mother pressed him to her heart. Among the boughs of the Christmas-tree there was a soft rustling and whispering. ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... guitar, while she wondered if the romances she had read about gallant and more—more contiguous cavaliers were all lies. At somewhat regular intervals Madama would glide in from the dispensary with a sort of drought-suggesting gleam in her eye, and there would be a rustling of stiffly-starched white trousers as one of the caballeros would propose an adjournment ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... yew-tree glade was served next morning by an acolyte in cassock and cotta. The way of it was this. Alice of the Hermitage was setting the altar in the light of a cloudy dawn, when she heard a step and the rustling of branches behind her. Looking quickly round, she saw a boy come out of the thicket, who stood echoing her wonder. He was a dark-haired slim lad, in leather jerkin and breeches, had crimson hose on his long legs, ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... like flocks of silver sheep Come rustling inland from the deep, And into rambling valleys press Behind their heavenly shepherdess. You cannot see them? Lift your eyes And see their mistress in the skies. She rises with her ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... kerchief and coloured turban, presented herself with a curtsy, delivered kindly messages from the ladies of the house, and sat down with her sewing in the little adjoining room. The morning advanced, sunny and peaceful, with vague sounds, faint laughter from distant rooms, droning of bees, and rustling of cool poplar leaves. ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... than with (e.g.) a worn reproduction of what Mr. F.P. Stephanoff thought that Flora Mac-Ivor looked like while playing the harp and introducing a few irregular strains which harmonized well with the distant waterfall and the soft sigh of the evening breeze in the rustling leaves of an aspen which overhung the fair harpress—especially as F.P. Stephanoff does not seem to have known the difference between ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the northers of winter, subsisting for months on prickly pear, a species of the cactus family, or drifting like game animals to more favored localities in avoiding the natural afflictions that beset an arid country. In producing the ideal range animal it was more important to retain those rustling qualities than to gain a better color, a few pounds in weight, and a shortening of horns and legs, unless their possessor could withstand the rigors of a variable climate. Nature befriends the animal race. The buffalo ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... of the plaza the President's band was playing native waltzes that came throbbing through the trees and beating softly above the rustling skirts and clinking spurs of the senoritas and officers, sweeping by in two opposite circles around the edges of the tessellated pavements. Above the palms around the square arose the dim, white facade of the cathedral, with the bronze statue of Anduella, the liberator of Olancho, who answered ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... Jameson was blindfolded that the first rudeness began, for Miss Jane seized hold of a newspaper and began rustling it so about Edward's head, that being blindfolded he became so annoyed by it, that he began to toss his arms about, making such rushes hither and thither, that the girls had to run away, lest they should be struck. Whilst Jane was teasing Edward, one of the boys seized hold ...
— Brotherly Love - Shewing That As Merely Human It May Not Always Be Depended Upon • Mrs. Sherwood
... the house!" Rose cried out again. "I would put that dress in the rag-bag if it was mine!" Her cheeks burned and her eyes were quite fierce upon the dress as Charlotte slipped it off and it fell to the floor in a rustling ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... fugitive whom they considered so tight in the trap. The red gleam of the flames upon the ice, contrasting with his own situation, struck a chill into Henry. The wind had a clear sweep over the frozen lagoon, and the rustling of the icy bushes above him was like a whisper from the cold. He wrapped himself thoroughly in the painted coat and the two blankets, put the rifle in front of him, where he could snatch it up instantly, and beat his hands ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... my life, which had passed so quickly and uninterestingly, and I thought all the while how good it would be to tear out of my breast my heart which had grown so weary. There would be talk going on on the terrace, the rustling of dresses, the fluttering of the pages of a book. I soon got used to Lyda receiving the sick all day long, and distributing books, and I used often to go with her to the village, bareheaded, under an umbrella. And in the evening she would hold forth about the Zemstvo and schools. ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... close to her and trembled. There was the rustling, squeaking sound again. Ruth pushed on (secretly feeling rather staggered by the strange noise), and they entered one of ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... to have Black Caroline with her. And immediately there was a rustling among the trees, and Black Caroline ...
