Whisper

“ “I was on the point of crying at her, 'Don't you hear them?' The dusk was repeating them in a persistent whisper all around us, in a whisper that seemed to swell menacingly like the first whisper of a rising wind. ”

“ Across the haunted bower;
"Too late! Too late!" the whisper came
From ev'ry sleeping flower.
I met a youth upon the path
And bade him tell to me
If he had seen the little maid
Who wept so dolefully. ”

“ And one man's whisper is much like another's. It could have been Deveril's or Taggart's or even Mexicali Joe's.
"Who are you?" her own whisper answered him.
"Is Standing in there?"
"Who are you?" she insisted.
There was a pause, a silence; a long silence. Then:
"Come with me ... just a few feet. So we won't be overheard."
She found herself frowning. Was it Babe Deveril? She did not fancy a man's whispering; she could not imagine a man like Bruce Standing whispering at a moment like this! More like him, like any man who was a man, to roar out what he had to say rather than whisper in the dark. ”

“ With all the colors of heaven's signal-bow.
⁠The fitful breezes die
Into a gentle whisper, and then sleep;
⁠And sweetly, mournfully,
Starting to sight, in the transparent sky,
⁠Lone in the upper deep,
Sad Hesper pours its beams upon the eye ”

“ Besides this mournful whistle, the thrasher has a note almost exactly like a smacking kiss,—very realistic,—and sometimes, especially at dusk, an uncanny, ghostly whisper, that seems meant expressly to suggest the presence of something unearthly and awful. ”

“ Without being raised above a whisper, it can girdle the globe. It can barely breathe some delicious new melody; yet the thing will float forth not only undiminished, but gathering beauty, significance, and incisiveness in every land it passes through. ”

“ In both whisper and aspirate leave the throat free and open; and be energetic, remembering that force is [Pg 53] made by control of muscles at the waist, and not by effort of throat or mouth. The clearer you can make a whisper, the better quality you can make in pure and orotund. Pure tone or quality is sound made with no disagreeable quality being heard; and is the same as pleasant quality, spoken of as being necessary to make listeners. Pure quality is made with ease, with no waste of breath, and is used for expression of agreeable feelings. ”

“ A whisper, a laugh that often seemed vague and unmeaning, conveyed to each other a world of secret significance, and an apparently senseless burst of merriment in which the whole class joined and that the adult critic set down to “animal spirits”—a quality much more rare with children than generally supposed—was only a sympathetic expression of some discovery happily oblivious to older preoccupation. ”

“ How often calculation is folly and cowardice!
Before we can hear the Divine Voice we must shut out all other voices, so that we may be able to listen, to discern its faintest whisper. The most precious messages are those which are whispered. ”

“ She can burst forth a torrent of sound expressive of our strongest passions, without losing an atom of tone, and she can diminish it to a whisper, in sotto voce, as distinct as it is thrilling and true intonation. ”

“ Their silence remains inexplicable; but it was probably the result of the nature of their surroundings. I have spoken before of the innumerable echoes and reverberations that followed every sound of the voice above a whisper. At times it was literally deafening; and time may have made it so in reality. ”

“ A whisper will often awake a sleeper who would not be disturbed by an ordinary conversation; and never say “hush!” Let your clothes and foot covering be of as noiseless and unobtrusive a character as possible, and instead of gliding and tottering about like a rickety ghost, do not hesitate to walk. If you have occasion to say anything in the room, say it so that the patient can hear it if he wishes, and do not let him be aware of your conspiring privately with the others, especially at the door. ”

“ But the difference is not the less real because the reality is less. Words spoken in a faint whisper are clearly heard by a listener immediately before the speaker, when quite inaudible or indistinct to one at an equal distance behind him. ”

“ He's a sort of a ghost, the Whisperer is. He rides a white horse that can go like the wind, and he wears light gray clothes, and a white handkerchief all over his face like a mask. Nobody has ever seen his face, but when he shows up he's known by his voice. ”

