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More "Loudness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Strength or loudness of tone is determined primarily by the width or amplitude of the vibrations of the vocal membrane, and quality or timbre is determined by the form ...
— The Child-Voice in Singing • Francis E. Howard
... insisted upon haste, for they had not gone far when the glacier broke abreast of the spot they had just left. There came a rending crack, terrifying in its loudness; a tremendous tower of ice separated itself from the main body, leaned slowly outward, then roared downward, falling in a solid piece like a sky-scraper undermined. Not until the arc described by its summit had ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... that were natural to him before he was called to command; his uniform begins to look like a masquerade dress hired for the occasion; of the hard and, perhaps, gallant service of months past, there is soon no other evidence, than an unnecessary loudness of speech, and a readiness to seize on any occasion to bluster or blaspheme. A friend of mine once remarked (by way of excuse for being detected in the most eccentric deshabille) that "the British dragoon, under any circumstances, was a ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... most numerous in the cochlea. We do not know for certain what the functions of the canals and the cochlea are; but it is probable that the former enables us to distinguish between the intensity or loudness of sounds and the direction from which they come, while the latter enables us to determine the pitch of a note. In the cochlea are about 2,800 tiny nerve-ends, called the rods of Corti. The normal ear has such a range as to give ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... and was also connected with Nature. "The sound of the flowing of streams," said one of their bardic clan, "is sweeter than any music of men." "The harp of the woods is playing music," said another. In Finn's Song to May, the waterfall is singing a welcome to the pool below, the loudness of music is around the hill, and in the green fields the stream is singing. The blackbird, the cuckoo, the heron and the lark are the musicians of the world. When Finn asks his men what music they thought the best, each says ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... objects in a painting, as in a nocturne of Whistler: these are simple illustrations of harmony. An almost equally simple case is gradation or lawful change of quality in space and time—the increase or decrease of loudness in music of saturation or brightness of hue in painting, the gentle change of direction of a curved line. In these cases there is, of course, a dynamic or dramatic effect, if you take the elements in sequence; but when taken simultaneously and ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... Scotland Yard a tense silence fell. For the first time we were all conscious of a tiny clock on the inspector's desk, for it ticked now with a loudness sudden and startling. I gazed at the faces about me. Bray's showed a momentary surprise—then the mask fell again. Lieutenant Fraser-Freer was plainly amazed. On the face of Colonel Hughes I saw what struck me ...
— The Agony Column • Earl Derr Biggers
... daring to look. When they did, they saw a gleaming black form that stood on queer shafts of wood come gliding with the speed of the wind from behind the hillock. It straightened out on a stretch of snow, bellowing with a loudness that hammered their eardrums into numbness, and sped lightly along till the queer shafts of wood left the surface and the sleek black object soared ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... sending up a tray to Lady Jane in her bed-room. Those were apt to be grave breakfasts; not like the merry mornings at home, when chatter used to go on in half whispers between the younger ones, with laughs, breaking out in sudden gusts, till a little over-loudness brought one of Mary's good-natured "Hushes," usually answered with, ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... became more violently agitated by the increased velocity of the descent, the noise more nearly resembled that produced by drawing the moistened fingers over glass. As it reached the base, the reverberations attained the loudness of distant thunder, causing the rock on which we were seated to vibrate; and our camels,—animals not easily frightened,—became so alarmed that it was with difficulty their drivers could ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... William Foster, with a picked party of his friends, had forced their way to the top of the hall, and were in the act of mounting the platform for the purpose of turning the vicar out of the chair, when a voice of unearthly loudness was heard to shout, "Forbear!"—upon which the meeting broke up in wild confusion, leaving Foster prostrated on the ground by some invisible and mysterious power, where he lay till brought back to consciousness by the joint efforts of Mr Maltby and Thomas Bradly; after which, at ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... to celebrate the birth-day of my son, and I invite you, my Pithacion, to the feast. But come not alone; bring with you your wife, children, and your brother. If you will bring also your bitch, who is a good guard, and by the loudness of her voice drives away the enemies of your flocks, she will not, I warrant, disdain to be partaker of our feast, &c." (Letter ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... the room above was shuttered. There was a hole in the shutter, however, where a knot of the wood had fallen out, and a thin shaft of light stretched across the blackness and buried itself in a ragged yew-tree at the end of the garden. From the loudness of the sounds I judged this to be the room where the flute-playing was going on. The crackling of my footsteps on the thin soil did not disturb the performer, so I gathered a handful of earth and ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... with those immediately subsequent. As their captivity may continue six days, it is possible that the bees in this space of time may forget which has emitted it first; but it is also possible, that the queens diversify the sounds, encreasing the loudness as they become older, and that the bees can distinguish these variations. We have even ourselves been able to distinguish differences in the sound, either with relation to the succession of notes, or their intensity; ...
— New observations on the natural history of bees • Francis Huber
... crier of flounders in London, who arrived at so much fame for the loudness of his voice, that he had the honour to be mentioned upon that account, in a comedy. He hath disturbed me many a morning, before he came within fifty doors of my lodging. And although I were not in those days so fully apprized of the ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... brought in and presented all together, but one after another by lot, and passed in order through the assembly without speaking a word. Those who were locked up had writing-tables with them, in which they recorded and marked each shout by its loudness, without knowing in favor of which candidate each of them was made, but merely that they came first, second, third, and so forth. He who was found to have the most and loudest acclamations ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... repeat to her the two words she had in the Park scarcely let him bring out. "See here—see here!"—the sound of these two words had been with her perpetually; but it was in her ears to-day without mercy, with a loudness that grew and grew. What was it they then expressed? what was it he had wanted her to see? She seemed, whatever it was, perfectly to see it now—to see that if she should just chuck the whole thing, should have a great and beautiful courage, he would somehow make everything up to her. When the clock ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... din of contending elements are heard the hoarse bellowings of the mountain itself, which, meanwhile, trembles to its very core. The detonations from the volcano far exceed in loudness any other earthly noise. Compared with these, the pealing of the loudest thunder is but as the report of a musket contrasted with the simultaneous discharge of a thousand pieces of heavy ordnance. ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous
... a self-educator in good behavior, as in everything else; he can be civil and kind, if he will, though he have not a cent in his pocket. Gentleness in society is like the silent influence of light, which gives color to all nature; it is far more powerful than loudness or force, and far more fruitful. It pushes its way quietly and persistently, like the tiniest daffodil in spring, which raises the clod and thrusts it aside by the ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... Sylvia would be still awake, would hear the violent words of Hine, and would therefore be an available witness afterward, Chayne found the reason both of the loudness of Garratt Skinner's tones and his early ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... Almayer, engaged her in earnest conversation. Through the long passage, closed at the further end by the red curtain, they could hear from time to time Almayer's voice mingling in conversation with an abrupt loudness that made Mrs. ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... the melancholy rising of the wind and the increasing loudness of the thunder, to the shrill cries of the distant night-birds hurrying to shelter, emotions of mournfulness and awe possessed themselves of his heart. He now wondered that any events, however startling, however appalling, should have had the power to turn his mind for a moment from the ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... heed it. Excitement compelled her to walk incessantly round and round the scanty space of floor. Already she had begun to rehearse the chief scenes of Laura Denton; she spoke the words with all appropriate loudness and emphasis; her gestures were those of the stage, as though an audience sat before her; she seemed to have grown taller. There came a double knock at the house-door, but it did not attract her attention; ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... string vibrate, and the louder will be the sound. Just so with these vocal bands or cords. The varying force with which the breath strikes them and their different tensions and lengths at different times, explain the different degrees of loudness and the ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... view of billows which mount to the very skies—of huge volumes of water, dashing down the dreadful precipice into a vast basin, which seemed large enough to be the tomb of the giant Chappewee; and their ears were saluted with sounds, whose loudness and violence were a thousand times beyond those of the tempest, or the thunder, or the earthquake. Onward they groped their desperate way beyond the fiercest fall, until all at once they came to a dreadful cavern shrouded in the ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... of justice, a deliberate treading under foot of all the rights of man. The sans-culottes and the tricoteuses rivaled each other in the loudness and strength of ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... sounds echoing through the forest. I thus knew that the elephant had not yet fallen. A minute afterwards I heard the crashing of boughs and brushwood some way off. I guessed, as I listened, that the animal was coming towards where I lay. The sounds increased in loudness. Should it discover me it would probable revenge itself by crushing me to death, or tossing me in the air with its trunk. I had my rifle ready to fire. There was a chance that I might kill it or make ...
— Adventures in Africa - By an African Trader • W.H.G. Kingston
... his chin, and look important and insolent and come-to-stay; and assert his genuine simon-pure authenticity with a thundering bellow that will convince everybody because it is so loud. The thug is aware that loudness convinces sixty persons where reasoning convinces but one. I wouldn't be a thug, not even if—but never mind about that, it has nothing to do with the argument, and it is not noble in spirit besides. If I am better than a thug, ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain
... it to her all right. She hasn't found the letter yet," said Letty, trying to comfort, and astonished by the loudness of his grief. "It's all right—you wait a bit. She liked the ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... was repeated a third time, without any increase of loudness; and the old man, obeying an impulse for which to his dying hour he could never account, proceeded to remove, one by one, the three great oaken bars which secured the door. Time and damp had effectually corroded the iron chambers ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... governor-general's distaste for party in theory merely forced him to become in practice the unconscious leader of the Canadian conservatives, who, under men like MacNab and the leaders of the Orange Lodges, differed only from other parties in the loudness of their loyalist professions, and the paucity of their supporters among the people. Metcalfe complained that at times the whole colony must be regarded as a party opposed to her Majesty's Government.[8] He might have {168} seen ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... a peculiar condition. In the French it has very various significations, but has come to be adopted in music and acoustics to connote the quality of a musical sound independent of its pitch and loudness, a quality derived from the harmonics which the fundamental note intensifies, and that depends on the special form of the instrument. The article Clang in the Oxford Dictionary quotes Professor Tyndall regretting that we have no word for this meaning, and suggesting that we should imitate ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 3 (1920) - A Few Practical Suggestions • Society for Pure English
... in their shirt-sleeves, he would have been noticed anywhere as one evidently a scholarly thinker astray from the alcove or the study, which were his natural habitats. His voice was very sweet, and penetrating without any loudness or mark of effort. His enunciation was beautifully clear, but he often hesitated as if waiting for the right word to present itself. His manner was very quiet, his smile was pleasant, but he did ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... on subtlety. It may be that a great colorist will use his utmost force of color, as a singer his full power of voice; but, loud or low, the virtue is in both cases always in refinement, never in loudness. The west window of Chartres is bedropped with crimson deeper than blood; but it is as soft as it is deep, and as quiet as ...