— Edmund Dulac's Fairy-Book - Fairy Tales of the Allied Nations • Edmund Dulac
... round, the dusky earth Rings with their hymning voices; and beneath Their many-rustling feet a pleasant sound Ariseth, as they take their onward way To their ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... courage did not quail. We would not allow ourselves to be depressed by the snowdrift trailing past the window, any more than if it had been the sigh of a summer wind among rustling boughs. There have been few brighter seasons for us than that. If ever men might lawfully dream awake, and give utterance to their wildest visions without dread of laughter or scorn on the part of the audience,—yes, and speak of earthly happiness, ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... spatters of dust and losing themselves in the dry soil. Then the clouds sweep forward up the valley, darkening the meadows and blotting out the hills, and then there is the whispering of the rain as it first sweeps across the corn-field. At once what a stir of life! What rustling of the long green leaves. What joyful shaking and swaying of the tassels! And have you watched how eagerly the grooved leaves catch the early drops, and, lest there be too little rain after all, conduct them jealously down the stalks where they will soonest reach the thirsty ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... Harden who hae said, that were it in their power they wad mak her their wife; an' ye should remember, sir, that it will be as pleasant for you to hear the blithe laverock singing ower yer head, as for another person to hear the wind soughing and the long grass rustling ower yer grave. Ye hae another day to live, an' see her, an' speak to her, before ye decide rashly. Yours is a cruel doom, but Sir Gideon is a wrathfu' man; an' even for his ain flesh an' bluid he has but sma' compassion when his anger is provoked. Death, too, is an awfu' thing to think aboot; ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... bowl, the other grasping the heavy revolver at his hip. Crouching like a startled tiger, with not a muscle moving, he peered anxiously into the darkness, his arm half extended, scarcely venturing to breathe. There came a plain, undisguised rustling in the grass,—some prowling coyote, probably; then his tense muscles immediately relaxed, and he cursed himself for being so startled, yet he continued to grasp the "45" in his right hand, ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... liberty from their Bibles, from their song books, and from their copy books too; they read of liberty, they sing of it, and they write of it; they chant to liberty in their school rooms, and they resume the strains on their homeward way, till every rustling lime-grove, and waving cane-field, is alive with their notes, and every hillock and ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... of panic-stricken silence ensued, and then through the darkness was heard the indefinite rustling sound of living creatures seeking covertly to escape from ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... burning faintly down below, and I heard a slight rustling as if people were moving about. And after a while the door of a room opened softly, and two men came out. It was father and the doctor. I couldn't have believed big men could have moved so quietly, and I listened as if I was ...
— The Girls and I - A Veracious History • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... poetic companion. The fate of the fair maid, the song of birds, the rustling of groves, the murmur of yonder brook,—does not all this remind you of the accents of our laurel-crowned poet, he ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... circumference, and in the interior of this you are in a perfect Arcadia. The mind cannot conceive any thing more hushed, more sylvan, more entirely removed from the slightest evidence of proximity to a town. Nothing is audible there except the songs of birds and the rustling of leaves. Kensington gardens, beautiful as they are, have no seclusion ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... the subject, and a few minutes later he was following her rustling skirts up the broad centre aisle to the pew four rows back from the pulpit. He wished it had not been so far forward, because the worshippers interested him, if only by reason of their sameness of type. ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... can give is more forcible than people would suppose. One day when I was in a cover, leaning against a tree, with my gun in my hand, I presume for some time I must have been in deep thought, I heard a rustling and then a squeak on the other side of the tree; I looked round the trunk, and beheld a curious combat between two hares and a stoat. The hares were male and female, and had their leveret between them, which ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... we reached the gloomy glade where, as Francis had told us, according to popular belief, the wraith of Charlemagne was still seen on the night of St. Hubert's Day galloping along with his ghostly followers of the chase. The rustling of leaves caught our ears; instantly we all lay prone ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... the stone stairs, when a rustling and chattering, as of maids descending, caused her and her brother to stand aside to make way, and down came a pair of heads and candles together over a green bandbox, and then voices in vulgar tones half suppressed. 'I couldn't ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Carlos' eyes upon us, looking out of the thick darkness. A slight rustling came from ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... vociferously as I approached the nest, thinking it was the old one with food; but the clamor suddenly ceased as I put my hand on that part of the trunk in which they were concealed, the unusual jarring and rustling alarming them into silence. The cavity, which was about fifteen inches deep, was gourd-shaped, and was wrought out with great skill and regularity. The walls were quite smooth and ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... be the wind and blow through your rustling branches, to be your shadow and lengthen with the day on the water, to be a bird and perch on your top-most twig, and to float like those ducks among ...
