I remember how, in my boyhood, I listened to their voices, which came up loudest, shrillest, merriest, when twilight was spreading its grey mantle over the earth; while the song of the birds was hushing into silence, and the coming darkness was lulling the things of the day into repose;

The silence was instantly broken by a whistle the shrillest and loudest I had ever heard; the dense compressed atmosphere of the Astronaut rushing out with a force which actually created a draught through the whole vessel, to the great discomfiture of the birds, which roughed their feathers and fluttered about in dismay.

" The boys departed to make whistles with the new knives, Pearl offering a prize for the shrillest and fartherest reaching; to be tried at twelve o'clock noon, and silence settled once more on the kitchen.

" "Do not be uneasy," cried his lordship, endeavouring to assume an harmonious, but missing his point, he spoke in the shrillest and most squeaking accent that can be imagined.

He was pursued by a shrill voice crying, "Diablo!

His own good sense might have checked him, if Aunt Kipp hadn't unfortunately recovered her voice at this crisis, and uttered a succession of the shrillest screams that ever saluted mortal ears.

Loud was the fight and shrill, Wexford and Vinegar Hill, Three cheers for Father Murphy and the bold cavaliers.

Much was I troubled in my heavie spright, 575 At sight of these sad spectacles forepast, That all my senses were bereaved quight, And I in minde remained sore agast, Distraught twixt feare and pitie; when at last I heard a voyce which loudly to me called, 580 That with the suddein shrill I was appalled.

150 My part it is and my professed skill The stage with tragick buskin to adorne, And fill the scene with plaint and outcries shrill Of wretched persons, to misfortune borne:

In stead of them, fowle goblins and shriek-owles With fearfull howling do all places fill, And feeble eccho now laments and howles, 285 The dreadfull accents of their outcries shrill.

[* I.e. Hesiod] In such delights whilst thus his carelesse time This shepheard drives, upleaning on his batt*, And on shrill reedes chaunting his rustick rime, 155 Hyperion, throwing foorth his beames full hott, Into the highest top of heaven gan clime, And the world parting by an equall lott, Did shed his whirling flames on either side, As the great Ocean doth himselfe divide.

But the small birds in their wide boughs embowring 225 Chaunted their sundrie tunes with sweete consent; And under them a silver spring, forth powring His trickling streames, a gentle murmure sent; Thereto the frogs, bred in the slimie scowring Of the moist moores, their iarring voyces bent; 230 And shrill grashoppers chirped them around: All which the ayrie echo did resound.

"But valiant fortune made Dan Orpheus bolde: For the swift running rivers still did stand, 450 And the wilde beasts their furie did withhold, To follow Orpheus musicke through the land: And th'okes, deep grounded in the earthly molde, Did move, as if they could him understand; 454 And the shrill woods, which were of sense bereav'd, Through their hard barke his silver sound receav'd.

(As they sit there together, now for the first time really together, there is a shrill shout of derision from outside.)

He is somewhat in the nature of a hogshead, shrillest when he is empty; when his belly is full he is quiet enough.

And all those that he had uttered the most furtively, chirrupped the loudest and the shrillest in the branches all the night.

The giggling Towers caught the idea instantly, and a confused medley of hymns, music-hall ditties, and patriotic songs in every key, from the deepest bellowing bass to the shrillest wailing treble, arose from the Towers' ranks, mixed with whistles and cat-calls and Corporal Flannigan's famous imitation of "Life on a Farm."

The Master winced with annoyance; and then, bending down the table towards the offender, said in his shrillest tone"Shall we continue this conversation in the drawing-room?" and rose from his chair.

Had he been in a position to obtain copies for himself, and had he availed himself of that circumstance, he would not have failed to proclaim the fact in his loudest and shrillest tones.

The voice of the great wife was loudest and shrillest.

(3) But the shrillest cries of all came from the third class of complainants.

I heard, in the shrillest accents.

Private courts, 180 Gloomy as coffins, and unsightly lanes Thrilled by some female vendor's scream, belike The very shrillest of all London cries, May then entangle our impatient steps; Conducted through those labyrinths, unawares, 185 To privileged regions and inviolate, Where from their airy lodges studious lawyers Look out on waters, walks, and gardens green.

Her shrillest tones were lost in an echoless space, even as the smoke of her fire had faded into pure ether.

the shrillest voice repeated three times rapidly, with a sniffle now and then by way of punctuation.