“ Every attempt at getting up a topic failing, the company look into the fire, or in each others faces, or begin to examine with much interest the pattern of the carpet; and the silence which ensues is truly terrific. A slight whisper is the only sound in the apartment, and is caught at or watched by the company, for it may chance to be the commencement of a conversation in which they may join, without exciting particular attention. ”

“ An aspirated tone is one that is surrounded with breath, only a portion of which is vocalized.
Whispered Quality. The whisper is seldom used by the orator, but is often employed by the actor. Whispered speech is speech that is produced by the articulation of breath without that breath being converted into voice. ”

“ Attention should be paid to the whispered voice, and, still again, the two sides show a normal disparity. The sound heard with the whispered voice, which may be distinguished as the normal bronchial whisper, is louder on the right than on the left side, and somewhat higher in pitch on the left side, at the summit of the chest. ”

“ I look'd to Heav'n, and try'd to pray;
But or ever a prayer had gusht,
A wicked whisper came and made
My heart as dry as dust. ”

“ The trumpet does not more stun you by its loudness, than a whisper teases you by its provoking inaudibility. ”

“ I with either sport and toy.
Though a lady, I am stout,
Drums and trumpets bring me out:
Then I clash, and roar, and rattle,
Join in all the din of battle.
Jove, with all his loudest thunder,
When I'm vexed can't keep me under,
Yet so tender is my ear,
That the lowest voice I fear;
Much I dread the courtier's fate,
When his merit's out of date,
For I hate a silent breath,
And a whisper is my death.
This work was published before January 1, 1928, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago. ”

“ The giglers and the whisperers are innumerable; they beset us wherever we go; and it is observable, that after a short murmur of whispers, out comes the burst of laughter: like a gunpowder serpent, which, after hissing about for some time, goes off in a bounce. ”

“ You think it is a late bird until you weigh the sound in your ear, and then you find no bird could touch so delicate a note, reach so weird a meaning. Then all at once a hundred soft whispers steal along the shore and from the surface of the stream, and you wait and listen minute after minute in the hope or fear the whisperings will shape themselves in some human speech. You wait until disappointment yields to despair. ”

“ When there is anything said from this Stand that pleases or displeases you, you turn to your neighbor and whisper, and the next one does the same, and directly there are a few thousand whispering, creating a noise like the rushing of many waters. Then you scrape your feet a little, and the many little noises are like the dust that composes the mountains and the whole earth. Every person should be silent when we meet here to worship God. ”

“ There is only the song of birds, and the whisper of a gentle breeze. For a few seconds nothing else is heard. Then, suddenly, not far away, there is the sound of a splash, followed by the scream of a drowning woman, "Help! Help! Help!" There is a tremendous crashing through the underbrush, and another voice, very masculine, very English, shouts, "Where are you? ”

“ The whisper that carries them is very small, in the great scale of things, of air and space and progress, but it’s also very safe, for there’s no compression, no sounding-board, to make speakers responsible. ”

“ I uttered these words in a whisper, thinking [52] of the listening ones there might be on the other side of that door, and when I got through I tiptoed first to one end of the porch and then to the other to keep a lookout for Johnson. I was afraid of the “snooping” qualities that the fellow had developed, and if he had suddenly come around the corner of the house and caught me in the act of whispering to my friends I would not have been at all surprised at it. ”

“ Exercise.—1. With the syllable häh, make an expiration in the voice of whisper, forcing slowly all air out from the chest. Then give to this expiration vocality, producing the reverberation far back in the mouth: the resulting utterance is a hoarse exemplification of the orotund. With the mouth in the position of a yawn, making the cavity of reverberation as large as possible, repeat the exercise until the utterance can be produced smoothly and without hoarseness. ”

“ Further, at this period the child begins during his long monologues to whisper. He produces sounds in abundance, varying in force, pitch, and timbre, as if he were speaking an unknown tongue; and some single syllables may gradually be more easily distinguished, although the corresponding positions of the mouth pass into one another, sometimes quite gradually, sometimes rapidly. ”

“ That these are not concerned in the whisper is demonstrated by the fact that persons, suffering from such forms of paralysis that the cords can not be brought together, can whisper, and that even where the vocal cords have been entirely destroyed by tuberculous or other disease, the patient can still whisper without difficulty. ”