— The Crescent Moon • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... taking a stroll in the woods, as I delight to do in the autumn-time, laundering my soul with the gorgeous colors, the music of the rustling leaves, the majestic silences, and the sounds that are less and more than sounds, I often wonder, when I take one bypath, what experiences I might have had if I had taken the other. I'll never know, of course, but I keep on wondering. So it is ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... servile and contemptible in mine," said Louise; "I always shrink from a woman flaunted out in rustling silks, great, glaring rings on her fingers, and alarming jewels swinging like ponderous pendulums from her ears. I think what a poor, little, pinched, narrow-contracted, poverty-stricken soul is there, that seeks to atone for the lack within, by rigging her poor body ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... by any initial feature of the programme, silence should fall upon the assembly, and not a whisper be heard. Polite attention should be given to each feature of the hour. Programmes should be folded and arranged for easy reference before the exercises begin, so that no rustling of papers shall mar the effect of the music, or interfere with the speakers or listeners. The noisy handling of programmes is a most exasperating exhibition of thoughtlessness, and can easily be avoided ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... immediately. It was late when they returned, having had good success, and bringing with them five tongues, and the shoulder of a deer. We made about twelve miles this day. The night was fine, and the Aurora Borealis so vivid, that we imagined, more than once, that we heard a rustling noise like that of autumnal leaves stirred by the wind; but after two hours of attentive listening, we were not entirely convinced of the fact. The coruscations were not so bright, nor the transition from one shape and colour to another so rapid, as they sometimes are; otherwise, I have no ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... brilliant thing, is what all children long to do in every country on earth. But in Africa, where there are plenty of birds, big people as well as little love them. In the Moorish cafes, in the wretchedest gourbis, cages made of reeds are hung on the walls, all rustling with trills and fluttering of wings. Quail, thrushes, nightingales are imprisoned in them. The nightingale, the singing-bird beyond all others, so difficult to tame, is the honoured guest, the privileged dweller ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... follow. Everything that surrounds you at this still tour of twilight courts your attention,—the waving branches speak to you,—the hazel thicket, bending to the weight of some advancing animal, puts you on your guard; the heart beats, not for the rustling of a silk gown, nor for the hurried footfall of woman treading with fairy lightness on the fallen leaves. The syren voice is not about to whisper softly in your ear, "Are you there, violet of my heart!" nor ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... general hush of the wind—though it still indulged in occasional brief gusts—the river seemed to me to grow blacker, the willows to stand more densely together. The latter, too, kept up a sort of independent movement of their own, rustling among themselves when no wind stirred, and shaking oddly from the roots upwards. When common objects in this way become charged with the suggestion of horror, they stimulate the imagination far more than things of unusual appearance; and these bushes, crowding huddled about us, assumed ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... business-like way to open the music of the first number on the program and to follow the concert note for note from the printed scores from beginning to end. Imagine the effect upon her nerves produced by the rustling of one hundred pages all being turned at the same instant at intervals during the concert; and even now she laughingly confesses that she was nearly overcome with stage fright and prays she may never have to endure again such an ordeal as the ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... still there was a haunting feeling of insecurity which hung around me especially at night. I was awfully afraid of snakes, and no sooner had we lain ourselves down on our cots to sleep, than I would hear a rustling among the dry leaves that had blown in under our beds. Then all would be still again; then a crackling and a rustling—in a flash I would be sitting up in bed. "Jack, do you hear that?" Of course I did not dare to move or jump out of bed, so I would sit, rigid, ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... a wide white blouse with a girdle and big pockets; in the afternoon she put on a brown dress, and on feast days a heavy rustling silk dress that gleamed like silver, and over it a valuable shawl which only Vassilissa, her housekeeper, was allowed to take out of ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... gave his master the letter and then stood with the water rustling past his woollen stockings. There was an odd suggestion of brotherhood between these men of very different birth. For as men are equal in the sight of God, so are those dimly like each other who live in the open air and cast their lives ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... be a matter of no importance that Luther found a Bible in a monastery; but as he opened that Bible, and the brass-bound lids fell back, they jarred everything, from the Vatican to the furthest convent in Germany, and the rustling of the wormed leaves was the sound of the wings of the angel of the Reformation. It seemed to be a matter of no importance that a woman, whose name has been forgotten, dropped a tract in the way of a very bad man by the name of Richard Baxter. He picked up the tract and read it, and ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... the melodies she had just heard still echoing in her ears. A soft rustling outside the tent door made her open her eyes, and she started in surprise at the fairy scene which was being enacted there. In the open grassy space before the tent