— Lectures on Landscape - Delivered at Oxford in Lent Term, 1871 • John Ruskin
... The voices of his opponents were the most violent and prevailed, and made me apprehensive that they would proceed to greater length than speech. But Macer stood firm, nothing daunted by the uproar. One, who signalized himself by the loudness and fierceness of his cries, exclaimed, 'that he was nothing else than an atheist like all the rest of the Christians; they have no gods; they deny the gods of Rome, and they give us nothing ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... the south end of the Pont au Change, when a number of youths ran past me, pelting one another with snowballs, and shouting so lustily that I was at a loss which to admire more, the silence of their feet or the loudness of their voices. Aware that lads of that age are no respecters of persons, I was not surprised to see two or three of them rush on to the bridge before us, and even continue their Parthian warfare under the feet of the horses. The result, however, was ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... and rotated by handle. A heavy flywheel was attached to give it uniformity of motion. A sheet of tinfoil formed the record, and the delivery could be heard by a roomful of people. But articulation was sacrificed at the expense of loudness. It was as though a parrot or a punchinello spoke, and sentences which were unexpected could not be understood. Clearly, if the phonograph were to become a practical instrument, it required to be much improved. ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... some little imperfections of manner. It is a type which has grown more and more familiar to us, yet never less strange: the man in costly but severe costume, big, with a necessary great waistcoat, not noticing the loudness of his own voice; as ignorant of the thousand tiny things which we observe and feel as he would be careless of them (except for his wife) if he knew. We laugh at him, sometimes even to his face, and he does not perceive it. We are a little ...
— The Beautiful Lady • Booth Tarkington
... water alongside grew momentarily more confused; bulkheads began to creak, and cabin-doors to jar and rattle upon their hooks; the two people overhead began to pace the deck to and fro; the wind whistled and blustered with increasing loudness through the rigging; and as the craft plunged more sharply I caught the sound of an occasional clatter of spray upon the deck forward. This went on for some considerable time, and then I became aware ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... drew on, the night began to grow less quiet. From the distance some one began to blow on a horn or a shell, sending forth a harsh raucous note incessantly. The sound came nearer, as we could tell from its growing loudness, and the voices of those by the fires made themselves heard, railing at the blower for his disturbance. And presently it became stationary, and standing up we could see through the slits in the walls the people ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... speedily ensue. If the chain were removed, she might be easily thrown into the state of delirium; when she would sing at the request of her magnetiser; and, if the chain were then unrolled, her voice would be arrested in the most gradual manner; its loudness first diminishing — the tune then becoming confused, and finally lost altogether. The operations of her intellect could be checked, while the organs of sound would still continue to exert themselves. For instance, while her thoughts were occupied on the ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... down,' said Darco, pacing and turning suddenly. 'No. Don't but that down. I don't vant that' He roamed off again, murmuring: 'No. Don't but it down. I don't vant it. I don't vant it. Nodes. Dake nodes.' Then with sudden loudness ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... shooting at us from the private houses. When they saw us take the barracks they had probably decided that the time had come to wipe off the powder-stains, and reappear as friends of the revolution. The only firing now was from where Garcia was engaged. Judging from the loudness of these volleys he had reached the outskirts of the town. I set half of my force to work piling up bags of meal behind the iron bars, and, in the event of fire, filling pails with water, and breaking what little glass still remained in the windows. ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... They took their places quite unaware of his proximity, and he listened with considerable interest to the tones and words of the fair stranger who had so unexpectedly taken possession of his thoughts. Were it not for a slight shrillness and loudness at times, and the fashionable affectation of the day, her voice would have been sweet and girlish enough. As it was, it suggested an instrument tuned to a false key and consequently discordant with all true and ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... a very effective report. The rockets in general had a slight advantage over the same quantities of material fired near the ground. The loudness of the sound was by no means proportional to the quantity of the material exploded, 8 oz. yielding very nearly as loud a report as 1 lb. The 'aerial echoes,' which invariably followed the explosion of the rockets, ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... they do not know, or do not remember, that audibility is not secured by mere loudness and bigness of voice, nor again by raising the voice to a high pitch. "People tell you to speak up," said that excellent elocutionist, Mr Simeon; "but I say, speak down," down as regards the musical scale. Again, the larger the building ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... was second tenor, and his pipes was kinder cracked, But Rube made up in loudness what in tune he might have lacked; But 'twas a leetle cur'us, though, for p'r'aps his voice would balk, And when he'd fetch a high note give a most outrageous squawk; And Uncle Elkanah was deef and kind er'd lose the run, And keep ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the number, limits, and definitions of the species into which he groups the very same things. In these islands, we are in the habit of regarding mankind as of one species, but a fortnight's steam will land us in a country where divines and savants, for once in agreement, vie with one another in loudness of assertion, if not in cogency of proof, that men are of different species; and, more particularly, that the species negro is so distinct from our own that the Ten Commandments have actually no reference to him. Even in the calm region of entomology, where, if anywhere ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... not so? Old gaffer dead?" And when the soldier was told how the feeble thread of life had been snapped by the shock of joy on his coming, a fit of compunction and sorrow seized him. He covered his face with his hands and wept with a loudness of grief that surprised and touched his hearers; and presently began to bemoan himself that he had hardly a mark in his purse to pay for a mass; but therewith he proceeded to erect before him the cross hilt of poor Abenali's sword, and ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... plainly. And so everybody to the park, and by and by the chapel done, the King and Duke into the bowling-green and upon the leads, whither I went, and there the guns were plain to be heard; though it was pretty to hear how confident some would be in the loudness of the guns, which it was as much as ever I could do ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... the helicopter came across the broken ground. Now louder, now momentarily muted, its moments of loudness grew steadily more strong. It was coming nearer. Thorn gripped his spear in an instinctive, utterly futile gesture of ...
— Invasion • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... the loudness of the street noises, and the glare of the sunlight as he stepped to the sidewalk. He stood there blinking for a moment, until his eyes became accustomed to the light. The foot-procession of the ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... and a sign of lost control. In public places, especially, it is a sign of ill breeding and bad taste. Good breeding should always keep a woman from loud talk. We must remove the stigma of loudness and coarseness that now rests upon the race. The less a person knows, the bigger noise she generally makes. The big touring car never makes the noise that a motor cycle does, nor does a great steamer make the fuss that a tug boat does. The deep stream ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley
... loudness, of the voice is governed by the force with which the air is expelled from the lungs. The vibrations of the cords, however, are greatly reenforced by the peculiar structure of the upper air ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... know?" she repeated, as if to herself. Then she drew a long breath, which quivered through her, and, with it, voice and emotion and the power of expression returned. "I know?" she cried with a startling loudness. "Good God, you fool, do you think I'd be here with you, if I ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... should wish to be always thus dragged upwards, as little (or rather still less) is it desirable to be stunted downwards by your associates. The trumpet does not more stun you by its loudness, than a whisper teases you by ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... malignant passions will be let loose. To judge from the conduct of the opposite parties, we shall be led to conclude that they will mutually hope to evince the justness of their opinions, and to increase the number of their converts by the loudness of their declamations and the bitterness of their invectives. An enlightened zeal for the energy and efficiency of government will be stigmatized as the offspring of a temper fond of despotic power and hostile ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... unforgotten lord, The long self-exiled Chieftain, is restored: There be bright faces in the busy hall, Bowls on the board, and banners on the wall; Far checkering o'er the pictured window, plays The unwonted faggot's hospitable blaze; And gay retainers gather round the hearth, With tongues all loudness, and ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... an old and faithful retainer to this household, is now suffering from his annual cough. It is a terrific cough, capable of disputing supremacy with all other coughs of which the world has heard. The special points about this cough are (1) its loudness; (2) its combination of the noises made by all other coughs; (3) its depth; (4) its shriek of despair as it trembles and reverberates through the house; (5) its capacity to repel and annihilate sympathy. It is true that I have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156., March 5, 1919 • Various
... great: but he reads well.' JOHNSON. 'He reads well, but he reads low[642]; and you know it is much easier to read low than to read high; for when you read high, you are much more limited, your loudest note can be but one, and so the variety is less in proportion to the loudness. Now some people have occasion to speak to an extensive audience, and must speak loud to be heard.' WALKER. 