“ It is very uneasy that we must necessarily be under Persecution. Next to these Bawlers, is a troublesome Creature who comes with the Air of your Friend and your Intimate, and that is your Whisperer. There is one of them at a Coffee-house which I my self frequent, who observing me to be a Man pretty well made for Secrets, gets by me, and with a Whisper tells me things which all the Town knows. It is no very hard matter to guess at the Source of this Impertinence, which is nothing else but a Method or Mechanick Art of being wise. ”

“ The words buzz, crackle, crash, blow, rattle, roar, hiss, whistle, and many others of a like nature and construction, were evidently formed to imitate the sounds themselves. Sometimes the word expressing an object is formed to imitate the sound produced by that object, as waye, cuckoo, whippoorwill, whisper, hum. I have been thus particular in calling the attention of the reader to these beautiful characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon because it is the language of the Cat in so far as word-signs are used in it for want of action to express the ideas or as conjunctives more particularly. ”

“ And where there is no whisperer, contention ceaseth.
21As coals are to burning coals, and wood to fire; So is a contentious man to kindle strife.
22The words of a whisperer are as dainty morsels, And they go down into the innermost parts of the body.
23Burning lips and a wicked heart Are like an earthen vessel overlaid with silver dross.
24He that hateth dissembleth with his lips, But he layeth up deceit within him. 25When he speaketh fair, Believe him not; For there are seven abominations in his heart. ”

“ Whisperers are like the wind that creeps in by the chinks and crevices of a wall, or the cracks in a window, that commonly proves more dangerous than a storm that meets a man in the face upon the plain.—Trapp. ”

“ Select some passage of poetry involving passionate thought, and read in articulated whispers, with appropriate intonations, somewhat exaggerated, it may be. Let the intervals and stresses be slowly and distinctly given. 5. Repeat the exercise in a half whisper. 6. Next read the passage over several times in pure vocality, without exaggeration, increasing the strength of the utterance until it is as full and ringing as possible. Care must be taken that the utterance is in reality full and ringing, not sharp and hard. Let the pitch chosen be not too high—as low as possible ”

“ One disagreeable result of whispering is that it seems to evoke an atmosphere of silence, haunted by the ghosts of sound—strange cracks and tickings, the rustling of garments that have no substance in them, and the tread of dreadful feet that would leave no mark on the sea-sand or the winter snow. ”

“ For Hansen and Lehmann have shown that an acute auditory organ is able to respond to such delicate stimulation as is involved in the softest whisper, or even in the so-called nasal whisper in which the lips are tightly closed. ”

“ The Seven Whisperers.—I have been informed by an old and trustworthy servant that about twenty years ago, as he was walking one clear starlight night with two other persons, they heard, for the space of several minutes, high up in the air, beautiful sounds like music, which gradually died away towards the north. ”

“ A sentence is commenced with vehemence and in a high key, and the voice gradually sinks until, the breath being spent, it dies away in a whisper.
NOTE—The power of changing the key at will is difficult to acquire, but of great importance.
REMARK 3.—The habit of singsong, so common in reading poetry, as it is a variation of pitch without reference to the sense, is a species of the fault above mentioned.
REMARK 4.—If the reader or speaker is guided by the sense, and if he gives that emphasis, inflection, and expression required by the meaning, these faults speedily disappear. ”

“ The simplest case is the direct imitation of the sound, thus clink, clank, ting, tinkle of various metallic sounds, splash, bubble, sizz, sizzle of sounds produced by water, bow-wow, bleat, roar of sounds produced by animals, and snort, sneeze, snigger, smack, whisper, grunt, grumble of sounds produced by human beings. ”

“ Sometimes, though more rarely, the same object is effected by an unusual lowering of the voice, even to a whisper, and not unfrequently by a pause before the emphatic word.
The inflections are often made subsidiary to this object. To give emphasis to a word, the inflection is changed or increased in force or extent. When the rising inflection is ordinarily used, the word, when emphatic, frequently takes the falling inflection; and sometimes, also, the falling inflection is changed into the rising inflection, for the same purpose. ”