figures were passing back and forth and winding in and ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... oaks and Spanish chestnuts stand in crowded but careless ranks. The leaves which dropped in the preceding autumn from these trees still lie on the ground under the bushes, dry and brittle, and the blackbirds searching about among them cause as much rustling as if some ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... civil-suited Morn appear, Not tricked and frounced, as she was wont With the Attic boy to hunt, But kerchieft in a comely cloud While rocking winds are piping loud, Or ushered with a shower still, When the gust hath blown his fill, Ending on the rustling leaves, With minute-drops from off the eaves. And, when the sun begins to fling His flaring beams, me, Goddess, bring To arched walks of twilight groves, And shadows brown, that Sylvan loves, Of pine, or monumental oak, Where the rude axe with heaved stroke Was never heard ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... too noble a title for the bravery he shows in carolling all through the hot summer day. Someone has called him a preacher, but we confess, we have listened to many a lengthy discourse whose effect was slight in comparison to his wild ringing text, so redolent of rustling leaves and murmuring brooks—one of the sermons of God's great out-of-doors. Across the "peach orchard" a cardinal, like a swiftly hurled firebrand, comes toward us and utters his clear metallic Chip, then alighting among some ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... moment came a rustling sound in the underbrush. "P'raps it's savages," thought Archie, and, half pleased, half frightened at the idea, he gave a loud whoop. Out flew a fat motherly hen, cackling and screaming. What she was doing there in the woods I cannot imagine. Perhaps she had lost her way. Perhaps ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... happened. She could not move. She was pinned down among the short, stiff branches of a thorny shrub; but she screamed again as loud as she could—not a scream of terror, but a call for help. Then she lay and listened. All about her there was no sound but the rustling murmur of the leaves and the tiny, mysterious noises of the little creatures of the night whose realm she had invaded. Now and again she tried to move and disentangle herself from the strong branches that held her; but they ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... 24th.—I bathed in the river on Thursday evening, and in the brook at the old dam on Saturday and Sunday,—the former time at noon. The aspect of the solitude at noon was peculiarly impressive, there being a cloudless sunshine, no wind, no rustling of the forest-leaves, no waving of the boughs, no noise but the brawling and babbling of the stream, making its way among the stones, and pouring in a little cataract round one side of the mouldering dam. Looking up the brook, there was a long vista,—now ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... rustling noise at the door, and Arthur lay very still and quiet as he saw that it was his mother who was coming in. He was hidden on his sofa, so she did not see ...
— Left at Home - or, The Heart's Resting Place • Mary L. Code
... begin to pair; the grass to spring; And Maple sap is scarce worth gathering; Yet, when it won't make sugar, some prepare Syrup, and vinegar, of flavor rare. On every hand the brightly green-robed trees May hear their finery rustling in the breeze; And pleased, like mortals, with their gay attire, May feel a strong, vain-glorious desire To have a glass in which to view their charms, Or mark the effect of each rude blast's alarms. Some, far more highly favored than the rest, Have such ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... afternoon Dr. Arthur set him down at the old house door. A cool winter breeze was fitfully rustling the dry leaves and giving a monitory brush past the house now and then; whispering that Christmas was near, and snow coming. Staying for no look at the sunlight in the tree-tops, Rollo marched in and went straight to the ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... was only the rustling of the leaves. There are no such things as fairies; but if there were any such, we have no need to ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... badgers, coons, skunks, and even the squirrels had well-beaten tracks from their dens and hiding-places in thickets, hollow trees, and the ground, but they did not reach far, and but little noise was made by the soft-footed travelers in passing over them, only a slight rustling and swishing among fallen leaves ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... shimmering skies the big clouds slowly sail; A faint breeze lingers in the rustling beech; Atop the withered oak with vagrant speech The brawling crows call down the sleepy vale; Unseen the glad cicadas trill their tale Of deep content in changeless vibrant screech, And where the old fence rambles out of reach, The drowsy lizard hugs the ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove
... pleased to see her expectations so agreeably disappointed; for, instead of the squalid circumstances and wretched looks attending indigence and distraction, everything was decent and genteel; and the patient's aspect such as betokened internal satisfaction. Hearing the rustling of silk in his room, he lifted up his eyes from the paper, and, seeing her ladyship, was struck with astonishment and awe, as at the unexpected ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... wondering backward glance of Pheos, he made expressive signs with his fingers in derision of Sah-luma's sweeping mantle, which now, allowed to fall to its full length, trailed along the marble floor with a rich, rustling sound, the varied light sparkling on it at every point and making it look like ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... the flowery fields of the immortals. My footsteps along the dusty road continually disturbed serpents that wriggled away in long ripples of motion among the tall spears of the grass; while green and golden lizards, sunning themselves on the hot stones, disappeared into their holes with a quick rustling sound at my