'The art is to ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... ought to be spoken of the Composition of Kennels, wherein I must appeal to the Affection of the Gentleman, the Lover of this Sport, and let him tell me the Reasons that induced him take pleasure in Hounds, whether it be he fancies Cunning in Hunting? Or Sweetness, Loudness, or Deepness of Cry? Or for the Training his Horses? Or for the Exercise ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... preached; but the sunshine was over—the glad and careless look, the joy of young life and mutual love. He was little with us, and, as I said, the house was still, except when he was mandating his sermons for Sabbath. This he always did, not only viva voce, but with as much energy and loudness as in the pulpit; we felt his voice was sharper, and rang ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... speaking or reading from private conversation, and no one can accomplish much, as a public speaker, without cultivating it. It must be carefully distinguished from the "high tone," which is an elevation of pitch, and from "loudness." or ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... gave surpassed in loudness that of all the others put together; and brought up several ferocious-looking Turks, bent on condignly punishing the outrageous conduct ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... her feet at my side with a loud cry, "No, George, no," which bewildered me completely. The suddenness, the loudness of it made the ensuing silence on both sides of the door perfectly awful. It seemed to me that if I didn't resist with all my might something in me would die on the instant. In the straight, falling folds of the night-dress she looked cold like a block of marble; ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... a very different thing from boldness or obtrusiveness. Courtesy and considerateness are cardinal qualities of the well-equipped salesman, but boastfulness, glibness, egotism, loudness, and self-assertion, are as distasteful as they ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... virtue; you cannot restore me untainted to the world-the world never forgives a fallen woman. Her own sex will be first to lacerate her heart with her shame." These words were spoken with such biting sarcasm, that the Judge, whose nap the loudness of Anna's voice had disturbed, protruded his flushed face and snowy locks from out the curtains of the alcove. "The gay Madame Montford, as I am a Christian," he exclaims in the eagerness of the moment, and the strange figure ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... overhead was rent asunder by a flash of lightning, steel-blue, keen, and dazzlingly vivid, that seemed to strike the water within a dozen fathoms of us, while simultaneously we were deafened by a crackling crash of thunder of such appalling loudness and violence that one might have been excused for believing that the very foundations of the earth had been riven asunder. So tremendous was the concussion of it that I quite distinctly felt the ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... the schools, legislatures and courts are drawn into this whirl of sexualized public opinion; the old-fashioned policy of silence has been crushed by a policy of thundering outcry, which is heard in every home and every nursery. This loudness of debate is surely an effect of the horror with which the appalling misery around us is suddenly discovered. All which was hidden by prudery is disclosed in its viciousness, and this outburst of indignation is ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... secondary circuit for adjustment to the wave length, turning it slowly from minimum to maximum until you come to the point where the desired station is heard. When this is found, you again readjust the primary until you find the point of maximum loudness. ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman
... cordially shaking hands with General Grant. A moment later he mounted his chunky gray horse, and lifting his hat as he passed out of the yard, rode off toward his army, his arrival there being announced to us by cheering, which, as it progressed, varying in loudness, told he was riding through the bivouac of ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... older residents still called Rodney Lane, was as still and deserted as a country road. The entry gate to Tory Hill clicked behind him with curious, lonely loudness. The gravel crunched in the same way beneath his tread. Looking up at the house, he saw neither light nor sign of living. There was something stricken and sinister about ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... for dear Agnes," she said with a natural loudness in that hushed room. "It even made me forget papa to ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... of sounds has a simple physical measure for its basis; and the rate of vibration is complicated by its sweep or loudness, and by concomitant sounds. What a rich note is to a pure and thin one, that a chord is to a note; nor is melody wholly different in principle, for it is a chord rendered piece-meal. Time intervenes, and the ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... with equal force. That landscape of his ideal world ever after takes its place in your memory by the side of the landscapes of your real world. Even the sounds which he has described linger in the ear as the types of harshness, or loudness, or sweetness, instantly coming back to you whenever you listen to the roaring of the sea, or the howling of the wind, or the carol of birds. He calls things by their names, never shrinking from a homely phrase where the occasion ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... and we knew that we were once again approachin' the edge of the hurricane. There happened to be a little food in the galley and a scrap was given to each man. If we were going under, there was no need to drown hungry. So, faintly, but with quickenin' loudness, the whirring roar of the hurricane rose into a shriek and the fury hit ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... Johnnie seemed interminable, while dusk thickened to darkness; then snores. The snoring continued all the while he was counting up to four hundred. Also it achieved a regularity and loudness that guaranteed it to be genuine. Still Johnnie did not open his eyes. There were little movements in Cis's room, and he felt sure she was not asleep. Soon he had proof of it. For peering up carefully ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... thought as little of the destruction of her garments, but kept on, on, on, she knew not whither, and cared not, so that she escaped from her dreaded pursuers. All would not do. Ever and increasing, nearer and nearer, came the dismal sound! How her heart died within her, as the increased loudness of the baying of the wolves told her they were fast overtaking her! In vain she exerted all her remaining strength, and taxed every nerve and muscle to its utmost capacity! There was no help! As unerring as mistakeless instinct, and as certain ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... I tackled the harbor. By day it was quite impossible, all toots and blares, the most frightful discords—but at night its vulgar loudness was toned down sufficiently so that a fellow with artist's ears could really stand listening to its life, especially if I did not go too close but listened from my window. Here with uglier sounds subdued I could ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... part, gentle or subdued sounds, and gentle or subdued colors, are more pleasing than either in their utmost force; nevertheless, in all the noblest compositions, this utmost power is permitted, but only for a short time, or over a small space. Music must rise to its utmost loudness, and fall from it; color must be gradated to its extreme brightness, and descend from it; and I believe that absolutely perfect treatment would, in either case, permit the intensest sound and purest color only for a ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... in a leaky punt with a long pole. Silas Foster represents the brutal, commonplace comments of the outside world, which jar so terribly on the more sensitive and closely interested actors in the tragedy. 'Heigho!' he soliloquises, with offensive loudness, 'life and death together make sad work for us all. Then I was a boy, bobbing for fish; and now I'm getting to be an old fellow, and here I be, groping for a dead body! I tell you what, lads, if I thought ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... rapidity, and drove the smoke in dense masses round us, so that, bright as were the flames, we could often see but a short distance ahead. The shouts and cries of the terrified settlers increased in loudness. All hope that the village would be preserved must by this time have been abandoned. The fire was coming up from the west and north-west, leaping at a bound, as it seemed, over the clearings; the burning branches, driven by the wind, quickly ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... on the princes, in which Mr. Fairly, with his usual but Most uncommon openness, protested there was something in the violence of their animal spirits that Would make him accept no post and no pay to live with them. Their very voices, he said, had a loudness and force ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... are probably few people who are so callous concerning the sufferings of the animal world. The owners of the donkeys have a cruel custom of slitting their nostrils, because it is supposed to moderate the loudness of their bray. ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... report was heard. It was loud enough to shake the walls of the apartment, and abrupt enough to throw me into tremors. I dropped the book and yielded for a moment to confusion and surprise. From what quarter it came, I was unable accurately to determine; but there could be no doubt, from its loudness, that it was near, and even in the house. It was no less manifest that the sound arose from the discharge of a pistol. Some hand must have drawn the trigger. I recollected the disappearance of the candle from the room below. Instantly a supposition darted into my mind ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... rushing of a mighty river, or from the muttering sound of distant thunder, by the sharp and angry notes which the clashing of the rider's arms mingled with the deep bass of the horses' rapid tread. From the long continuance of the sounds, their loudness, and the extent of horizon from which they seemed to come, all in the castle were satisfied that the approaching relief consisted of several very strong bodies of horse. [Footnote: Even the sharp and angry clang made by the iron ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... smile. Dead? Not I! The scorching sunlight streams through the open door of the inn—the thirsty flies buzz with persistent loudness—some voices are singing "La Fata di ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... spasmodic puffs, governed by a curious notion of the proper places for them to fit into the general performance. The flutes are a little unsteady and unreliable; the clarionet always squeaks in pathetic parts; and the cornet imagines that loudness is the chief thing to ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... moerens . . . produces an almost deafening sound from the numbers of the individuals in the hottest days and the loudness of their noise." "This species (Cyclochila Australasiae) is much less abundant than the C. moerens, and seems more confined to moist places, such as river banks and deep ravines ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... peculiar yapping howl which told us that a pack of wild dogs was in full cry somewhere in our rear. Being curious to learn what kind of animal they were hunting, we looked about us for a spot whence, ourselves unseen, we might witness the chase, which the increasing loudness of the cries told us was coming our way. Such a spot was found close at hand in the shadow of a big clump of thorn bush, within a few yards of the margin of a small stream, evidently a tributary of the river which flowed a mile or two farther to ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... should have suffered the good miller to proceed with his harangue without interruption, can only be accounted for on the score of the loudness of tone on which he piqued himself with so much justice. When she did take up the word, her reply made up in volubility and virulence for any deficiency in sound, concluding by a formal renunciation of her nephew, and a command to his zealous advocate ...
— Aunt Deborah • Mary Russell Mitford
... rider wheeled away I blurted out with anxious loudness in the general hubbub, "Isn't his ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... place upon which he stood was level, with huge serpentine cables lying athwart it in every direction. The circular wheels of a number of windmills loomed indistinct and gigantic through the darkness and snowfall, and roared with a varying loudness as the fitful wind rose and fell. Some way off an intermittent white light smote up from below, touched the snow eddies with a transient glitter, and made an evanescent spectre in the night; and here and there, low down, some vaguely ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... "Land! land!" was heard from the masthead, adding to the excitement of all on board. At length the high cliffs of the Chersonese appeared in sight; the thunder of the guns, as the ship advanced, increasing in loudness. Now the fleet could be seen coming forward from the roads off the Katcha River to the north; no sails were set, as the ships had either their own steam-power, or were moved by steamers ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... had no attention to spare: they remained on a plane with the dim pictures hanging at her back. She had expected a larger party; but she was relieved, on the whole, that it was small enough to permit of her dominating it. Not that she wished to do so by any loudness of assertion. Her quickness in noting external differences had already taught her to modulate and lower her voice, and to replace "The I-dea!" and "I wouldn't wonder" by more polished locutions; and she had not been ten minutes at table before ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... effect so new made with such world-old material! I cared nothing that I was the victim, and I joined them; but ceased, feeling suddenly somehow estranged or chilled. It was in their laughter. The loudness was too loud. And I caught the eyes of Trampas fixed upon the Virginian with exultant malevolence. Scipio's disgusted glance was upon me from ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... of so great anger, his ears listened not unto Beloved Doctor making to speak, but he tell with lengthiness and loudness of voice of meddlesome ...
— Seven Maids of Far Cathay • Bing Ding, Ed.
... folds, and the figure in front of him sometimes loomed up like a distorted shadow and then in a moment plunged into a yellow pocket of obscurity, and was lost. Then Stonehouse could only listen for his footfalls, quick and irregular, echoing with an uncanny loudness in the low vault ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... of melancholy in Almeria's countenance at this instant, for sympathy in their sorrows; and her silence, for acquiescence in the justice of their complaints. They were reiterating their opinions with something like plebeian loudness of voice, when their mother entered the room. The ease with which her daughters changed their countenances and the subject of conversation, when she entered, might have prevented all suspicion but for the blushes of Almeria, who, though of all the party she was the least guilty, looked by far ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... that this life of sea-bathing and sun-burning was for me but a holiday. In that year cannon were roaring for days together on French battle-fields; and I would sit in my isle (I call it mine, after the use of lovers) and think upon the war, and the loudness of these far-away battles, and the pain of the men's wounds, and the weariness of their marching. And I would think too of that other war which is as old as mankind, and is indeed the life of man; the unsparing ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in detecting and defeating the chicanery of the advocates, who labored to disguise the truths of facts, and to pervert the sense of the laws. He sometimes forgot the gravity of his station, asked indiscreet or unseasonable questions, and betrayed, by the loudness of his voice, and the agitation of his body, the earnest vehemence with which he maintained his opinion against the judges, the advocates, and their clients. But his knowledge of his own temper prompted him to encourage, and even to solicit, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... extending to some distance along the foot of the mountain, and made their way with some difficulty through the closely planted trunks and thick brushwood. Presently the sound of falling water was audible, increasing in loudness as they proceeded, until its cause became visible in a cascade that splashed down the mountain side. A rocky pool received the foaming element, and fed a pellucid stream that soon disappeared amongst the trees, on its way to irrigate and fertilize the neighbouring ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... as if the work had been left hurriedly. The pink-crested cockatoo started, on his appearance, into clumsy activity and began to climb laboriously up and down his perch, calling "Joanna" with indistinct loudness and a persistent screech that prolonged the last syllable of the name as if in a peal of insane laughter. The screen in the doorway moved gently once or twice in the breeze, and each time Willems started slightly, expecting his wife, but he never lifted his eyes, although straining his ears ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... cigar here, the murmur of a fray came to me, borne upon the light breeze: my curiosity was excited by the indistinct sounds, and I walked along in the direction whence they came for a couple of minutes. As I neared it, the tumult grew in loudness and fierceness; men's hoarse and angry voices, mingled in hot dispute, came crashing upwards as from the deeps of hell. I bent anxiously over the cliff, as though articulate sounds might be caught three hundred feet above their source;—a louder burst ascended, then crack! ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... of evidence that we have entered into a period in which an especial emphasis will be laid on the too long neglected psychical factor. This new movement is probably only in its beginning and the loudness with which it presents itself to-day is one of the many indications of its immaturity. Whether it will be a blessing or a danger, whether it will really lead forward in a lasting way, or whether it will soon ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... off Albert and put it on himself, lest Albert might suspect, and then began to sing purposely, with loudness and levity, an old farm rhyme that had been familiar to the boys of ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... be avoided. As to manners, I think that to repeat a bit of scandal, and circulate backbiting stories, are worse offences than the actions that gave rise to them. If I mentally condemn a person, I feel guilty of moral lapse. I hate self-assertion; I am ashamed of self-advertisement. I dislike loudness of any kind. Probably I have too much tendency to negation of all sorts. Small-talk bores me to extinction, but I will discuss a point of ethics or psychology half the night. To make capital out of a person's weakness is repugnant to me. I want ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... and for the most part legendary. The language is archaic and difficult for an outsider to understand. The singing is a kind of declamation, with long slurs, frequent staccatos, and abrupt endings. Of course, there are war songs that demand loudness and rapidity, but on the whole the song music is as weird and melancholy as the instrumental. Ceremonial chants do not differ from secular songs, except that they treat of the doings of a supernatural world, and ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... Indian officers, friends of his own, who had entered into the speculation on his recommendation. These rebukes Thomas Newcome bore with an affecting meekness, as his faithful F. B. described to me, striving with many oaths and much loudness to carry off bis own emotion. But what moved the Colonel most of all, was a letter which came at this time from Honeyman in India, saying that he was doing well—that of course he knew of his benefactor's ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... breezes. All this went on in the most ludicrous manner; and, as soon as one person was exhausted, he was immediately replaced by another, prayers at the same time being offered up to the spirits as well of the fires as of the wind. The loudness of these prayers, I may add, grew and decreased in intensity, according to the aspect which the fire took from moment to moment; if a flame rose up higher than usual, louder prayers were hurriedly offered, and if the fire at times almost went out, then the spirits ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... supposed to be there in the capacity of his servant. But the man, as it seemed, had a mission to fulfil, and was the captain's master as well as servant. "Mr. Hart," said Captain Scarborough, repressing the loudness of his words as far as his rage would admit him, but still speaking so as to attract the attention of some of those round him, "I do not know what good you propose to yourself by following me in this manner. You have my bonds, which are not even ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... to his feet, put his hands on either side of his mouth and shouted. The unexpected loudness of the call startled him a little; it went echoing around and in the dead solitude of the low-lying hills seemed to carry for miles. But although he listened intently there was no answer other than the echo which ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... and open spaces of Victorian London. The place upon which he stood was level, with huge serpentine cables lying athwart it in every direction. The circular wheels of a number of windmills loomed indistinct and gigantic through the darkness and snowfall, and roared with a varying loudness as the fitful wind rose and fell. Some way off an intermittent white light smote up from below, touched the snow eddies with a transient glitter, and made an evanescent spectre in the night; and here and there, ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... by and by the chapel done, the King and Duke into the bowling-green and upon the leads, whither I went, and there the guns were plain to be heard; though it was pretty to hear how confident some would be in the loudness of the guns, which it was as much as ever I could do ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... room, took the trunk by its stout leather handle and pulled it over the ledge in the doorway. There were small wheels at the bottom of the trunk, but although they made the pulling of it easy, they seemed to creak with appalling loudness. He realised the fearful weight of the trunk as he lifted the end of it up on the rail. He balanced it there for a moment, and glanced sharply around him, but there was nothing to alarm him. In spite of his natural coolness, he felt a strange, haunting dread ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... perilymph and endolymph, and contains a number of the nerve-ends, which are, however, most numerous in the cochlea. We do not know for certain what the functions of the canals and the cochlea are; but it is probable that the former enables us to distinguish between the intensity or loudness of sounds and the direction from which they come, while the latter enables us to determine the pitch of a note. In the cochlea are about 2,800 tiny nerve-ends, called the rods of Corti. The normal ear has such ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... bursting out into a fit of crying when he was once more under his mother's roof; and Virginie, who was alone there (Madame Babette having gone out to make her daily purchases), might have imagined him pommeled to death by the loudness of his sobs. ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... movement or a gesture, that it seemed as if the touch of a hand might break him into atoms, so brittle and delicate a figure of clay was he. When he spoke, his harsh voice, issuing from the long thin lips which scarcely moved, even in utterance, was startling in its unmelodious loudness, the more so when its ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... of the same expressions require a sort of vehemence and loudness of voice, they will then be unsuited to the simple style of oratory. The orator may use other embellishments promiscuously; only let him relax and separate the connexion of the words, and use as ordinary expressions ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... not know, or do not remember, that audibility is not secured by mere loudness and bigness of voice, nor again by raising the voice to a high pitch. "People tell you to speak up," said that excellent elocutionist, Mr Simeon; "but I say, speak down," down as regards the musical scale. Again, the larger the building the more accentuated must ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... our oak-stump cast a long and attenuated shadow across the barren heath. All was still: thanks to the lofty trees at our feet, we were unable to catch a glimpse of the valley of the Rhine below. The peacefulness of the spot seemed only to intensify the loudness of our pistol-shots—and I had scarcely fired my second barrel at the pentagram when I felt some one lay hold of my arm and noticed that my friend had also some one beside him who had ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... the edge of the hurricane. There happened to be a little food in the galley and a scrap was given to each man. If we were going under, there was no need to drown hungry. So, faintly, but with quickenin' loudness, the whirring roar of the hurricane rose into a shriek and ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... slowly across the lake, and it was the deep-mouthed clangour of its near approach that startled her, at dead of night, from her slumber, to witness the same phenomena in the tremendous loudness and brilliancy ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... was beginning to rise again. This blew the snow down from the mountain side, and occasionally the landscape was all but blotted out thereby. They struggled along as best they could, the driver cracking his whip with the loudness of a pistol. They passed around one edge of the mountain, only to view with consternation a still more dangerous stretch ...
— Dave Porter in the Far North - or, The Pluck of an American Schoolboy • Edward Stratemeyer
... in this nauseous puffery business, and the infection is rapidly spreading to the illustrated weeklies and magazines. No wonder that foreigners have much to say about our bad manners, worse taste, lack of refinement and offensive "loudness," when the "leading society ladies" of the land will pay big prices to have themselves written up like variety actresses or prize cattle, when they will pay to have their portraits paraded in the public prints and their personal charms proclaimed much as auctioneers in antebellum days expatiated ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... we descried yesterday.' rejoined Toby, with a rapidity and loudness of utterance that almost led me to suspect he had been slyly devouring the broadside of an ox in some of the adjoining thickets. 'What else,' he continued, 'remains for us to do but that, to be sure? Why, we shall both starve to a certainty if we remain here; and as ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... his own; who again needed to be relieved before long. For the French, whom Zastrow had to imitate in that respect, kept bringing up more cannon, ever more, as if they would bring up all the cannon of their Army: and there rose between Zastrow and them such a cannonade, for length and loudness together, as had not been heard in this War. Most furious cannonading, musketading; and seemingly no end to it. Ferdinand himself came over to ascertain; found it a hot thing indeed. Zastrow had to relieve his 200 ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... and companies of young countryfolk almost as fondly united and raising their voices to the night as if superfluously to sing out at you that they were happy, and above all were Tuscan. On reflection, and to be just, I connect the slightly incongruous loudness that hung about me under the Beautiful Towers with the really too coarse competition for my favour among the young vetturini who lay in wait for my approach, and with an eye to my subsequent departure, ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... But the ears of men are deafened by being filled with this melody; nor is there in you mortals a duller sense than that of hearing. As where the Nile at the Falls of Catadupa pours down from the loftiest mountains, the people who live hard by lack the sense of hearing because of the loudness of the cataract, so this harmony of the whole universe in its intensely rapid movement is so loud that men's ears cannot take it in, even as you cannot look directly at the sun, and the keenness and visual power of the eye are overwhelmed ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis
... to look. When they did, they saw a gleaming black form that stood on queer shafts of wood come gliding with the speed of the wind from behind the hillock. It straightened out on a stretch of snow, bellowing with a loudness that hammered their eardrums into numbness, and sped lightly along till the queer shafts of wood left the surface and the sleek black object soared up into ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... backbiting stories, are worse offences than the actions that gave rise to them. If I mentally condemn a person, I feel guilty of moral lapse. I hate self-assertion; I am ashamed of self-advertisement. I dislike loudness of any kind. Probably I have too much tendency to negation of all sorts. Small-talk bores me to extinction, but I will discuss a point of ethics or psychology half the night. To make capital out of a person's weakness ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... The voice of God and the voice of Nature. I cannot be wrong if I listen to them. Sometimes, when uncertain of a voice from its very loudness, we catch the missing syllable in the echo. In God and Nature we have Voice and Echo. When I hear both, I am assured. My sense of hearing does not betray me twice. I recognize the Voice in the Echo, the Echo makes me certain of the ...
— Beautiful Thoughts • Henry Drummond
... mounted his chunky gray horse, and lifting his hat as he passed out of the yard, rode off toward his army, his arrival there being announced to us by cheering, which, as it progressed, varying in loudness, told he was riding through the bivouac of ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 5 • P. H. Sheridan
... let loose. To judge from the conduct of the opposite parties, we shall be led to conclude that they will mutually hope to evince the justness of their opinions, and to increase the number of their converts by the loudness of their declamations and the bitterness of their invectives. An enlightened zeal for the energy and efficiency of government will be stigmatized as the offspring of a temper fond of despotic power and hostile to the principles of ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... who is an old and faithful retainer to this household, is now suffering from his annual cough. It is a terrific cough, capable of disputing supremacy with all other coughs of which the world has heard. The special points about this cough are (1) its loudness; (2) its combination of the noises made by all other coughs; (3) its depth; (4) its shriek of despair as it trembles and reverberates through the house; (5) its capacity to repel and annihilate sympathy. It is true that I have interviewed Binns with regard to his cough—it is an annual interview ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156., March 5, 1919 • Various
... surpassed in loudness that of all the others put together; and brought up several ferocious-looking Turks, bent on condignly punishing the outrageous conduct of the ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... of the spot where we stood was an open space or glade of considerable extent. Towards this the animal approached, as was evident from the increasing loudness of its wild roar, which was almost continuous. In another moment the thick wall of underwood at its farther extremity was burst asunder with a crash, and a wild buffalo bull bounded into the plain and dashed madly across. On its neck was crouched a leopard, which had fixed its ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... of Lady Chaloner. This relationship in some strange way entirely condoned in Lady Chaloner's eyes the fact that the Princess Hohenschreien had a good deal of paint on her face, and a good deal of paint in her manner, and that the loudness of her laugh and the boldness of her bearing were more pronounced than would have been permitted of the well-behaved ladies brought up within the walls of Castle Chaloner. However, Lady Chaloner's daughters ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... sound of the flowing of streams," said one of their bardic clan, "is sweeter than any music of men." "The harp of the woods is playing music," said another. In Finn's Song to May, the waterfall is singing a welcome to the pool below, the loudness of music is around the hill, and in the green fields the stream is singing. The blackbird, the cuckoo, the heron and the lark are the musicians of the world. When Finn asks his men what music they thought the best, each says his say, but Oisin answers, "The music of the woods is sweetest to ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... pleasant mornings the welkin rings with the singing of birds, which is not so delightful as the notes of birds at home, because I have not been familiar with them from infancy. The notes here, however, strike the mind by their loudness and variety, as the wellings forth from joyous hearts of praise to Him who fills them with overflowing gladness. All of us rise early to enjoy the luscious balmy air of the morning. We then have worship; but, amid all the beauty and loveliness with which we are surrounded, there is ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... Motherbank; he swore and he drank, he was dirty and gross. She had never been able to recall anything approaching to tenderness in his former treatment of herself. There had remained only a general impression of roughness and loudness; and now he scarcely ever noticed her, but to make her the object of ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... The volume, or loudness, of a sound depends on the size of the vibrations, just as one feels a blow from a large object, other things being equal, more than from a small one. The ear drum-head is in the case of a large sound beaten, as it were, more powerfully. The singers that give us bigness ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... deprived by Pandu's son, in that battle, of their riders, and afflicted with arrows wandered on the field, treading down their own ranks and uttering loud roars like masses of clouds driven by the wind. Then the mighty-armed Bhima, scimitar in hand, and filled with delight, blew his conch of terrible loudness. And with that blare he caused the hearts of all the Kalinga troops to quake with fear. And, O chastiser of foes, all the Kalingas seemed at the same time to be deprived of their senses. And all the combatants and all the animals shook with terror. And in consequence ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... here again our inexpugnable hypocrisy comes in and leads us down to perdition even in our prayers. There is nothing our Lord more bitterly and more contemptuously assails the Pharisees for than just the length, the loudness, the number, and the publicity of their prayers. The truth is, public prayer, for the most part, is no true prayer at all. It is at best an open homage paid to secret prayer. We make such shipwrecks of devotion in public ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... summit rock was gneiss, succeeded by sienitic gneiss. Sienite and feldspar succeeded in our descent to the snow line, where we found a feldspathic granite. I had remarked that the noise produced by the explosion of our pistols had the usual degree of loudness, but was not in the least prolonged, expiring almost instantaneously. Having now made what observations our means afforded, we proceeded to descend. We had accomplished an object of laudable ambition, and beyond the strict order of our instructions. We ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... "I am here, uncle," and if the first voice startled one with its loudness, this second was equally startling from its music, its ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... persevered in it against every kind of dissuasion and opposition, is strange enough; that in the third or fourth year of their efforts they should have produced works in many parts not inferior to the best of Albert Durer, this is perhaps not less strange. But the loudness and universality of the howl which the common critics of the press have raised against them, the utter absence of all generous help or encouragement from those who can both measure their toil and appreciate their success, and the shrill, shallow laughter of those who can do neither the one ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... over her shoulders, and her eyes, while she still delayed, had turned from him, engaged by another interest, though the court was by this time, the hour of dispersal for luncheon, so forsaken that they would have had it, for free talk, should they have been moved to loudness, quite to themselves. She was ready for their adjournment, but she was also aware of a pedestrian youth, in uniform, a visible emissary of the Postes et Telegraphes, who had approached, from the street, the small stronghold of the concierge and who presented there a missive ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... of Fanash, occurred under my own eye, and which, I have no doubt, was produced by grief at being separated from a mavis. Their cages had long hung side by side in the parlour, and often had they striven to out-rival each other in the loudness of their song, till their minstrelsy became so stunning, that it was found necessary to remove the laverock to a drawing-room ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various
... constitutional timidity seemed to be filled to the brim by the loudness of Allan's voice and the bluntness of Allan's request. He ran over in the same feeble flow of words with which he had deluged Midwinter on the occasion when ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... and look important and insolent and come-to-stay; and assert his genuine simon-pure authenticity with a thundering bellow that will convince everybody because it is so loud. The thug is aware that loudness convinces sixty persons where reasoning convinces but one. I wouldn't be a thug, not even if—but never mind about that, it has nothing to do with the argument, and it is not noble in spirit besides. If I am better than a thug, is the merit ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... more than thirty-six;[96] but they may be variously combined, so as to form words innumerable. Different vowel sounds, or vocal elements, are produced by opening the mouth differently, and placing the tongue in a peculiar manner for each; but the voice may vary in loudness, pitch, or time, and still utter the same ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... violent the blow, the farther will the string vibrate, and the louder will be the sound. Just so with these vocal bands or cords. The varying force with which the breath strikes them and their different tensions and lengths at different times, explain the different degrees of loudness and the ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... made to the exquisite beauty of his compositions. The loudness is all that seems to be praised, and we suspect, that in private Pope was inclined to laugh with Swift in his disparaging comparison between Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Wordsworth has written on the "Power of Sound;" but the small part of it that touches on the musical ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... he insisted upon haste, for they had not gone far when the glacier broke abreast of the spot they had just left. There came a rending crack, terrifying in its loudness; a tremendous tower of ice separated itself from the main body, leaned slowly outward, then roared downward, falling in a solid piece like a sky-scraper undermined. Not until the arc described by its summit had reached the ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... made friends quickly. She became tactful, a quality that had hitherto been unknown. She liked Nora and the girl loved Mrs. Hollister. Ethel marveled. That her mother who disliked anything savoring of loudness could tolerate ...
— Ethel Hollister's Second Summer as a Campfire Girl • Irene Elliott Benson
... subsequent. As their captivity may continue six days, it is possible that the bees in this space of time may forget which has emitted it first; but it is also possible, that the queens diversify the sounds, encreasing the loudness as they become older, and that the bees can distinguish these variations. We have even ourselves been able to distinguish differences in the sound, either with relation to the succession of notes, or their intensity; and probably there are gradations still more imperceptible that ...
— New observations on the natural history of bees • Francis Huber
... perceived, on the opposite side, Sir Lionel Garrett, a personage whom I had not before even inquired after, or thought of. He was busily and noisily employed in discussing the game-laws. Thank Heaven, thought I, I shall be on firm ground there. The general interest of the subject, and the loudness with which it was debated, soon drew all the scattered conversation ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the secondary circuit for adjustment to the wave length, turning it slowly from minimum to maximum until you come to the point where the desired station is heard. When this is found, you again readjust the primary until you find the point of maximum loudness. ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman
... came up and began talking to Freda; he was so kind and so natural even in his loudness, that Freda felt as if she would rather trust him with every secret of her heart, than the polished worldling who had ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... very different thing from boldness or obtrusiveness. Courtesy and considerateness are cardinal qualities of the well-equipped salesman, but boastfulness, glibness, egotism, loudness, and self-assertion, are as ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... consists, first, in the recognition of sounds of equal intensity, arranging the cylinders in pairs. The next exercise consists in the comparison of one sound with another; that is, the child arranges the six cylinders in a series according to the loudness of sound which they produce. The exercise is analogous to that with the color spools, which also are paired and then arranged in gradation. In this case also the child performs the exercise seated comfortably at a table. After a preliminary ...
— Dr. Montessori's Own Handbook • Maria Montessori
... that angle into the smelly shop, of any range of chances for his wishing still to repeat to her the two words she had in the Park scarcely let him bring out. "See here—see here!"—the sound of these two words had been with her perpetually; but it was in her ears to-day without mercy, with a loudness that grew and grew. What was it they then expressed? what was it he had wanted her to see? She seemed, whatever it was, perfectly to see it now—to see that if she should just chuck the whole thing, should have a great and beautiful courage, he would somehow make everything up to ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... both gentlemen. In the course of ten minutes the horse and the bay mare had both changed owners. Cousin William swore more fiercely than ever. The parson dashed his wig to the ground, and emulated his pupil in the loudness of his objurgations. Mr. Harry Warrington was quite calm, and not the least elated by his triumph. They had asked him to play, and he had played. He knew he should win. O beloved slumbering angel! he thought, am I not sure of victory when you are kind to me? He was looking out from ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... disposition, and when nothing better offered itself for a singing-perch easily grew accustomed to standing upon a stone or a little lump of earth; and this practice, long persisted in, naturally had the effect to lessen the loudness of his voice. The skylark, on the other hand, when he did not readily find a tree-top, said to himself, "Never mind! I have a pair of wings." And so the lark is famous, while the sparrow remains unheard-of, and is even ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... depend on old Skeezics," Maurice told himself, with a friendly look at her. He had forgotten Eleanor's behavior, and was trying to suppress his grins at the forlorn and dripping people, who were on land now, shivering, and talking with astonishing loudness. ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... and bounded impetuously against the wall with a hoarse, rough bark of fearful loudness. The walls re-echoed just as if a clap of ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... chief of the haruspices, who had gravely and silently greeted her, passed on to the door of the temple. But as she prepared to cross the forecourt, suddenly, without warning, the priests' chant swelled to a terrible, almost thundering loudness, the clear, shrill voice of the Temple scholars rising in passionate lament, supported by the deep and threatening ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... young life and mutual love. He was little with us, and, as I said, the house was still, except when he was mandating his sermons for Sabbath. This he always did, not only viva voce, but with as much energy and loudness as in the pulpit; we felt his voice was sharper, and ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... greater density than the rest would be the last to go, but in the end its inertia would be overcome and all would be expelled, and there would be a perfect vacuum. The ball would then burst, but you would not be aware of the fact on account of the loudness of a sound varying with the density of the place in which it is generated, and not on that in which it is ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... behind, bringing my attention to bear upon keeping in step. Rearranging my stride now and then, I marched through the empty corridors, listening to the drone of masters' voices teaching in their class-rooms, and wondering at the loudness of our footsteps. The sight of the prefects' door gave me my ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... he dreaded the affair. He dreaded Mrs. Neville; and he dreaded Jack, who had been so named after his gallant grandfather, Colonel Smith. When Mrs. Neville arrived, she was found to be so subdued and tame that she could hardly open her mouth before the old Earl. Her loudness, if she ever had been loud, was certainly all gone,—and her fastness, if ever she had been fast, had been worn out of her. She was an old woman, with the relics of great beauty, idolizing her ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... out of the bed, and hurled the boot-jack at him with all my strength; but had only the satisfaction to hear him go down stairs chuckling at his escape; and as he reached the parlour, the increase of mirth and the loudness of the laughter told me that he was not the only one who was merry at my expense. Any thing was preferable to this; down stairs I resolved to go at once—but how; a blanket I thought would not be a bad thing, and particularly as I had said I was ill; I could at least get ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... tones, including the phonetic sounds of words, have four characteristics: pitch, loudness or intensity, quality or tone-color, and duration. The last, of ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... was fast and the lights were out. He knocked, at first lightly, but gradually increasing in loudness. At the fourth knock a light appeared in the room above, the window was raised, and Mrs. Henshaw ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... door on the young bride-elect, and ran swiftly down stairs. There did seem to be a good deal of confusion in the orderly household, and the very air of the hall seemed to be pervaded with a singular subdued excitement; voices of suppressed loudness issued from the front parlor and as Ester knocked she heard a half scream from Mrs. Ried, mingled with cries of "Don't let her in." Growing thoroughly alarmed, Ester now abruptly pushed open the ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... his job and my mother's peace. I have seen what happened to her, and how it is that I am a vagabond—about whom France has never troubled herself." He shouted it over his shoulder, above the noise of the motor, with an increasing loudness. "Also," he went on, "I have duties not so far away as France. Up there, at Sheleilieh, there will perhaps be next month a little Gaston. If I go away, who will feed him? I have not the courage of Monsieur, who separates himself ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the little creature, dressed him in the red and gold robe, and put on his head the holy crown, and the people admired to see how straight he held up his neck under it; indeed, they admired the loudness and strength of his cries, when, as the good lady records, "the noble king had little pleasure in his coronation, for he wept aloud." She had to hold him up for the rest of the service, while Count Ulric of Eily held the crown over his head, ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... uttered these words, in language that would have seemed above his station (if a certain glow and exaggeration of phrase and sentiment were not common, when excited, to all the Romans), the loudness of his voice rose above the noise immediately round him, and stilled, for an instant, the general din; and when, at last, the words, "Rienzi and the People" rang forth, they penetrated midway through the increasing crowd, and were answered as by an echo, ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... or restrained force. Often the latter is the more natural and effective. This is intense, but not loud, though at times it may break through its restraint. It is most fitting when the hearers are near at hand, as in the case of a jury or judge in court, when the din of loudness would offend. ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... the hours drew on, the night began to grow less quiet. From the distance some one began to blow on a horn or a shell, sending forth a harsh raucous note incessantly. The sound came nearer, as we could tell from its growing loudness, and the voices of those by the fires made themselves heard, railing at the blower for his disturbance. And presently it became stationary, and standing up we could see through the slits in the walls the people of the camp rousing up from ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... there shortly appeared every probability of the weather becoming. Dark green seas came rolling in crested with foam, and breaking with increasing loudness of sound on the rocky shore; the wind whistled and howled louder ...
— Michael Penguyne - Fisher Life on the Cornish Coast • William H. G. Kingston
... proportions of one of the pillars which supported it, and estimating the practicability of climbing it, when he heard a footstep. Some one dragged a chair out toward the railing, then seemed to change his mind and began to pace the veranda, his footfalls resounding on the dry boards with singular loudness. Little White drew a step backward, got the figure between himself and the sky, and at once recognized the short, broad-shouldered form of old ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... was lost in the dark moustache, and in the beard combed from the center. The visible part of his face would have made a gambler's fortune; and, save for its warm color, it might have been carved out of ice. Without ever a hint of harshness or loudness, his voice was one to command attention; though it came out soft and velvety, it was with the half assurance that it could ring like steel if the occasion arose. The occasion never arose. The hands, whose fingers thrummed on the glass-topped desk, were soft, warm-looking, ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach
... our waking hours, there is a perpetual confused sound of various bodies, as of the wind in our rooms, the fire, distant conversations, mechanic business; this continued buzz, as we are seldom quite motionless, changes its loudness perpetually, like the sound of a bell; which rises and falls as long as it continues, and seems to pulsate on the ear. This any one may experience by turning himself round near a waterfall; or by ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... moment at the wicket-gate, and then opening it passed through, suffering it to fall with a clatter behind him. His hand trembled strangely as he lifted it to the door, and he knocked with a tremulous loudness. When he had waited for a time he heard Rachel's footsteps tapping on the oil-cloth of the passage which divided her toy sitting-room from her bandbox of a parlor. His gray face went a shade grayer, and he cleared his throat nervously, with the tips of his thin fingers at his month. ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... expected the next day. This led to much discourse on the princes, in which Mr. Fairly, with his usual but Most uncommon openness, protested there was something in the violence of their animal spirits that Would make him accept no post and no pay to live with them. Their very voices, he said, had a loudness and force ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... increased in brilliance, and objects were distinguishable far over the prairie. A red glare could be seen on the sides of the deer as they bounded over the tall, dry grass, which was soon to be no longer a refuge for them. The young men heard a low, continued roar, that increased every moment in loudness, and looking in the direction whence they supposed it proceeded, they observed an immense, dark, moving mass, the nature of which they could not divine, but it threatened to annihilate every thing that opposed it. While gazing at this additional source of danger, the horses, ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... time, the cannon from our batteries, but faintly answered by the Americans, had continued to thunder without intermission, and as the columns drew nearer, each succeeding discharge came upon the ear with increased and more exciting loudness. Hitherto the view had been obstructed by the numerous farm houses and other buildings, that skirted the windings of the road, but when at length the column emerged into more open ground, the whole scene burst splendidly and imposingly upon the sight. Within half a mile, and to the left, rose ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... not only convinced himself that she had injured him but, by the loudness of his voice and the brutality of his attack, he convinced her also, and presently he had her apologizing for his having spent the evening with Tanis. He went up to bed well pleased, not only the master but the martyr of the household. For a distasteful moment after he had lain down he wondered ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... and his pipes was kinder cracked, But Rube made up in loudness what in tune he might have lacked; But 'twas a leetle cur'us, though, for p'r'aps his voice would balk, And when he'd fetch a high note give a most outrageous squawk; And Uncle Elkanah was deef and kind er'd lose the run, And keep on singin' loud and high when all the rest was done; But, ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... wished to come, and were greatly disappointed. But these men, as is usual amongst Somali, had prepared themselves for a feast by several days' previous fasting, and each man would, if I allowed it, swallow at one meal as much as a sheep's skin could contain. As a gun is known by the loudness of its report, and ability to stand a large discharge of powder, to be of good quality, so is a man's power gauged by his capacity of devouring food; it is considered a feat of superiority to surpass another ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... The oak generally affords the largest quantity. At the season of its greatest abundance, the happy humming noise of the bees may be heard at a considerable distance from the trees, sometimes nearly equalling in loudness ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... That is to say, if exactly the same sound is repeated at half the distance, the intensity with which it reaches the ear is four times as great as before, and if the distance is quartered, the intensity is sixteen times as great. In other words, if "ah" is spoken with a certain loudness eight inches from the child's ear, and then again with exactly the same pitch and volume only two inches from his ear, it will be sixteen times as loud to him as ...
— What the Mother of a Deaf Child Ought to Know • John Dutton Wright
... always on subtlety. It may be that a great colorist will use his utmost force of color, as a singer his full power of voice; but, loud or low, the virtue is in both cases always in refinement, never in loudness. The west window of Chartres is bedropped with crimson deeper than blood; but it is as soft as it is deep, and as quiet as the ...
— Lectures on Landscape - Delivered at Oxford in Lent Term, 1871 • John Ruskin
... Oven-Bird, (Turdus aurocapillus), or Golden-Crowned Thrush. It is the smallest of the Thrushes, is confined exclusively to the wood, and when singing is particularly partial to noon-day. There is no melody in his song. He begins rather low, increasing in loudness as he proceeds, until the last notes are so loud as to seem almost in our immediate presence. He might be supposed to utter His words, I see, I see, I see, etc.,—emphasizing the first word, and repeating the words six or eight times, louder and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... man to the left in the row had a small bundle of documents on the table before him. He rose to his feet, bowed low to his brother judges, and then with less deference to the prisoner. He spoke in a voice lacking any trace of loudness, but distinctly heard in every corner of the room because of the intense stillness. There was a sweet persuasiveness in the accents he used, and his sentences resembled those of a lady anxious not to give ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... of a mighty river, or from the muttering sound of distant thunder, by the sharp and angry notes which the clashing of the rider's arms mingled with the deep bass of the horses' rapid tread. From the long continuance of the sounds, their loudness, and the extent of horizon from which they seemed to come, all in the castle were satisfied that the approaching relief consisted of several very strong bodies of horse. [Footnote: Even the sharp and angry clang made by the iron scabbards of modern cavalry ringing against the steel-tipp'd saddles ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... has a simple physical measure for its basis; and the rate of vibration is complicated by its sweep or loudness, and by concomitant sounds. What a rich note is to a pure and thin one, that a chord is to a note; nor is melody wholly different in principle, for it is a chord rendered piece-meal. Time intervenes, and the harmony is deployed; so that in melody rhythm is added, with its immense appeal, ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... public-house is a lazy and innocent interchange of remarks, which wander aimlessly from one subject to another, because nobody wants to bother his head with thinking; or else it is a vehement discussion, in which dogmatic assertion does duty for argument and loudness for force. In either case it rests and stimulates the tired men, while the drink refreshes their throats, and it has no more necessary impropriety than the drawing-room talk of the well-to-do. In this intercourse men who ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... the tension to the breaking point. She came out in all innocence but not without vague dread. Anthony's exclamation on first seeing Powell had reached her in her cabin, where, it seems, she was brushing her hair. She had heard the very words. 'What are you doing here?' And the unwonted loudness of the voice—his voice—breaking the habitual stillness of that hour would have startled a person having much less reason to be constantly apprehensive, than the captive of Anthony's masterful generosity. She had no means to guess to whom the question ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... pale radiance through some window-curtain, or through the chink of some door which could not be closed because of the smoky chimney within. At last they entered the inn boldly, by the till then bolted front-door, after a prolonged knocking of loudness commensurate with the importance of ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... sprang to her feet at my side with a loud cry, "No, George, no," which bewildered me completely. The suddenness, the loudness of it made the ensuing silence on both sides of the door perfectly awful. It seemed to me that if I didn't resist with all my might something in me would die on the instant. In the straight, falling folds of the night-dress she looked cold like a block ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... so? Old gaffer dead?" And when the soldier was told how the feeble thread of life had been snapped by the shock of joy on his coming, a fit of compunction and sorrow seized him. He covered his face with his hands and wept with a loudness of grief that surprised and touched his hearers; and presently began to bemoan himself that he had hardly a mark in his purse to pay for a mass; but therewith he proceeded to erect before him the cross hilt of poor Abenali's sword, and to vow thereupon that the first spoil ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... naught to say. It has nothing to do with beauty: it traces the movements of the stars, and tells of their constitution; but the fact of their singing together, and that "such harmony is in immortal souls," it leaves to poet and philosopher. The timbre, loudness, pitch, of musical tones, is a concern of science; but for this a Beethoven symphony is no better than the latest ragtime air from the music halls. In brief, science deals only with phenomena, and its gift to man is power over ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... accusation. Nor is there any excuse for unpleasant, harsh, rough, nasal tones of voice in these days when in every good school instruction is given in the management of the voice for reading and conversation. The cause of harshness and loudness is often mere carelessness on the part of young people. But talking in too loud a tone is scarcely less unpleasant to the listeners than the use of too low a tone, which ...
— Letters to a Daughter and A Little Sermon to School Girls • Helen Ekin Starrett
... but a snipe flew up from beside the dog. Levin had lifted his gun, but at the very instant when he was taking aim, the sound of splashing grew louder, came closer, and was joined with the sound of Veslovsky's voice, shouting something with strange loudness. Levin saw he had his gun pointed behind the snipe, but ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... dynamic—the opposite of static) as used in the nomenclature of music has to do with the various degrees of power (i.e., the comparative loudness and ...
— Music Notation and Terminology • Karl W. Gehrkens
... are put in circuit with the latter and pick up sound from them. The telephones are applied to the ears of the person whose hearing is to be tested. By sliding the outer coils back and forth the intensity of induction and consequent loudness of the sounds in the telephones is varied. The position when the sounds grow so faint as to be no longer audible, gives the degree of delicacy of the person's hearing. By using a single telephone the same apparatus affords a means of testing ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... Rupert, with a rather nervous loudness, "since Lieutenant Keith has seen fit to make this suggestion to Basil before his ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... repeated five or six times, ending in faintly audible sighs; at other times he startles the forest with loud, deep-toned, solemn roars, repeated five or six times in quick succession, each increasing in loudness to the third or fourth, when his voice dies away in five or six low, muffled sounds, very much resembling distant thunder. At times, and not unfrequently, a troop may be heard roaring in concert, one assuming the lead, and two, three, or four more regularly taking up their ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... shuttered. There was a hole in the shutter, however, where a knot of the wood had fallen out, and a thin shaft of light stretched across the blackness and buried itself in a ragged yew-tree at the end of the garden. From the loudness of the sounds I judged this to be the room where the flute-playing was going on. The crackling of my footsteps on the thin soil did not disturb the performer, so I gathered a handful of earth and pitched it up against the pane. The flute stopped for ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... in everything else; he can be civil and kind, if he will, though he have not a penny in his purse. Gentleness in society is like the silent influence of light, which gives colour to all nature; it is far more powerful than loudness or force, and far more fruitful. It pushes its way quietly and persistently, like the tiniest daffodil in spring, which raises the clod and thrusts it aside by the ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... grew momentarily more confused; bulkheads began to creak, and cabin-doors to jar and rattle upon their hooks; the two people overhead began to pace the deck to and fro; the wind whistled and blustered with increasing loudness through the rigging; and as the craft plunged more sharply I caught the sound of an occasional clatter of spray upon the deck forward. This went on for some considerable time, and then I became aware of the sound of surf booming distantly, but rapidly increasing ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... cigarette and his metal soles scraped the floor with the same startling loudness he had noticed before. The bubble was as silent as ...
— The Nothing Equation • Tom Godwin
... his coat off Albert and put it on himself, lest Albert might suspect, and then began to sing purposely, with loudness and levity, an old farm rhyme that had been familiar to the boys ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... good places. Peter could always get good places: a word from him and the best box was at his disposal. She made him write the word on a card and saw a messenger despatched with it to the Rue de Richelieu; and all this without loudness or insistence, parenthetically and authoritatively. The box was bespoken and the carriage, as soon as they had had their coffee, found to be in attendance. Peter drove off in it with the girls, understanding ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... believed account of the last night's occurrences, which set forth how William Foster, with a picked party of his friends, had forced their way to the top of the hall, and were in the act of mounting the platform for the purpose of turning the vicar out of the chair, when a voice of unearthly loudness was heard to shout, "Forbear!"—upon which the meeting broke up in wild confusion, leaving Foster prostrated on the ground by some invisible and mysterious power, where he lay till brought back to consciousness by the joint efforts of Mr Maltby and Thomas Bradly; after ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... heard the horses being brought round the house; heard plainly the jingle of the bits and a sneeze or two. This had been followed by long interminable talking, muffled and indistinguishable, that came up to him from some unknown direction. Voices changed curiously in loudness and articulation ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... the most part, gentle or subdued sounds, and gentle or subdued colors, are more pleasing than either in their utmost force; nevertheless, in all the noblest compositions, this utmost power is permitted, but only for a short time, or over a small space. Music must rise to its utmost loudness, and fall from it; color must be gradated to its extreme brightness, and descend from it; and I believe that absolutely perfect treatment would, in either case, permit the intensest sound and purest color only for a point or ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... of months; but they afterward entirely ceased, so that the inhabitants of the place were lulled into security. On the night between the 28th and 29th of September, however, the subterranean noises were renewed with greater loudness than before, and the ground shook severely. The Indian servants living on the place started from their beds in terror, and fled to the neighboring mountains. Thence gazing upon their master's farm they beheld it, along with a tract of ground measuring between three and four square ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... university quiet great men who steadily pursue vital and difficult researches without the slightest reference or desire for cheap conspicuousness. In every profession and business there are known to the discriminating men who are experts, even geniuses in their own field, but who shrink back from the loudness of publicity as from a plague. There are a number of wealthy philanthropists in all our large cities who consistently and steadily do good works in almost complete anonymity. One finds in almost every department of human activity these types of self-effacing men who find their fulfillment ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... same things. In these islands, we are in the habit of regarding mankind as of one species, but a fortnight's steam will land us in a country where divines and savants, for once in agreement, vie with one another in loudness of assertion, if not in cogency of proof, that men are of different species; and, more particularly, that the species negro is so distinct from our own that the Ten Commandments have actually no reference to him. Even in the calm region of entomology, where, ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... importance. There is no lack of evidence that we have entered into a period in which an especial emphasis will be laid on the too long neglected psychical factor. This new movement is probably only in its beginning and the loudness with which it presents itself to-day is one of the many indications of its immaturity. Whether it will be a blessing or a danger, whether it will really lead forward in a lasting way, or whether it will soon demand a reaction, will probably depend in the first place ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... ever Westward, and the night fell upon the earth. A vast rain seemed to come with it, and a wind of a most extraordinary loudness—as though the howling of a nightlong gale, were packed into the space of no more ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... public. Personal peculiarities formed the source of the majority of such informal baptisms. Many were easily dubbed geographically from the regions from which they confessed to have hailed. Some announced themselves to be "Thompsons," and "Adamses," and the like, with a brazenness and loudness that cast a cloud upon their titles. A few vaingloriously and shamelessly uncovered their proper and indisputable names. This was held to be unduly arrogant, and did not win popularity. One man who said he was Chesterton L. C. Belmont, and ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... voice accommodated to the hearing, not by its loudness, but by its propriety."—Quintilian, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... the grey eyes were steady and frank. It was not the face of a merchant, but rather that of one of good degree, accustomed to camps and war. For the rest, his figure was well-built and active, and his voice when he spoke, which was seldom, clear and distinct to loudness, but cultivated and pleasant—again, not the ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... up and waited; for he could hear the sound of wheels behind him, and noted that it was not increasing in loudness. ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... man, therefore, will not take more of the discourse than falls to his share; nor in this will he shew any violent impetuosity of temper, or exert any loudness of voice, even in arguing; for the information of the company, and the conviction of his antagonist, are to be his apparent motives; not the indulgence of his own pride, or an ambitious desire of victory; which latter, if a wise man should entertain, ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... are drawn into this whirl of sexualized public opinion; the old-fashioned policy of silence has been crushed by a policy of thundering outcry, which is heard in every home and every nursery. This loudness of debate is surely an effect of the horror with which the appalling misery around us is suddenly discovered. All which was hidden by prudery is disclosed in its viciousness, and this outburst of indignation is the result. Yet it would never have swollen to this overwhelming flood ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... without it. You need not open the casement of your bosom; I see through it. You think me a strange bold girl, half coquette, half romp; desirous of attracting attention by the freedom of her manners and loudness of her conversation, because she is ignorant of what the Spectator calls the softer graces of the sex; and perhaps you think I have some particular plan of storming you into admiration. I should be sorry to shock your self-opinion, but you ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Lord Liverpool, not only on account of his rank as a minister, but also on account of the talents which have qualified him for that high situation. The greatest objection that I have to him as a speaker, is owing to the loudness of his voice—in other respects, what he does say is well digested. But I do not think that he embraces his subject with so much power and comprehension as some of his opponents; and he has evidently less actual experience of the world. This may doubtless be attributed to his having been almost ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... French words. To Claude, of course, they were perfectly intelligible, though not so to Zac, who did not understand any language but his mother Yankee. Judging by the distinctness and the loudness of the sound, the speaker could not be very far away. The voice seemed to come from the water astern. No sight, however, was visible; and the two, as they stared into the fog, saw nothing whatever. Nor ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... was the exact octave to the lowest. The quality of the notes is very musical; and I do not doubt that a good violinist would be able to give a correct idea of the gibbon's composition, excepting as regards its loudness." Mr. Waterhouse then gives the notes. Professor Owen, who is a musician, confirms the foregoing statement, and remarks, though erroneously, that this gibbon "alone of brute mammals may be said to sing." It appears to be much excited after its performance. Unfortunately, ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... course—I don't see what we're here for," Mrs. Jack Stepney remarked with careless loudness to Ned Van Alstyne; and the latter's deprecating murmur—"Julia was always a just woman"—might have been interpreted as ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... echoing through the forest. I thus knew that the elephant had not yet fallen. A minute afterwards I heard the crashing of boughs and brushwood some way off. I guessed, as I listened, that the animal was coming towards where I lay. The sounds increased in loudness. Should it discover me it would probable revenge itself by crushing me to death, or tossing me in the air with its trunk. I had my rifle ready to fire. There was a chance that I might kill it or make it turn aside. The ground where I lay sloped gradually downwards to a more open spot. I ...
— Adventures in Africa - By an African Trader • W.H.G. Kingston
... to the very skies—of huge volumes of water, dashing down the dreadful precipice into a vast basin, which seemed large enough to be the tomb of the giant Chappewee; and their ears were saluted with sounds, whose loudness and violence were a thousand times beyond those of the tempest, or the thunder, or the earthquake. Onward they groped their desperate way beyond the fiercest fall, until all at once they came to a dreadful cavern shrouded in the deepest night and gloom. Notwithstanding ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... next to that of the men in their shirt-sleeves, he would have been noticed anywhere as one evidently a scholarly thinker astray from the alcove or the study, which were his natural habitats. His voice was very sweet, and penetrating without any loudness or mark of effort. His enunciation was beautifully clear, but he often hesitated as if waiting for the right word to present itself. His manner was very quiet, his smile was pleasant, but he did not ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... varied, euphonious, and enchanting than Beethoven's, and in this direction he did for the symphony what Weber did for the opera. By using the brass instruments pianissimo, for color instead of for loudness, he opened a path in which later masters, including Wagner, eagerly followed him. Schubert was also the first composer who revealed the exquisite beauty and the great emotional power of the freest modulation from key to key. His poetic impromptus ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... hands pressed on my buttocks, as if to drive me further home, and we ran a most delicious course, I feigned to be even still more excited than I really was, and almost brayed at the ecstatic moment of ejection. Mamma herself was too far gone in delight to notice the loudness of my braying. She lay panting and throbbing on my prick, almost in a state of insensibility to aught else beside. Her eyes were closed, so that she did not observe the entrance of the light carried by the doctor. It ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... of sight and hearing are alike based on the appreciation of frequencies of different rapidity; brightness and colour in light are equivalent to loudness and pitch in sound, but in sound we have no equivalent to perception of form or situation in space; it gives us no knowledge of the existence of objects when situated at great distances, nor can movements be followed even at short distances ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... cipher, and to gesticulate by some rule of freemasonry. But to the uninitiated he is explanatory to a scruple, as though mischief might ensue from his being misapprehended. He makes sure of your understanding by an emphasis, which reminds one of the loudness of tone used towards a person supposed to be hard of hearing—a proceeding not very flattering where there happens to be neither dulness nor deafness in the case. In a word, the measured pedantry of his whole deportment betrays the happy conviction in which he rejoices of being conversant ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 273, September 15, 1827 • Various
... was such a "Hurray! hurray!" as surpassed the former cheer in loudness. Everybody engaged in it except Piggy Duff, who made an instant dash at the three-cornered puffs, but was stopped by Champion, who said there should be a fair distribution. And so there was, and no one lacked, neither of raspberry, open ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... from the other shore or whether they were prowling up and down the bank, where they were now grouped. To the whites, who could hear every word uttered, the talk of course was incomprehensible; but the loudness of the tones, as well as the rapidity and general jangle, led them to believe they were angry about something that had taken or had failed to take place, and that had produced a quarrel between them. Such was the fact, and Lena-Wingo listened to the high words with the hope ...
— The Wilderness Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... get on their feet and proceed. Once more they were on their course, but Philip made them keep one on each side of him, going at a less speed than before. It was nervous work, though, for the cracking noise increased in loudness till it rivalled that of thunder—seeming to pass under their very feet. Speed and lightness of tread was everything. For himself Philip had no fear. He dreaded only lest Charley should again fall, and so did his best to keep up his spirits, and to banish the nervousness from ...
— The Log House by the Lake - A Tale of Canada • William H. G. Kingston
... word, but went on drying himself and moving his eyes about the room, where the people, apparently grown uneasy, now talked with increasing loudness, now fell suddenly silent, while every moment one of them went out of the inn, ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... of recognition between the two sexes of a species, and as an invitation from the male to the female bird. When the individuals of a species are widely scattered, such a call must be of great importance in enabling pairing to take place as early as possible, and thus the clearness, loudness, and individuality of the song becomes a useful character, and therefore the subject of natural selection. Such is especially the case with the cuckoo, and with all solitary birds, and it may have been ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... confessed, that for a moment he was afraid; yet he felt, that 'fear is but the betraying of the succors which reason offereth,' and that which roused him to further exertion, would have sealed the fate of almost any other human being. A sudden short cracking peal of thunder burst in stunning loudness just over his head, and the forked and flashing lightning at brief intervals threw its vivid fires around him. This, too, in its turn passed away, and left the sea once more calm and unruffled: the moon (nearly full) again threw a more brilliant light upon the waters, which the ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... spoken of the Composition of Kennels, wherein I must appeal to the Affection of the Gentleman, the Lover of this Sport, and let him tell me the Reasons that induced him take pleasure in Hounds, whether it be he fancies Cunning in Hunting? Or Sweetness, Loudness, or Deepness of Cry? Or for the Training his Horses? Or for the Exercise ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... many fiery young men, who disdained to temper the expression of their feelings, or to moderate their tone. A large group of these at one corner of the square drew attention upon themselves, as well by the conspicuous station which they occupied upon the steps of a church portico, as by the loudness of their voices. Towards them the officer directed his steps; and probably no lover of scenes would have had very long to wait for some explosion between parties both equally ready to take offence, and careless of giving it; but at that moment, from an opposite angle of ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... shows us that any piece of knowledge has two constituents of very diverse origin. It has a matter or material constituent consisting, as Kant held, of certain crude data supplied by sensation, colours, tones of varying pitch and loudness, odours, savours, and the like. It has also a form or formal constituent. Our data, when we know anything at all, are arranged on some definite principle of order. When we recognize an object by ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... were to her simply a means to an end. She cared so little for them that she was not afraid, and had merely to acquire the ease which results from usage. Diffidence soon passed into a shy grace that was indefinable and yet became a recognized trait. The least approach to loudness and aggressiveness in manner was not only impossible to her, but she also possessed the refinement and tact of which only extremely sensitive natures are capable. A vain, selfish woman is so preoccupied with herself that she does ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... frightfully sensible, Drawls. You know I mean a different loudness. It sort of rises up and swims all over one, ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... mouths. They looked hesitatingly around them, and appeared to doubt the thickness of the partition between them and the office of M. de Treville; but a fresh allusion soon brought back the conversation to his Eminence, and then the laughter recovered its loudness and the light was not withheld from ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... with nature, and seem to begin just where birds and butterflies leave off! Leigh Hunt, with his delicate perceptions, paints this well: "The voices of children seem as natural to the early morning as the voice of the birds. The suddenness, the lightness, the loudness, the sweet confusion, the sparkling gayety, seem alike in both. The sudden little jangle is now here and now there; and now a single voice calls to another, and the boy is off like the bird." So Heine, with deeper thoughtfulness, noticed ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... whirled in black clouds round the trees and the conical red caps of the oast-houses which give that country the look of being studded with turreted castles; then they descended—a black line—upon the fields, with what seemed an unearthly loudness of caw. And all round there arose a shrill quavering bleating of lambs and calling of sheep, while the wind began to catch the topmost ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... long pole. Silas Foster represents the brutal, commonplace comments of the outside world, which jar so terribly on the more sensitive and closely interested actors in the tragedy. 'Heigho!' he soliloquises, with offensive loudness, 'life and death together make sad work for us all. Then I was a boy, bobbing for fish; and now I'm getting to be an old fellow, and here I be, groping for a dead body! I tell you what, lads, if I thought anything had really happened to Zenobia, I should feel kind o' sorrowful.' ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
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