approach. The air was musical with a perfect chorus of larks, whose jubilant song soared above all sorrow and death to heaven's own gate; and now and then a tawny hawk sailed swiftly across the horizon. Huge plants of gray mullein ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... they're real. What of it? They could buy that amount of gold ten times over—twenty times over—with what they've taken in this morning. And they expect another boat-load of suckers this afternoon. And this is only the beginning,—Snider's been rustling around amongst a lot of women and old people over in Lanesport, and they're about ready to make over their bank- accounts to him. They LIKE him, you know,—a lot of folks DO like just that kind of slippery snake. It's funny,—you'd think anyone with ordinary common-sense ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... not from pride that she rejected them, but because her heart was capable of love —of love, pure, devoted, unchangeable, springing from being beloved, and because her feelings were sensitive as the quivering aspen, which trembles at the rustling of an insect's wing. Amongst her suitors there might have been some who were disinterested; but the meanness and sordid objects of many caused her to regard all with suspicion, and there was none among the number to whose voice her bosom responded as the needle ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... literally swept down the stairs, her black silk dress rustling somberly and importantly. She was a large woman, and her bearing and ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... swept by a breath of spring; and when the evening star appeared, Hazlitt saw it as Adam did while in Paradise and but one day old. "As we passed along," writes the essayist, "between Wem and Shrewsbury, and I eyed the blue hill tops seen through the wintry branches, or the red, rustling leaves of the sturdy oak-trees by the wayside, a sound was in my ears as of a siren's song. I was stunned, startled with it as from deep sleep; but I had no notion that I should ever be able to express my admiration to others in motley ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... among fields brown where the harvests had been gathered, green and white where myriads of graceful tassels waved above acres on acres of Indian corn. And the broad leaves sent up through the murmur of the river a rhythmic rustling like a sigh of content. Once in a while a passing steamboat made the sonorous cry of its whistle and the melodious beat of its paddles echo from hill to hill. Between the house and the hilltop, highway lay several hundred acres of lawn ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... the great field was already stripped to a belt of tall stubble, though long ranks of stooks still stretched across the rest, and dusty men were hard at work among them. Wagons rolled through the crackling straw—going slowly, piled high with rustling loads; returning light, jolting wildly, as fast as the teams could trot, for the thrashers were paid by the bushel and would brook no delay. In the background stood their big machine, pouring out a cloud of smoke that stretched in a gray trail across ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... were hundreds of dragon-flies, thin-bodied blue or green fellows, with bright transparent wings, that seemed invisible at times, so rapid was their vibration; while every now and then, rustling upon the wing as they dashed about in chase of one another, came the larger dragon-flies, ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... sails could catch the wind, and the great heaps of corn, some red and some yellow (the red is English wheat), and the heaps slice down a little bit at a time into a square hole and go down to the mill-stones. The corn makes a rustling soft noise that is very jolly—something like the noise of the sea—and you can hear it through all ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... fades To brown above the yellow blades, Whose rustling sheath enswathes the corn That bursts its chrysalis in scorn Longer to ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... through mosses flowing, See the brook and brooklet springing. Hear I rustling? hear I singing? Love-plaints, sweet and melancholy, Voices of those days so holy? All our loving, longing, yearning? Echo, like a strain returning From ...
— Faust • Goethe
... passing cold. Just then there was a rustling among the pine branches, and Lesbia looked ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... Extremity of Need brushed by me so close I heard the rustling of its gown, but I did not dig. I have sufficient for me, and I am the last of my line. I pass it, therefore, to my good friend Hugh Croyden (and, in the event that he predecease me, to his son Geoffrey Croyden), to whom Clarendon will go upon ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... manifold with sound, I heard my little brothers who move by night rustling in grass and tree. A hedgehog crossed my path with a dull squeak, the bats shrilled high to the stars, a white owl swept past me crying his hunting note, a beetle boomed suddenly in my face; and above and through it ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless
... seemed, my whole being in a clear and buoyant element of tone. It was only by degrees that out of this absolute essence of sheer sound distinctions of rhythm and pitch began to appear, and to assume definite musical form. The theme at first was pastoral and sweet, suggestive of rustling grasses and murmuring reeds, interwoven with which was an exquisite lilting tune, the song of the souls as they sped down the river. But one by one other elements crept into the strain; it increased in volume and variety of tone, in complexity of rhythm ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... evidently been hastily closed. Some of the furniture was covered with sheets, while part of it stood unprotected. The rug had been folded into the center of the room, and covered with heavy brown papers, and I was extremely startled to hear the papers rustling. A mouse, however, proved to be the source of the sound, and I pulled ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart |
