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More "Violin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the very eligible human tenement which I still occupy and a fortune of three hundred pounds a year. I suppose they also handed on to me a hare-brain humour, which it has been my chief delight to indulge. I received a good education. I can play the violin nearly well enough to earn money in the orchestra of a penny gaff, but not quite. The same remark applies to the flute and the French horn. I learned enough of whist to lose about a hundred a year at that scientific ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a party led by a violin, women applauding. But the women do more than applaud. They carry great paving-stones to the top of the house, to be thence precipitated on the heads of the soldiers; they tend the wounded, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... simply, "She plays the piano well," or, more superlatively, "exceedingly well," or "admirably"! If we talk about performing on musical instruments, to be consistent, we should call those who perform, piano-performers, cornet-performers, violin-performers, ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... may be divided conveniently into the numerous sub-headings which treat of particular instruments, songs, printed music generally, and accounts of the early musicians and their works. Treatises upon the violin are fairly numerous;[85] but I do not remember having come across many works on the Jew's harp or ocarina. There are interesting old books on the virginals, harpsichord, and spinet. Before the end of the fifteenth century a number of Missalia, Gradualia, Psalteria, and Libri Cantionum ('quas ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... by dint of assurance and affidavits, bearing testimony to wonderful cures that never were performed, whirls himself into his chariot, and lays the town under contribution. A third professes the composition of music, as well as the performance, and by means of a few capriciosos on the violin, properly introduced, wriggles himself into the management of private and public concerts. And a fourth breaks forth at once in all the splendour of a gay equipage, under the title and denomination of a foreign count. Not to mention ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... oaks near the patio they heard the resonant plunk-plunk-plunk of a harp making ready for the dance, and the shrill laughter of slim senoritas hovering there. Down the slope before the three the shadows stretched longer and longer. A violin twanged in the tuning, the harp-strings crooning ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... many fat cattle in adjoining fields. The music made by this large number of hogs eating corn on a frosty night I shall never forget. After supper and attention to the teams, the wagoners would gather in the bar-room and listen to the music on the violin furnished by one of their fellows, have a Virginia hoe-down, sing songs, tell anecdotes, and hear the experiences of drivers and drovers from all points of the road, and, when it was all over, unroll their beds, lay them down on the floor before the bar-room fire side by side, ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... will grow to power. In taking this exercise there should be no consciousness of effort in the throat, and no shade of sharpness should be heard in the tone. One must try for the pure, pervasive resonance which seems to float on the air like the soft note of a violin. The right condition for the expression of this radiant vitality in the voice is a complete alertness and responsive vivacity of the whole person. This animation should be vital and ...
— Expressive Voice Culture - Including the Emerson System • Jessie Eldridge Southwick
... cushioned in crimson plush, all of which gave it a snug, shut-in look. A large table with a constant litter of maps, charts, sextants, log-books, pipes, and tobacco jars, occupied the center, and comfortable chairs were placed around in careless order. There were a few books in some wall-shelves, a violin case in one corner—which instrument the captain loved to practise on, though he was no proficient—and one or two pretty India cabinets of lacquered work, containing odd specimens, and fine curios ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... of the Spanish Gitanos, we shall have subsequently more to say: thus they live in filth, in rags, in nakedness, and in merriness of heart, for nowhere is there more of song and dance than in an Hungarian Gypsy village. They are very fond of music, and some of them are heard to touch the violin in a manner wild, but of peculiar excellence. Parties of them have been known to exhibit ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... one arm in the carrying of weights, the habit of resting on one leg more than the other, or the assumption of a faulty attitude in writing or in playing the piano or violin, doubtless, determine the seat and direction of the curvature, and, when it has once commenced, tend to aggravate ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... "Life of Cicero," seldom wrote but out of pique; and he probably owed his origin as an author to a circumstance of this nature. Middleton when young was a Dilettante in music; and Dr. Bentley, in contempt, applied the epithet "fiddling Conyers." Had the irascible Middleton broken his violin about the head of the learned Grecian, and thus terminated the quarrel, the epithet had then cost Bentley's honour much less than it afterwards did. It seems to have excited Middleton to deeper studies, which the great Bentley not long after felt when he published proposals ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... with the things of the mind than the son of the slaveowner. Chekhov's father, Pavel Yegorovitch, had a passion for music and singing; while he was still a serf boy he learned to read music at sight and to play the violin. A few years after his freedom had been purchased he settled at Taganrog, a town on the Sea of Azov, where he afterwards opened ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... performance, a young girl in a fancy dress and with long, flowing hair passes among the spectators and gathers a few shillings. Not far away is observed Punch and Judy in the height of a successful quarrel to the music of a harp and a violin. The automatic contestants pound and pommel each other ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... lute, the violin, the flageolet, the harp, the syrinx and the regals," the other replied; "also the Spanish penola that is struck with a quill, the organistrum that a wheel turns round, the wait so delightful, the rebeck so enchanting, the ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... afternoons I spent in a veritable frenzy, singing away old Vaishnava songs to my own tunes, accompanying myself on a harmonium. On other afternoons, we would drift along in a boat, my brother Jyotirindra accompanying my singing with his violin. And as, beginning with the Puravi,[50] we went on varying the mode of our music with the declining day, we saw, on reaching the Behaga,[50] the western sky close the doors of its factory of golden toys, and the moon on the east rise over the ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... so dexterous and obedient, that the sculptor may be free to struggle soul to soul with the elusive moral element that he has to transfigure as he embodies it. If Paganini, who uttered his soul through the strings of his violin, spent three days without practising, he lost what he called the stops of his instrument, meaning the sympathy between the wooden frame, the strings, the bow, and himself; if he had lost this alliance, he would have been no more than ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... into the habit of sociability. Every evening he would come down to our camp, usually bringing his violin, and sit with us for hours at our camp fire. His cats—he had near a dozen of them—came trailing after him, and his two dogs trotted by his side. Two or three of the cats sprang into his lap as soon as he sat down, and the rest snarled at the dogs for appropriating the choice positions nearest ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... yet my eyes have not closed themselves to sleep: Alexis and Brilliard give me hopes of a kind return to this, and have brought their flute and violin to charm me into a slumber: if Sylvia love, as I am sure she does, she will wake me with a dear consent to see me; if not, I only ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... insist on his playing; that was, if I did not mind and her uncle gave his permission. Perry smiled. There was less fire in his eyes when I vowed that not till I had listened again to the song of his beloved violin would I stir from my chair. So he settled back to pay the price and hear the story of Flora Martin ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... kind of handling in drawing; but here, the boldness cheats the unlearned by looking like the precision of the true man. It is very strange how much better our ears are than our eyes in this country: if an ignorant man were to be "bold" with a violin, he would not get many admirers, though his boldness was far below that of ninety-nine out of a hundred drawings ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... endeavoured to find out the truth of the matter. Mr. Carter explained the circumstances, and showed that, far from being a source of disorder, his wife's public-house was an influence for good. 'I take down my violin,' he continued, 'and play them a few tunes, which gives me an opportunity of seeing that they get no more liquor than necessary for refreshment; and if the young people propose a dance, I seldom ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... circumstances. She kept an Italian Warehouse by the Sign of The two Olive Posts, in the broad part of the Strand, almost opposite to Exeter Change, and sold all sorts of Italian Silks, Lustrings, Satins, Paduasoys, Velvets, Damasks, Fans, Leghorn Hats, Flowers, Violin Strings, Books of Essences, Venice Treacle, Balsams, Florence Cordials, Oil, Olives, Anchovies, Capers, Vermicelli, Bologna Sausages, Parmesan Cheese, Naples Soap, and similar delicate cates from foreign parts. All her friends put her down as a forty-thousand-pounder. In Brief, she professed ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... quattrocento, Or something equally rare and priceless, Though its outward fashions perhaps entice less: A Sultan's slipper, a Bishop's mitre, Or the helmet owned by a Roundhead fighter, Or an old buff coat by the years worn thin, Or—what do you say to the violin? I'll wager you've many, so you can't miss one, And I—well, I have a mind for this one, This which was made, as you must know, Three hundred years and a year ago By one who dwelt in Cremona city For me—but ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann
... jar; a tall Dutch clock was going through a gavotte with a spindle-legged ancient chair; a very droll porcelain figure of Zitzenhausen was bowing to a very stiff soldier in terre cuite of Ulm; an old violin of Cremona was playing itself, and a queer little shrill plaintive music that thought itself merry came from a painted spinet covered with faded roses; some gilt Spanish leather had got up on the wall and laughed; a Dresden ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... which she was the cause, made her feel happy. She enjoyed the pleasure of those around her. With her compassionate eyes she thanked her mother in the distance for having prepared this fete in honor of her marriage. The clarionet, violin, and cornet sounded a last modulation, then the final cadence put an end to the bounds of the dances. Each took his lady to her place—the mayor with pompous gait, Serge with as much grace as if he had been at an ambassador's ball and was ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... the washing bills, was now engaged in tying certain pieces of bladder round certain pots of preserves. The eldest Miss Morton, a young woman of five or six-and-twenty, who was about to be very advantageously married to a young gentleman who dealt in coals and played the violin (for N——- was a very musical town), had just joined her for the purpose of extorting "The Swiss Boy, with variations," out of a sleepy little piano, that emitted a very painful cry under the awakening ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... A man does not undertake to run an engine or manage a piece of machinery without some careful examination of its parts and capabilities, and some inquiry whether he have the necessary knowledge, skill, and strength to make it do itself and him justice. A man does not try to play on the violin without seeing if his fingers are long and flexible enough to bring out the harmonies and raise his performance above the grade of dismal scraping to that of divine music. What should we think of a man who should set a whole orchestra of instruments upon playing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... over, and the Chinese cook and waiter had cleared the room, the major brought out a violin, and asked if ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... a poem must be kept AND USED, like a meerschaum, or a violin. A poem is just as porous as the meerschaum;—the more porous it is, the better. I mean to say that a genuine poem is capable of absorbing an indefinite amount of the essence of our own humanity,—its tenderness, its heroism, its regrets, its aspirations, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... himself the instance that pointed and adorned his various talk. Nor could a young man have found elsewhere a place so set apart from envy, fear, discontent, or any of the passions that debase; a life so honest and composed; a soul like an ancient violin, so subdued to harmony, responding to a touch in music—as in that dining-room, with Mr. Hunter chatting at the eleventh hour, under the shadow of eternity, fearless ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... savage whoopings, songs and dances. They had got a reprobate blind fiddler into the parlour, where their punch-bowl steamed—a most agreeable and roistering sinner, who sang indescribable songs to the quaver of his violin, and entertained the company with Saturnalian vivacity, jokes, gibes, and wicked stories. Larry Cleary, thou man of sin and music! methinks I see thee now. Thy ugly, cunning, pitted face, twitching and grinning; thy small, sightless ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... on the harpsichord, as I have before said, obliged us with two or three lessons. Each of the ladies did the like, and prevailed upon me to play a tune or two: but Miss Cope, as well as Miss L., surpassed me much. We all sung too in turns, and Mr. B. took the violin, in which he excels. Lord Davers obliged us on the violincello: Mr. H. played on the German flute, and sung us a fop's song, and performed it in character; so that we had an exceeding gay evening, and parted with great satisfaction on all ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... not yet been considered proficient enough to take an active part in the monthly entertainment, but Flossie's name was one of the first on the list. She played the violin remarkably well, better than almost anybody else at Chessington; and as she was seldom nervous, her pieces were generally very successful. The day following Evelyn Fletcher's fright happened to be "Mutual Improvement Friday". The girls only spent a short time at preparation, and then went ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... scarce and will soon disappear from the face of the earth as completely as the mastodon. The present application of the saying is to the people of Goa, who, while they carry through the world patronymics which breathe of conquest and discovery, devote their energies rather to the violin and the art of cookery. The caviller may object to the application of the words "fine art" to culinary operations, but the objection rests on superficial thought. A deeper view will show that art is in the artist, not in his subject or his materials. Perusal ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... were. The city was hung with flags and lamps. Bands played—the performers a little out of practice, because, of course, crows can't play the flute or the violin or the trombone—but the effect was very gay indeed. Then came the time—it was quite dark—when the King rose up on his throne and spoke; and Elsie, among all her new friends, listened with them to ...
— The Magic World • Edith Nesbit
... containing the musicians' instruments, followed this tilted wagon. Some members of the orchestra would not part with theirs, and behind the saddle of many a mounted virtuoso or attendant was fastened a violin case or a shapeless bag which ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... India some new faith, or whether they have such customs there?"—Then, after a brief pause, she asked him: "Had he continued to occupy himself with music during the time of his journeys?"—In reply Muzio ordered the Malay to bring him his Indian violin. It resembled those of the present day, only, instead of four strings it had three; a bluish snake-skin was stretched across its top, and the slender bow of reed was semi-circular in form, and on its very tip glittered a ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... was suddenly diverted from this subject, which was evidently growing to be a painful one to one of the company, by the sound of a violin played with, singular skill and ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... for rest. When Felix Mendelssohn was in Rome he made the sculptor's workshop his headquarters, and sometimes the two would play "four hands," or else Thorwaldsen would accompany the "Song Without Words" upon his violin. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... a fishing-rod, etc. Toward centre is a trench with the remains of a fire smoldering in it, and a frying pan and some soiled dishes beside it. There is a log, used as a seat, and near it are several books, a bound volume of music lying open, and a violin case with violin. To the right is a rocky wall, with a cleft ...
— Prince Hagen • Upton Sinclair
... familiar objects in this unfamiliar scene. Her father's travelling rug lay folded on the red velvet sofa; his cap and gloves were there, just as he had flung them down; his violin, dumb in its black coffin-like case, stood propped up against the wall. Everywhere else (only gradually discerned) were things belonging to Madame, evidence of her supreme and intimate occupation of ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... had been some days on shore, we had a very diverting scene with them, which exhibited strongly the great difference there is in the nature of the two classes of savages we now had such opportunities of observing. I had brought my violin from Sydney, on which I used to play occasionally. The New Zealanders generally expressed the greatest dislike to it; and my companions used to rally me much on the subject, saying it was not that the savages did ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... throbbing powerfully like a racing engine. Still there was satanic keenness in his mind to-night, a capacity for concentration that surprised him. Somewhere in his head, taut like an overstrung ligament or the string of a great violin, something sinister droned and hummed and subtly threatened. For the hundredth time he made a systematic list of recurrent symbols, noting again the puzzling similarity of the twisted signs, but no sign appeared frequently enough to do ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... beef, and such a plum pudding! We went to church in the morning in spite of the distance, and a heavy gale blowing in our teeth coming back. Fine old English holly, with many a scarlet berry on it, adorned the church; and the instruments, violin, violoncello, flageolet, etcetera, etcetera, with the voices, were in great tune and wind; and the sermon was appropriate,—"Love, goodwill towards all men," just long enough to send us away in a happy temper, with its leading idea or principle ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... sound rhetoric to speak of the statue as existing in the block of marble before the sculptor touches it. How easy to fall into such false analogies! Can we say that the music existed in the flute or in the violin before the musician touches them? The statue in the form of an idea or a conception exists in the mind of the sculptor, and he fashions the marble accordingly. Does the book exist in the pot of printer's ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... music. They often give concerts, to which the men come "from long distances—decked out like male ostriches." In these concerts the women improvise the songs, accompanying themselves on the tambourine and a sort of violin or rebaza. They are much sought after in marriage, because of the title of cherif which they confer ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... said, is of my mother's playing. I see myself, sitting on a great black book, the family Bible. I must have been very small, and it was a large Bible, and lay on a table in the sitting-room. I see my mother standing before me, with her violin on her arm. She is light, young, and very graceful; beauty seems to flow from her face in a kind of dark brightness, if I may use such an expression; her eyes are soft and deep. I have seen no other eyes like my mother Marie's. She ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... stormy trip, though I have the greatest confidence in the Captain's seamanship and in the soundness of the vessel. Played cribbage with Mrs. Tibbs after supper, and Harton gave us a couple of tunes on the violin. ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... that was heaped with notebooks and papers and had a telephone on it, and all sorts of mysterious instruments in shining brass and silver, as brightly polished as the gleaming thing with a lid, shaped like a violin-case and with a spirit-lamp underneath it, in which all sorts of wicked-looking knives and forceps were boiled when they were taken out of the black bag; or into Mrs. Saxham's bedroom, that was on the floor above, and was done up ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... dancing and "jubilee beating," was going on in all directions. This latter performance is strictly southern. It supplies the place of a violin, or of other musical instruments, and is played so easily, that almost every farm has its "Juba" beater. The performer improvises as he beats, and sings his merry songs, so ordering the words as to have them fall pat with the movement of his hands. ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... fearful thing. She could not face the thought—at least not yet. Perhaps she would feel more courageous to-morrow. On the ship she had slept little. Her nerves felt like violin strings stretched too tight—stretched to the point ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... the room he found the ladies and gentlemen assembled there tripping the light fantastic toe to the music of a harp, piano, and violin. Ernestine L. Rose was president of the occasion, and gave a very interesting sketch of the life and labors of this noble man. After which they had a grand supper, and Lucy Stone replied to the toast, "Woman, coequal with man." The ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... violin, drifting out through the open windows of the Hall, suggested that the second part of the concert had begun. All the undergraduates, however, except the few who figured in the programme, had waited outside till their mistress should re-appear. The sisters and cousins of ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... a case after your own heart. This poor lad is an orphan now, sick and friendless. He has been a street-musician; and I found him in a cellar, mourning for his dead father, and his lost violin. I think there is something in him, and have a fancy that between us we may give this little man a lift. You cure his overtasked body, Fritz help his neglected mind, and when he is ready I'll see if he is a genius or only a boy with a talent which may earn his bread for ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... hand, with its front door invitingly open, attracted his attention, and the cheering sounds of a violin, scraping out some popular air, gave a further impetus to inclination, and the tramp turned to the open door and entered. Seated on an empty barrel, his foot executing vigorous time to his own music, sat the magician ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... The Doctor's artistic passion was for music. Unfortunately, it was not materially portable, like a writing-pad, and there would have been something unseemly in the spectacle of a physician fiddling in his carriage, so he nursed this love in seclusion. His violin was his one indulgence, and when he permitted himself to dream, it was of a life with music in it. Sometimes he wished his wife were musical; more often he congratulated himself that she was not. He was sincerely attached ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... superstition around them, which is notable in that group of great naturalists who were boys in Montpellier at that day. Rabelais seems to have liked Rondelet, and no wonder: he was a cheery, lovable, honest little fellow, very fond of jokes, a great musician and player on the violin, and who, when he grew rich, liked nothing so well as to bring into his house any buffoon or strolling-player to make fun for him. Vivacious he was, hot-tempered, forgiving, and with a power of learning and a power of work which ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... were at Deerhurst, arranging with Mr. Wilmot to give you lessons? He has frequently expressed himself as not being satisfied with your progress. Shortly before his death I had a letter from him, in which he urged me to employ one of the best violin teachers in Baltimore for you at the end of your course at Oak Knowe. I feel it is a small favor, to grant, dear, so if you are still of the notion that you were intended for a great violinist, I have decided to give you a ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond
... her song. Then she ceased singing and to the far-away and yet distinct accompaniment of some stringed instrument in the orchestra, she began to dance. Holding her instrument in a graceful fashion against her shoulder as one holds a violin, and with her flowing white gown caught in the other hand, she bowed and smiled and instantly seemed transformed. From the statuesque and dreamy singer she became a marvel of graceful motion. To and fro she swept from end to end of the great rug, her tiny feet ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben
... yes, he did. Whitney was no boob." (This time Mrs. McGregor failed to protest; perhaps she decided it was useless.) "He had, as I told you, made wheels and canes and knives and nails in his father's workshop at home. He had even made a violin. So he wasn't at all fussed about trying to make a cotton gin. I guess he had a hunch ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... sighed with her, but Felix and Barbara were frankly delighted with the painted floors, the casement windows, and the low, big-beamed rooms. In the evenings, as the two would sit on the wide doorstep, the voice of Felix's violin would mingle with the voice of the wind in the oak, while Barbara listened, entranced, for her brother was a real master of his instrument. It would laugh and sing and sigh, while Barbara pressed closer and closer to his knee while the stars came ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... son of the soil, who was very slow to understand sorrows of any kind; and least of all, those which lie in the fancy of a dreaming and a doubtful lover. At this moment, when the possession of a new violin absorbed all his thoughts, his mind was particularly obtuse on the subject of sentimental grievances, and the almost voluptuous delight which filled his eyes when William entered his chamber, entirely prevented him from seeing the ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... severest censor. Not one of the professional critics could put their fingers on Van Kuyp's weak spots—"his sore music," as he jestingly called it—so surely as his wife. She had studied; she had even played the violin in public; but she gave up her virtuosa ambitions for the man she had married during their student years in Germany. Now the old doubts came to life as the chivalric tones of Weber rose to her sharpened senses. Why ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... this general musical training, about the same for all students of music, each student must acquire technical command of the chosen instrument. This is necessarily acquired by practice on the instrument, whether it be piano, violin, oboe, or whatever else. In the same way, vocal technique is acquired by practice in actual singing. Practice makes perfect, with the ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... obstreperous music and human voices, while in several there appeared to be a sort of conjuring exhibition in course of performance. Further on, there came from the opposite side of the way the screaming of a flageolet, heard far above its accompaniment of a violin and a couple of horns, to all of which the shuffling and scraping of many feet formed a sort of dull bass, as the dancers whirled round in their interminable waltz. Looking into the window of the building thus outrageously conspicuous, we saw a motley crowd of persons of both sexes, and ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... and House-Decorator, &c. Repairs Neatly Executed. Instruction in the Violin. Funerals at the Shortest Notice. ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... room ran the entire length of the house. A raised dais, whose faded carpet had half rotted away, occupied an alcove at one end; upon it four or five wooden stools were placed; one of these was overturned; on another a violin in its baggy green baize cover was lying. Straight high-backed chairs were pushed against the walls on either side; in front of an open fireplace with a low wooden mantel two small cushioned divans were ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... did not more pleasantly recall the things that he and Ben Jonson had seen done at the Mermaid than an old Brook Farmer remembers the long walks, eight good miles in and eight miles out, to see the tall, willowy Schmidt swaying with his violin at the head of the orchestra, to hear the airy ripple of Auber's 'Zanetta,' the swift passionate storm of Beethoven's 'Egmont,' the symphonic murmur of woods and waters and summer fields in the limpid 'Pastorale,' ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... Perhaps my eyes did say it. At any rate, she looked as straight at me as I at her, and I noticed that she paled a little and shrank—yet continued to look, as if I were compelling her. But her voice, beautifully clear, and lingering in the ears like the resonance of the violin after the bow has swept its strings and lifted, was perfectly self-possessed, as she said to her brother: "That will be delightful—if you think ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... his pocket, and drank some of it undiluted. Under the influence of this spirit he perceived that Hira's eyes were beautiful. In truth they were so—large, dark, brilliant, and seductive. He said, "Your eyes are heavenly!" Hira smiled. Debendra saw in a corner a broken violin. Humming a tune, he took the violin and touched it with the bow. "Where did you ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
... coasted through the clear and bracing air on swift toboggans. In the evening they flocked to a chosen rendezvous, where a home-bred violinist tuned them through gay quadrilles; and anon the lonely violin would be drowned in the lusty voices of the dancers, who suited ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... restaurant, upon a stand, Roumanians in red frocks were playing; all swarthy, white-toothed, with the faces of whiskered, pomaded apes, with their hair licked down. The director of the orchestra, bending forward and affectedly swaying, was playing upon a violin and making unseemly sweet eyes at the public—the eyes of a man-prostitute. And everything together—this abundance of tiresome electric lights, the exaggeratedly bright toilettes of the ladies, the odours of modish, spicy perfumes, ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... rustling noise. The Princesses had at length arrived, and the audience was standing up as they came in and took their seats. After a brief silence the rustling noise was renewed as the audience sat down again. Then the pianist hurried up to a grave-looking girl who was tenderly holding a violin, took her hand and led her away behind the screen. A moment later the opening bars of ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... to when they have not anything to do, to see that there is quite as much, if not more, peril to communion of soul with God in times when the whole nature is somewhat relaxed, and the strings are loosened, like those of a violin screwed down a turn or two of the peg, than there is in ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... while of odours you would always encounter a smell of leather from the saddler's shop, and a mingled message of bacon and cheese from the very general dealer's—in whose window hung what seemed three hams, and only he who looked twice would discover that the middle object was no ham, but a violin—while at every corner lurked a scent of gillyflowers and southernwood. Idly supreme, Portlossie the upper looked down in condescension, that is in half concealed contempt, on ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... long as she lived was Tony Holiday to forget that dance with Alan Massey. As a musician pours himself into his violin, as a poet puts his soul into his sonnet, as a sculptor chisels his dream in marble, so her companion flung his passion and despair and imploring into his dancing. They forgot the others, forgot everything but themselves. They might have been ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... fine performer on the flute; Mr. Lanman played the violin, and his wife the piano; and they discoursed some excellent music. Then, still better, there was singing. The deep-chested Forrest had a superb bass voice; Lanman a fine tenor; Annie's voice was light, but exceedingly sweet and expressive; and they sang several ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... had the casting vote. Now Flora, who seemed to impose it as a rule upon herself never to countenance any proposal which might seem to encourage Waverley, had voted for music, providing the Baron would take his violin to accompany Fergus. 'I wish you joy of your taste, Miss Mac-Ivor,' thought Edward, as they sought for his book. 'I thought it better when we were at Glennaquoich; but certainly the Baron is no great performer, and Shakespeare is ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... centre so that it can vibrate freely at its edges, is required. It is evenly and not too thickly covered with fine sand or lycopodium powder and then caused to vibrate acoustically by the repeated drawing of a violin-bow with some pressure across the edge of the plate until a steady note becomes audible. Through the vibrations thus caused within the plate, the particles of sand or powder are set in movement and caused to collect in certain stationary ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... to himself a beautiful wife, and had become a more settled character; though his exuberant spirits and love of enjoyment still remained, and rendered him the gayest and most agreeable of travelling companions. Nagel, the celebrated violin player, and his lively little wife, were also among the passengers. They were returning from America, where he had been exchanging his silvery notes against good gold coin. Nagel is a Jew by birth, a most accomplished man, speaking seven languages with equal elegance, and much ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... melodious grandeur from all English orchestras, the composition of which, I confess, is not acceptable to my ear, from the predominance of the clamorous instruments and the absolute tyranny of the violin. The choruses were divine to hear, and when Grassini appeared in some interlude, as she often did, and poured forth her passionate soul as Andromache at the tomb of Hector, &c., I question whether any Turk, ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... visit him so frequently; but, liking him, I go again and again. So with Dickens, Mark Twain, and Shakespeare. The story goes that a second Uncle Remus was sitting on a stump in the depths of a forest sawing away on an old discordant violin. A man, who chanced to come upon him, asked what he was doing. With no interruption of his musical activities, he answered: "Boss, I'se serenadin' m' soul." Book or violin, 'tis all the same. Uncle ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... informed, is the tone; as the tone is produced by the vibration of the air in the organ pipe, and not by that of the sides of it; though the latter, when it exists, may alter the tone though, not the note, like the belly of a harpsichord, or violin. ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... trampin' around!" exclaimed Budge, in great excitement. "There!—the piano's shut! Isn't that too mean! Oh, I'll tell you—here's Uncle Harry's violin." ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... know have been her father, but whose real mission in life was to be a model for the Zangiacomo of Victory. Having got a clear line of sight I naturally (being idle) continued to look at the girl through all the second part of the programme. The shape of her dark head inclined over the violin was fascinating, and, while resting between the pieces of that interminable programme she was, in her white dress and with her brown hands reposing in her lap, the very image of dreamy innocence. The mature, bad-tempered woman at the ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... at Salvington, near Worthing, in Sussex. His father was John Selden, a farmer, known as the 'Minstrel' on account of his proficiency in music. Aubrey describes him as 'a yeomanly man of about forty pounds a year, who played well on the violin, in which he took much delight.' Selden was first educated at the free grammar school at Chichester, and afterwards proceeded with an exhibition to Hart Hall, since merged in Magdalen Hall, Oxford. On leaving ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... course, the national instrument, and the songs never have the same charm with any other accompaniment; but the Spanish women of to-day are prouder of being able to play the piano or violin than of excelling in the instrument which suits them so much better. The Spaniard is nervously anxious not to appear, or to be, behind any other European nation in what we call "modernity," a word that signifies that to be "up-to-date" is of paramount importance, leaving wholly ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... direction and little stairs here and there so that one first went up and then down and then up again. Robin had almost given up her search and had just about decided she was lost, for turn whichever way she might, nothing seemed familiar, when she heard the harsh, scraping strains of a violin, vibrant with stormy feeling. ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... agree with him. He used to be such a pleasant boy, but last winter he went quite mad over Helen Sherwood, Mr. Meredith's cousin, our beauty, you know—I am so sorry she isn't here; you'd be interested in meeting her, I'm sure—and he took up the violin." ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... program consisted of various tricks performed by the dogs. I had not the slightest notion what they did. I was so nervous and taken up in repeating my own part. All that I remember was that Vitalis put aside his fife and took his violin and played accompaniments to the dogs' maneuvers; sometimes it was dance music, sometimes ...
— Nobody's Boy - Sans Famille • Hector Malot
... degrees of perfection—it is never on the same level with the double intellect of genius; just as the open chest notes of the human voice, however high, are essentially different from the falsetto notes. These, like the two upper octaves of the flute and the harmonics of the violin, are produced by the column of air dividing itself into two vibrating halves, with a node between them; while the open chest notes of the human voice and the lower octave of the flute are produced by the undivided column ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... would have passed Curtis Carlyle with a sniff. But the ragged little "poh white" used to sit beside her piano by the hour and try to get in an alto with one of those kazoos that boys hum through. Before he was thirteen he was picking up a living teasing ragtime out of a battered violin in little cafes round Nashville. Eight years later the ragtime craze hit the country, and he took six darkies on the Orpheum circuit. Five of them were boys he had grown up with; the other was the little mulatto, Babe Divine, who was a wharf nigger round New ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... all day. I hope we shall live through this noise and get a little rest, but I give up the idea of ever seeing Portland," answered Dora, staring with all her blue eyes at the display of musical instruments about the room, and longing to stop her ears, for several of the children were playing on the violin, flute, horn or harp. They were street musicians, and even the baby seemed to be getting ready to take part in the concert, for he sat on the floor beside an immense bass horn taller than himself, with his rosy lips at the mouth piece and his cheeks puffed out ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... appearance of a holiday. The people were dressed in their best; the men riding about among the houses, and the women sitting on carpets before the doors. Under the piazza of a pulpera two men were seated, decked out with knots of ribbons and bouquets, and playing the violin and the Spanish guitar. These are the only instruments, with the exception of the drums and trumpets at Monterey, that I ever heard in California; and I suspect they play upon no others, for at a great fandango at which I was afterwards present, and where they mustered ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... was safely housed, Rumour, the mother of Legend, got busy about him. Folk began to whisper to each other the news that wonderful music was heard proceeding from out of the stern walls of Dalibor's prison; the sound of a violin was heard by the many who were attracted to the spot by Rumour. No doubt Dalibor learnt to play the violin: the Czech is so intensely musical that he will master any instrument before he has got the hang of the grammar of his own language, the fiddle is ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... their places and Mme. Melba accompanied by piano, harp, and violin sang Gounod's ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... well-to-do residents chose to give an entertainment in the schoolroom, and admitted the poor into the cheaper seats. Everybody knows the nature of these functions. There were readings and recitations; young ladies sang drawing-room songs or played the violin; tableaux were displayed or a polite farce was performed; a complimentary speech wound up the entertainment; and then the performers withdrew again for several months into the aloofness of their residences, while the poor got through their winter evenings as best they could, in their mean cottages ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... of neuroses. The inspiration offered by music is well-known, and it is doubtless a stimulant to the intellectual work. Bacon, Milton, Warburton, and Alfieri needed music to stimulate them in their labors, and it is said that Bourdaloue always played an air on the violin before ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... magnificence nor for beauty; and we were all so dull and languid, that I was extremely glad when we were summoned to the orchestra, upon the opening of a concert; in the course of which I had the pleasure of hearing a concerto on the violin by Mr. Barthelemon, who to me seems a player of exquisite fancy, ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... in the world was John, after his father, my mother's brother, John O'Loughlin. The elder John was a brewer's traveller, and often came to our house in Liverpool, bringing his violin with him. He had a wide knowledge of old Irish airs, and to his accompaniment we had many a genuine Irish night, singing the stirring songs then ...
— The Life Story of an Old Rebel • John Denvir
... seeing the fun of it for a moment. This is partly perhaps the spirit of spontaneous institutionalism in American democracy, breaking out in the wrong place. They make humour an institution; and a man will be set to tell an anecdote as if to play the violin. But when the story is told in America it really is amusing; and when these jokes are reprinted in England they are often not even intelligible. With all the stupidity of the millionaire and the monopolist, the enterprising proprietor ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... of young folks had assembled at his uncle's to dance. One of the company, named Cummings, played on the violin. In the course of the evening Oliver undertook a hornpipe. His short and clumsy figure, and his face pitted and discolored with the small-pox, rendered him a ludicrous figure in the eyes of the musician, who ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... Fatty Melchers today to make a violin, we cut a piece of wood the shape of a violin then take some horsehairs and strech them over a brige and you can play a tune on them. in school i learnt to play on a piece of india rubber. you pull a piece of elastic out of your congres boot and hold ...
— The Real Diary of a Real Boy • Henry A. Shute
... back to it, staring out of the window, and supporting herself on the table by her violin, which she held by the neck. At Johanna's entrance, she started, grew very red, and hastily raised ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... sciences right royally. The Italian opera at Warsaw cannot have been of mean standing, seeing that artists such as the composers Paisiello and Cimarosa, and the great violinist, composer, and conductor Pugnani, with his pupil Viotti (the latter playing second violin in the orchestra), were members of the company. And the King's band of foreign and native players has been called one of the best in Europe. Still, all this was but the hothouse bloom of exotics. To bring about a natural harvest of home produce something else ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... the Martels for the silent, somber grandeur of the Bartletts. His affections had taken root in the shabby little brown house that always seemed to be humming gaily to itself. When the piano was not being played, the violin or guitar was. There were bursts of laughter, snatches of song, and young people going and coming through ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... it; those who are interested in the music lesson and those who are indifferent or even openly scornful; those who are full of energy and enthusiasm and those who are lazy and indifferent and will do only what they are made to do; those who have had lessons on piano or violin and have acquired considerable proficiency in performance, and those who have just come in from an outlying rural school where no music has ever been taught, and are therefore not able to read music, have no musical perception or taste whatsoever, and are frequently not even able to "carry a tune." ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... were separated, and if a rumour of an incursion of Paulistas was in the air, the Indians carried arms even in the sacred buildings and at the solemn feasts. Mass was celebrated with a full band, the oboe, fagot, lute, harp, cornet, clarinet, violin, viola, and all other kinds of music, figuring in the inventories of the thirty towns. Indeed, in two of the inventories*3* an opera called 'Santiago' is mentioned, which had special costumes and properties to put it on the ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... Army would be better than this. He liked spooks, he said, at second hand, but not otherwise. Too funny how people take dear Rrchud seriously. I'm glad to say the orchestra has stayed with us. Come into Rrchud's study, won't you, while I just go and help the first violin to dish up ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... Peters' absence at once. "We seem to have our first deserter," he commented evenly. His voice was as richly resonant as the tone of some fine old violin. He hesitated almost imperceptibly between words, like one to whom English was ...
— The Cavern of the Shining Ones • Hal K. Wells
... them there came the shrill shriek of a violin. It wailed itself into silence, and then broke forth again in a series of long drawn-out whines. ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... yellow and red and brown were falling, and the wind that came up the valley played on the boughs like a bow on the strings of a violin. The mountain ridges piled against each other cut the blue sky like a saber's edge, and the forests on the slopes rising terrace above terrace burned in vivid colours painted by the brush of autumn. The despatch bearer's eye, sweeping peaks and slopes and valleys, saw nothing living save himself ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... ordinary domestic and fashionable phases. In the hair-dressing scenes we hear the gossip of the periwigged barber; in the dressmaking scenes, the chatter of the maid; in the dancing-school, the pleasant music of the violin. There is no tragic note anywhere. Everybody dresses, dances, makes bows, takes coffee, as if there were nothing else in the world that wanted doing. A tone of high courtesy, of great refinement, coupled with an all-pervading cheerfulness, ...
— The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance - Third Edition • Bernhard Berenson
... after many another such, he sat entranced, listening to the song of a violin, alone and perfect, soaring and sailing the empyrean unconvoyed,—and Barbara in his heart was listening with him. He had given up hope of seeing her again in this world, but not all hope of seeing her again ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... to her desk and took up a violin that lay there. "Now, children, we'll begin the afternoon session by singing 'America,'" she said. She played the air over a little very sweetly and stirringly, and then as the children stood up she came down close to them, standing just in front of Betsy. She drew the bow ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield
... then," said Macdonald, looking inwards while he lowered his violin, to which he was passionately attached, into the canoe, "you hef not much time to waste, Martha, for it wass time ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... what manner she could explain to the Mother Superior that the mistake about the hour had been no fault of hers—and the Mother Superior, alas! would be sure to make inquiries as to the friends whom she had visited—the magic violin of M. Szmera played its first notes, accompanied by Madame Odinska on the piano, and by a delicious little flute. They played an overture, the dreamy sweetness of which extorted cries of admiration from ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... sadness—laddie buck!" he exclaimed as he took his violin from its case while I sat wiping my eyes. "Away with sadness! She often raps at my door, and while I try not to be rude, I always pretend to be very busy. Just a light word o' recognition by way o' common politeness! Then laugh, if ye can an' do it quickly, lad, ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... tomahawk, jumping, boxing and wrestling, foot and horse-racing. Playing marbles and pitching dollars, cards and backgammon, were little known, and were considered base or effeminate. The bugle, the violin, the fife and drum, furnished all the musical entertainments. These were much used and passionately admired. Weddings, military trainings, house-raisings, chopping frolics, were often followed with the fiddle, and ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley
... with every passing year music was less practised in Vaermland. The guitar, with its mouldy, silken ribbon and its worn screws, and the dented horn, with faded tassels and cord were put away in the lumber-room in the attic, and the dust settled inches deep on the long, iron-bound violin boxes. Yet the less little Ruster had to do with flute and music-pen, so much the more must he turn to the brandy flask, and at last he became quite a drunkard. ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... Maud was musical, and practised scales two hours a day as a preliminary before settling down for another two or three hours of sonatas and fugues. Elsie locked herself in her bedroom for a like period, and the wails of her violin came floating downstairs like the lament of a lost soul. Nan appropriated a chilly attic, carved wood and her fingers at the same time, and clanged away at copper work, knocking her nails black and blue with ill-directed strokes of the hammer, as she manufactured the panels ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... only this; when we lift and expand properly, we influence directly the form and adjustment of all the vocal muscles, and especially the organ of sound itself. In this way the voice is actually and artistically tuned for the production of correct tone, as is the violin in the hands ...
— The Renaissance of the Vocal Art • Edmund Myer
... my zither, so we can have music as we sail, and Grif will bring his violin, and Ralph can imitate a banjo so that you'd be sure he had one. I do hope it will be fine, it is so splendid to go round like other folks and enjoy myself," cried Jill, with a little bounce of satisfaction at the prospect of ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... organ. Elfie pressed forward eagerly to look at the latter, and found to her delight that it was open. Music was her passion, and she was almost as skilful at the organ as at her piano or with her violin. ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre
... by the voice gliding from one tone to another, and is equally available on stringed instruments, the violin or 'cello, the mandoline or zither. It is a grace of style much abused by inartistic singers. Being an ornament, good taste dictates that it be used sparingly. A frequent sliding from one tone to another is a grave fault, and most disagreeable to a cultivated ear. ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... weird music that had drawn him to that place had been partially satisfied by the discovery of a violin on the floor beside the sick man's bed. Now, as he flung himself wearily down on the lounge for a bit of rest, he became conscious of the muffled b-r-r-r of a dynamo. That accounted in a measure for the electric lights, but still left our lad in a daze ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... was at Crappy Zachy's much of the time, for she was very fond of hearing him play the violin; yes, and Crappy Zachy on one occasion bestowed such high praise upon her as to say: "You are not stupid;" for Amrei, after listening to his playing for a long time, had remarked: "It's wonderful how a fiddle can hold its breath so long; I can't do ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... rude fortress aptly named Farmers' Castle, there came floating by a long, slender craft, rigged somewhat like a schooner, and displaying from its mast the flag of the United States. The music of a violin, faintly heard, was wafted across the water from the deck, upon which could be seen a bevy of ladies, a few dancing, others waving handkerchiefs to those watching from the island. By means of a field-glass which Mrs. Blennerhassett handed him, Burr could bring out plainly the forms ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... that these gardens were the work of a Scotchman, and a Moray loon; yet such was the case." The history of the personage in question is a somewhat singular one: "Jamie Sinclair, the garden boy, had a natural genius, and played the violin. Lady Cumming had this boy educated by the family tutor, and sent him to London, where he was well known in 1836-7-8, for his skill in drawing and colouring. Mr. Knight, of the Exotic Nursery, for whom he used to draw orchids and ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... who inspires the poet; who makes the flute, guitar, and violin eloquent under the fingers of the wandering and homeless artist: it is she who bears him upon her light wing from the source of the Moldau to that of the Danube; it is she who crowns his dark locks with the glittering dewdrops, who makes the sparkling stars ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of the king, enfeebled by age and gout, no longer allowed him to devote himself to the pleasures of the chase, he began playing on the violin more than ever before, in order, he said, to perfect himself in it. This was beginning rather late. As is well known, he had for his first violin teacher the celebrated Alexander Boucher, with whom he greatly enjoyed playing; but he had a mania for beginning ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... fantastic, somewhere a personal magic in the inimitable twist or lie of a bow—; her face looked out at you from a g or an x, a gesture flashed back to you in a sudden distinguished stroke of the pen, and her voice was somewhere, everywhere, among the words, like a violin. ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... habituation. It costs less trouble to fold a paper when it has been folded already. This saving of trouble is due to the essential nature of habit, which brings it about that, to reproduce the effect, a less amount of the outward cause is required. The sounds of a violin improve by use in the hands of an able artist, because the fibers of the wood at last contract habits of vibration conformed to harmonic relations. This is what gives such inestimable value to instruments that have belonged ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... moonlight, or in the dusk of evening, or possibly on a densely clouded day—is at this moment alive within me. And yet, with a single exception, I have never received from musical or other sounds a psychic color effect—the exception being that certain tones of a violin leave the same mental impression as does the sight of purple. As I am not acquainted with the technical language of either painter or musician, I can attempt to describe these effects only in common language. I ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... may be arranged in the proper place to furnish the wedding processional—or perhaps some musical friend may be found to play the violin. ...
— Entertaining Made Easy • Emily Rose Burt
... there," he said; "I think if I had but my violin I could tell you all things. Because in music is all things. You must have feel that yourself. Only I fear you must smile at my language—it is not so easy to place your soul on a ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... books, and the country doctor began to assume in her eyes the proportions of a man of universal culture. He knew at least how to bring all he had into use, and succeeded in becoming something in the sweet lonely life, so ignorant and unsupported. He could play the violin too, and that with no mean expression—believing only in the expression, nowise in the feeling expressed: this accomplishment also he contrived she should, as if ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... a fish to swim, a humble amateur may be permitted to wish that Wagner had here resisted the tide of progress. It is not only that the tone and power of binding are injured, but the whole character of horns and trumpets is altered when they are expected to sing chromatic passages like the violin and the clarinet. As the point is of some interest, I should like to bring it before the reader with some examples. The essential character of the horns is nowhere more truly conveyed than in the soft passage near the beginning of the overture to Der Freischuetz, and ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... eye of a stranger on entering the living room was the array of different kinds of musical instruments. At one end of the room stood a small upright piano, a 'cello held one corner, a guitar another; upon a table a cornet was deposited, and on the piano a violin case could be seen, while a banjo hung from a ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... game that is always great fun. The players stand in rows before the leader or "conductor," who sings a verse from any well-known nonsense or other song. Then he says, pointing to one of the players, "and the first violin played this simple melody," whereupon the two sing the verse over again, the player imitating with his arms the movements of a violin player, and with his voice the sound of a squeaking fiddle. Then the conductor says, pointing to another player, "and the big trombone played this simple melody." ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... valued most he reserved for another time. It was the "Barcarolle" from "Les Contes D' Hoffmann," sung by Farrar and Scotti, and he put on instead a tenor solo that had cost him three dollars in Globe. Then a violin solo, "Tambourin Chinois," by some man with a foreign name; and at last the record that he liked the best, the "Cradle Song," by Schumann-Heink. And as he played it again he saw Drusilla come out and stand in the ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... not find an idiot. I said, "Sir, you are doing this boy an injustice. He has but little mathematical sense, it is true, and he will never be able to add more than one column of figures with speed and correctness. Nature intended him for something different from a bank cashier. Give this boy a good violin, place him under competent instructors, spend seventy-five dollars on his musical education and he will display such magnificent talent that you will ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... of moderate cold, but clear and bracing; the air sparkles like the snow; everything seems dry and resonant, like the wood of a violin. All sounds are musical,—the voices of children, the cooing of doves, the crowing of cocks, the chopping of wood, the creaking of country sleds, the sweet jangle of sleighbells. The snow has fallen under a cold temperature, and the flakes are perfectly crystallized; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... but it had its serious side. We had no selections on the violin at that night's concert, nor for several nights after, for Mac's finger was badly swollen, and he could not use it. And for a long time I could make him as red as a beet and as angry as I pleased by just whispering in his ear, in the innocentest way: ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... once a doctor in Heidelberg University, and was ninety years old. He was so wasted by hunger that his body weighed less than forty pounds, and was in a disgusting condition. His bed and clothes were reeking with filth. Over the head of the bed hung a violin of great value. So miserly was the old professor that fifteen years ago he drove his wife and all his children from home, saying that it cost too much to feed and clothe them. From that day until yesterday, ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... six feet in width at the widest part, tapering gradually towards the bow and stern, which are brought to a wedge-like point, and turned over from the extremities towards the centre so as to resemble, in some degree, the head of a violin. ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... likes the song.' Then Naldo: ''Tis a pretty kind of fame At best, that comes of making violins; And saves no masses, either. Thou wilt go To purgatory none the less.' But he: ''Twere purgatory here to make them ill; And for my fame—when any master holds 'Twixt chin and hand a violin of mine, He will be glad that Stradivari lived, Made violins, and made them of the best. The masters only know whose work is good: They will choose mine, and while God gives them skill I give them instruments to play upon, God choosing ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... quarter o'clock, the orchestra, consisting of two flutes and a violin, issued from behind the curtain, and seated itself before some music stands ranged against the wall. The performers were amateurs (two bookkeepers, and a cashier in private life), and could not have been ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... how sweet, how excellent Is't with tongue and heart's consent, Thankful hearts and joyful tongues, To renown thy name in songs! When the morning paints the skies, When the sparkling stars arise, Thy high favours to rehearse, Thy firm faith, in grateful verse! Take the lute and violin, Let the solemn harp begin, Instruments strung with ten strings, While the silver cymbal rings. From thy works my joy proceeds; How I triumph in thy deeds! Who thy wonders can express? All thy thoughts are fathomless— Hid from men in knowledge blind, ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... Margaret has spoken, permit me to call your attention to her voice. Mellow and suave and of astonishing volume was Margaret's voice; it came not from the back of her throat, as most of our women's voices do, but from her chest; and I protest it had the timbre of a violin. Men, hearing her voice for the first time, were wont to stare at her a little and afterward to close their hands slowly, for always its modulations had the tonic sadness of distant music, and it thrilled you to much the ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... is a favourite musical composer and an accomplished violinist. In appearance, Don Laureano strongly resembles the renowned Paganini, and it is for this reason, together with his marvellous performances on the violin, that his admirers sometimes advise him to visit ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... behind us at eleven o'clock, but on one of its "balls and masks begun at midnight, burning ever to midday." It is like an Aztec revel for its flowers: the great stairways, leading up and down between the rooms that glow with light and resound with the tones of flute and violin, are wound with shrubs where art conceals everything but the branch and blossom; doors are arched with palms and long banana leaves; flowers swing from lintel and window and bracket, stream from the pictures, crown the statues; sprays ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... she murmured, and she smiled a strange, sweet smile, "do you know, I find you like a rare violin which hitherto has been used by ordinary musicians to play their popular airs upon, but which is now highly strung and being touched by the bow of an artist who loves it. And oh! the exquisite sounds ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... that are sick, those whose souls sing neither compassion for others nor their own anger. All those numerous people are sick who, like a violin without strings, merely echo every sound. Or would you say that the man whose memory is like a photographic plate on which the light has fallen and which cannot record any more impressions, is the healthy man? Is not memory the very highest ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... shake a foot amused themselves in dancing on the green to the music of the violin, ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton
... heard in a room, from behind a curtain, a soft and harmonious instrument, should we believe that chance, without the help of any human hand, could have formed such an instrument? Should we say that the strings of a violin, for instance, had of their own accord ranged and extended themselves on a wooden frame, whose several parts had glued themselves together to form a cavity with regular apertures? Should we maintain that the bow formed without art should be pushed by the wind to touch every ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... is, the salle is fully as interesting to me as the performance, good as that is—with a handsome, delicate-looking young professor of music playing the violin, an actor from the Palais Royale showing a diction altogether remarkable, two well-known gymnasts doing wonderful stunts on horizontal bars, a prize pupil from the Conservatory at Nantes acting, as only the French can, in a well- known little comedy, two ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... confidence that they are very good, better than my collection of poems, which are not worth a shot." Elsewhere he tells us, that when, after one of Paganini's concerts, he was passionately complimenting the great master on his violin-playing. Paganini interrupted him thus: "But how were you pleased ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... distinguished from my singing master, was a worthy old Englishman of the name of Shaw, who played on the violin, and had been at one time leader of the orchestra at Covent Garden Theatre. Indeed, it was to him that John Kemble addressed the joke (famous, because in his mouth unique) upon the subject of a song in the piece of ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... could play a violin splendidly. A man came along with one in his hands, and Oglesby asked if he might borrow it for the evening, to which the man consented. He commenced playing in order to attract the crowd from Robinson, and in order to break up his meeting. He succeeded; one by one they came ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... the most astonishing part of all; for they say in Strasbourg that his performance upon the violin was far finer than Paganini's; but there seems some secret in it, after all: for Madame Baptiste swears that he is Meerberger; and in fact the matter is far from being cleared up —nor can it ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... doing this boy an injustice. He has but little mathematical sense, it is true, and he will never be able to add more than one column of figures with speed and correctness. Nature intended him for something different from a bank cashier. Give this boy a good violin, place him under competent instructors, spend seventy-five dollars on his musical education and he will display such magnificent talent that you will be willing ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... consulting-room, a little below your level, where the Doctor sat at his big writing-table that was heaped with notebooks and papers and had a telephone on it, and all sorts of mysterious instruments in shining brass and silver, as brightly polished as the gleaming thing with a lid, shaped like a violin-case and with a spirit-lamp underneath it, in which all sorts of wicked-looking knives and forceps were boiled when they were taken out of the black bag; or into Mrs. Saxham's bedroom, that was on the floor above, and was done up in the loveliest style you ever! "Not that Missis W. Keyse ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... for one drink before going to a much-touted boxing-match in Jersey. Through the evening she deliberately avoided seeing Banneker alone for so much as the space of a query put and answered, dividing her attention between an enraptured master of the violin who had come after his concert, and an aged and bewildered inventor who, in a long career of secluded toil, had never beheld anything like this brilliant creature with her intelligent and quickening interest in what he had ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... quadrille, etc., are suggested, and when this question has gone the round, the grasshopper asks what music he can dance to, and the ants suggest the music of the violin, the piano, cornet, etc. Then the grasshopper says he is tired of dancing and wishes for a bed, and the ants offer him moss, straw, grass, and so on, to ...
— My Book of Indoor Games • Clarence Squareman
... world is the practice of music more universally extended and at the same time the science so little understood as in America. Almost every house included between the Delaware and Schuylkill has its piano or harpsichord, its violin, its flute, or its clarinet. Almost every young lady and gentleman from the children of the Judge, the banker, and the general, down to those of the constable, the huckster, and the drummer, can make a noise upon some instrument or other, and charm their ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... before quitting port, an expedient we would recommend to all who have a regard for the instrument that extends beyond its outside, or even for their own ears. John Effingham executed brilliantly on the violin; and, as it appeared on inquiry, the two younger gentlemen performed respectably on the flute, flageolet, and one or two other wind instruments. We shall leave them doing great justice to Beethoven, Rossini, and Mayerbeer, whose compositions Mr. Dodge did not fail to sneer at in the ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... holyday. The people were all dressed in their best; the men riding about on horseback among the houses, and the women sitting on carpets before the doors. Under the piazza of a "pulperia," two men were seated, decked out with knots of ribbons and bouquets, and playing the violin and the Spanish guitar. These are the only instruments, with the exception of the drums and trumpets at Monterey that I ever heard in California; and I suspect they play upon no others, for at a great fandango at which I was afterwards present, and where they mustered all the music ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... like playing lately, but I do now," and Dorothy stood up and swept the bow over the strings. Doctor of Music in violin, an accomplished musician, playing upon one of the finest instruments the world has ever known, she was lifted out of herself by relief from the dread of the Fenachrone invasion and that splendid violin expressed every ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... Susan knew in a happy instant that he had gone to find her at her aunt's, and had followed her here, and during the meal that followed, she was the maddest of all the mad crowd. After dinner they had Josephine's violin, and coaxed Betsey to recite, but more appreciated than either was Miss Brown's rendition of selections from German and Italian opera, and her impersonation of an inexperienced servant from Erin's green isle. Mrs. Carroll ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... of the most interesting. He is said to love music, and to show great delight in hearing a person sing. "Traveling some years since," says a gentleman whose statements may be relied on, "I met a bevy of about twenty stags, following a bagpipe and violin. While the music continued, they proceeded; when it ceased, they ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... savagely, but nevertheless communicated the order to the orchestra, and as the music waned to a mere wailing of the violin, the little dancer, rosy, hot, tired, whirled slower, slower,—then sank on her bed of green, and like her companions feigned sleep with the cunning ...
— The Angel of the Tenement • George Madden Martin
... melody which he composed for a song of his own at the age of about twenty-three, and this melody displeased him so much that he destroyed it and never attempted another. In the same way, although he practised the violin, he did not attain to excellence in execution, his playing being confined to strathspeys and other slow airs of the pathetic kind. On the other hand, his perception and his love of music are undeniable. For example, he possessed copies of the principal collections of Scottish vocal and instrumental ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... platform, which was now and then used as a stage; and there was a pianist from Gnesen, not at all a bad player, who was supported by a violin and a double-bass. The musicians played with a good deal of rhythm, a fiery rhythm that carried the dancers away. People danced well in Gradewitz. Schmielke's dancing was nothing special here, although it had been considered exceedingly good at home. The girls were as light ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... the youths, with their soft beardless faces framed in combed-out hair, with their daggers on their hips and their plumed hats between their fingers; and the serious bearded men, in silken robes; drawing nearer the poet, letting go lute or violin or music-book as they listen on the villa terrace or in some darkened room, where the sunset sky turns green-blue behind the pillared window, and the roses hang over the trellise of the cloister. ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... the Philosopher, "as though it were a known quantity. After all, to say that a man loves is like saying that he paints or plays the violin; it conveys no meaning until we have witnessed his performance. Yet to hear the subject discussed, one might imagine the love of a Dante or a society Johnny, of a Cleopatra or a Georges Sand, to be precisely ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome
... musicians' instruments, followed this tilted wagon. Some members of the orchestra would not part with theirs, and behind the saddle of many a mounted virtuoso or attendant was fastened a violin case or a shapeless bag which concealed some ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of his senses. Why, in the carriage was Margari's own brand-new mantle, for which he had paid nine and twenty gulden. The vagabond would be sure to lay his hands upon it. No, he would rather go to look for the fiddle himself. So he found the violin case at last somehow, and handing it to the baron through the csarda window (for he durst not trust himself inside), he retired again beneath the coach-house, although the rain was now splashing ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... the kind in question. Paganini was the founder of this school. He might have played on four strings till he was tired, without causing any particular sensation; but the single string made his fortune. Sivori is one of the cleverest artists of the present day, who resorts to tricks with his violin, and wonderfully does he perform them. At a concert last season, he imitated the singing of a bird with the strangest and happiest skill. The 'severe' shook their heads, but smiled as they did so, and owned that the trick was clever enough, and withal ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... less something he saw than something he was writing, and he altered it to make it more dramatic. "I woke up." How awful that was! but in this new scene she uttered no words. Lady Pippinworth was in his arms when they heard a little cry, so faint that a violin string makes as much moan when it snaps. In a dread silence he lit a match, and as it flared the figure of a girl was seen upon the floor. She was dead; and even as he knew that she was dead he recognized her. "Grizel!" he cried. The other woman who had lured him from his true ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... upon it, in which he playfully remarks that he got the full value of his passage money, inasmuch as there was a birth, a death, and a suicide, between Plymouth and Melbourne. Another of his distinctions is great dexterity in playing the violin, his favourite pieces being "The Scalloway Lasses" and "The Auld Wife ayont the Fire." The title of the last-named piece rather staggered me, until I was informed by one of the ministers, who is a scholar and an antiquarian, that it relates to a time when the fire was in the middle of the room ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... brought the affectionate greetings of the women of Utah, and Mrs. Chapman Catt referred to the loving testimonials which had been sent by the Idaho women.[133] Then after an exquisite violin solo by Mr. Douglass, she said: "The liberties of the citizens of the future will be still more an outgrowth of this movement than those of the present," and to the delighted surprise of the audience the following scene occurred, as described by ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... is used in those conversational passages with other instruments that lend such a charm to orchestral music. The lower notes are not powerful. Mr. Henry Carte has, however, designed an alto flute in A, descending to violin G, with excellent results. There is a flute which transposes a minor third higher than the ordinary flute; but it is not much used in the orchestra, although used in the army, as is also a flute one semitone higher than ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various
... he had a veritable passion, and to have a passion for a thing means that you excel in it—excellence is a matter of intensity. One of the players in the band was a Frenchman, and William made an arrangement to give the "parlez vous" lessons on the violin as ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... the shape of a bow that its elastic force may keep tense the strings that are stretched upon it. These strings, three in number, were originally of sinnet, later after the arrival of the white man, of horsehair. At the present time it is the fashion to use the ordinary gut designed for the violin or the taro-patch guitar. Every ukeke seen followed closely a conventional pattern, which, argues for the instrument a historic age sufficient to have gathered about itself some degree of traditional reverence. One end of the stick is notched or provided with holes ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... poor sort of painting; she noticed it herself. But she seemed to think that, if she talked a lot about it, and thought of nothing else, that somehow it would all come right. The second girl played the violin. She played it from early morning till late evening, and friends fell away from them. There wasn't a spark of talent in the family, but they all had a notion that a vague longing to be admired was just the ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... our organs as so many musical instruments. You have, probably, sometimes been at a concert. Each of the instruments in the orchestra performs its own part, does it not? The little flute pipes through all its holes; the double-bass pours thunder from its chords: the violin sighs with his; the cymbals clash; the Chinese bells dance to their own tinkling; all go at it in their own fashion, each independently of the other. And yet, when the orchestra is in good tune together, and well played, you hear but one sound; and to you the result of all these various noises, ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... its bright light made the day longer; and when everybody had eaten a last piece of sponge-cake, and the heap of strawberries on a great round India dish had been leveled, what should be heard but sounds of a violin. Betty had discovered that Seth Pond,—the clumsy, good-natured Seth of all people!—had, as he said, "ears for music," and had ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... bottles, or beer out of stone or pewter "krugs." At the end of the long, narrow room stood two huge casks, one on either side of a small stage where three men in the costumes of Tyrolese peasants played a zither, a 'cello, and a violin, for a gaily dressed boy ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the one instrument which they know and understand, and it has been in use among the Norwegians for hundreds of years. Their most famous violin-player, Ole Bull, who died some few years ago, was looked on as a great composer and musician. But all over the country there are to be found men who can play after a fashion; and a century or so ago, when the people were still very superstitious, they fully ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman
... him mad,—the poor, old man, Whose white hair, worn and thin, Fell o'er his shoulders, as he played His cherished violin, Forever drawing to and fro O'er silent strings ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... uttered by a human voice will creep around its curves repeating and repeating itself like the vibrations of the gongs of Burmese temples, until it is lost in a whisper at the apex of the dome. I should like to hear a violin there or a hymn softly sung by ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... on the words till it trailed away into nothing, like the vanishing note of a violin which seems still to pulse faintly after the sound ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Black Cricket. Indeed the mistake would certainly be made by any one who did not know that, by the time the very hot weather comes, the true Cricket, the chorister of spring, has disappeared. His pleasant violin has been succeeded by another more pleasant still and worthy of special study. We shall return to him ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... the Poet returned home. He had been at a concert, had heard a celebrated violin player, and was quite enchanted with his wonderful performance. It had been a complete gush of melody that he had drawn from the instrument. Sometimes it seemed like the gentle murmur of a rippling stream, sometimes like the singing ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... wings spread was like a scarlet pomegranate blossom flying. Palma had asked him why he had run away from the bridal supper of Griffeo, the coppersmith's son,—just in the midst of his music; run away home, he and his violin. ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... offerings. Ranger Winess brought us love songs. He doted on John McCormack's ballads, and I secretly applauded his choice. Of course I had to praise the Harry Lauder selections that Ranger Fisk toted in. White Mountain favored Elman and Kreisler. The violin held him spellbound. But when Pat came we all suffered through an evening of Grand ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... dipped her wrist into a spring; and her heart, at that ethereal shock, began to move more soberly. The sun that sails overhead, ploughing into gold the fields of daylight azure and uttering the signal to man's myriads, has no word apart for man the individual; and the moon, like a violin, only praises and laments our private destiny. The stars alone, cheerful whisperers, confer quietly with each of us like friends; they give ear to our sorrows smilingly, like wise old men, rich in tolerance; and by their double scale, so small to the eye, so vast ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... increased and perfected their output until they became ambitious to make larger pieces. Potters began turning out small foot-stoves, vases, candlesticks, and dinner sets. One of the most amusing relics of this old Delft is now in one of the foreign museums. It is a violin perfectly modeled and exquisitely decorated. The story goes that it was one of four such instruments which were made as wedding gifts for the four daughters of a rich Dutch pottery manufacturer. It is even asserted ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett
... called, is neither striking for magnificence nor for beauty; and we were all so dull and languid, that I was extremely glad when we were summoned to the orchestra, upon the opening of a concert; in the course of which I had the pleasure of hearing a concerto on the violin by Mr. Barthelemon, who to me seems a player of ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... become one of noisy revel. Many of the soldiers had gathered around a huge bonfire, amusing themselves with a variety of games; and, at a little distance, a few females, their wives and daughters, were collected on a plat of grass, and dancing with the young men, to the sound of a violin. The shrill fife, the deep-toned drum, and noisy bag-pipe, occasionally swelled the concert; though the monotonous strains of the latter instrument, by which a few sturdy Scots performed their national dance, were ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... with illustrations of old Sunday newspapers and county-fair posters. To its side was fastened an improvised lever, made from a broken cart-wheel. Under this barrel, concealed so that no one could see within, were placed three most prominent musicians of the village, Ivan with his violin, Semen with his concertina and Nicholas with his drum. As soon as the conductor outside pulled a string, the lever began to turn around and the musicians in the barrel had to start to play. In the corner of the house this strange instrument looked ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... I said, is of my mother's playing. I see myself, sitting on a great black book, the family Bible. I must have been very small, and it was a large Bible, and lay on a table in the sitting-room. I see my mother standing before me, with her violin on her arm. She is light, young, and very graceful; beauty seems to flow from her face in a kind of dark brightness, if I may use such an expression; her eyes are soft and deep. I have seen no other eyes like my mother Marie's. She ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... with clanking music making din as they go. One of the negroes will add something to change the monotony. Fumbling beneath the seats for some minutes, he draws forth a little bag, carefully unties it, and presents his favourite violin. Its appearance gladdens the hearts of his comrades, who welcome it with smiling faces and loud applause. The instrument is of the most antique and original description. It has only two strings; but Simon thinks wonders ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... beneath his roof I've been On eves of wintry blight, And heard his magic violin Make musical ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... watch R., for example, steadily filling his six-pound creel from that unlikely stream, is like watching Sargent paint a portrait. R. weighs two hundred and ten. Twenty years ago he was a famous amateur pitcher, and among his present avocations are violin playing, which is good for the wrist, taxidermy, which is good for the eye, and shooting woodcock, which before the days of the new Nature Study used to be thought good for the whole man. R. began as a fly-fisherman, but by dint of passing his summers ...
— Fishing with a Worm • Bliss Perry
... brilliantly lighted, and the magnificent Erard grand piano sang and rang again with music, now martial and loud, now soft and solemn, now gay and sparkling. I made the very pleasant discovery that Harold Beecham. was an excellent pianist, a gifted player on the violin, and sang with a strong, clear, well-trained tenor, which penetrated far into the night. How many, many times I have lived those nights over again! The great room with its rich appointments, the superb piano, the lights, the merriment, the breeze from ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... ... broken Cremona. Swift (as Lamb explained in the original essay in the New Monthly Magazine), seeing a lady's mantua overturning a violin (possibly a Cremona), quoted Virgil's line: "Mantua vae miserae nimium vicina Cremonae!" (Eclogues, IX., 28), "Mantua, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... every nerve in her body twanging like a plucked violin string; and her eyes met the clear eyes ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... first arrival they seemed surprised, but not alarmed, and we soon became intimate by means of smoking and our favorite entertainment for the Indians, the violin. They gave us fruit, roots, and root-bread, and we purchased from them three dogs. The houses of these people are similar to those of the Indians above, and their language is the same; their dress also, consisting ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... soon conveyed to the Archdeacon of the diocese, who at the next visitation endeavoured to find out the truth of the matter. Mr. Carter explained the circumstances, and showed that, far from being a source of disorder, his wife's public-house was an influence for good. 'I take down my violin,' he continued, 'and play them a few tunes, which gives me an opportunity of seeing that they get no more liquor than necessary for refreshment; and if the young people propose a dance, I seldom answer in the negative; ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home
... Day's New Year's party. They would as soon have thought of having supper without trifle, tipsy-cake, and syllabub, in those days, as of finishing the evening without Sir Roger. Dancing had begun at seven-thirty. The lady at the piano was drooping with weariness. Violin and 'cello yawned over their bows; only spasmodically and half-heartedly the thrum and jingle of the tambourine ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... tension, with pulse and head throbbing powerfully like a racing engine. Still there was satanic keenness in his mind to-night, a capacity for concentration that surprised him. Somewhere in his head, taut like an overstrung ligament or the string of a great violin, something sinister droned and hummed and subtly threatened. For the hundredth time he made a systematic list of recurrent symbols, noting again the puzzling similarity of the twisted signs, but no sign appeared frequently enough ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... lofty dome, there to blend and wreath, and fall again. At one extremity of music's hall was an organ; at the other a grand piano, built by a German composer. Ranged on carved slabs, at intermediate distances, was placed almost every instrument that may claim a votary. Of viols, from the violin to the double bass,—of instruments of brass, from trombones and bass kettledrums even unto trumpet and cymbal,—of instruments of wood, from winding serpents to octave flute,—and of fiddles of parchment, from the grosse caisse to the tambourine. ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... flax-blue. His great golden head involved a long search in the stores to find the vast steel-blue tureen that bonnets him. Fouillade, the boatman from Cette, rolls his wicked eyes in the long, lean face of a musketeer, with sunken cheeks and his skin the color of a violin. In good sooth, my two neighbors are as unlike ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... in the proper place to furnish the wedding processional—or perhaps some musical friend may be found to play the violin. ...
— Entertaining Made Easy • Emily Rose Burt
... minuet with a plump Faenza jar; a tall Dutch clock was going through a gavotte with a spindle-legged ancient chair; a very droll porcelain figure of Littenhausen was bowing to a very stiff soldier in terre cuite of Ulm; an old violin of Cremona was playing itself, and a queer little shrill plaintive music that thought itself merry came from a painted spinet covered with faded roses; some gilt Spanish leather had got up on the wall and laughed; ...
— The Nuernberg Stove • Louisa de la Rame (AKA Ouida)
... finished their feast, and betook themselves to dancing in an alley smoothed for a croquet-ground, and to the sound of a violin played by the old grandfather of one of the party. While Mrs. Braefield was busying herself with forming the dance, Kenelm seized the occasion to escape from a young nymph of the age of twelve who had sat next him at the banquet, and taken so great a fancy to him that he began to fear she ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... speak: "It came from up-stairs! Somebody's playing a violin up-stairs. I'm going up-stairs to find out who ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... amount to much but it was blowing at quite a lively rate closer to the earth and doubtless the broad palmetto leaves must be making a considerable slashing as they struck one another, dead and withered ones sawing like some giant violin bow. ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... the time with a metrical fluency, he scraped a little jig on the violin, while Dummer led off a procession which solemnly capered round the room in sundry stages of conscious awkwardness. Mr. Bultitude shuffled along somehow after the rest, with rebellion at his heart and a deep sense of degradation. "If my clerks ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... battle to the All. If the least evil could stop anywhere indefinitely, it would sink deep and cut into the very roots of existence. As it is, man does not really believe in evil, just as he cannot believe that violin strings have been purposely made to create the exquisite torture of discordant notes, though by the aid of statistics it can be mathematically proved that the probability of discord is far greater than that of harmony, and for one who can play the ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... stood, violin in hand, while, at the piano, Betty Chase was playing the prelude. Lina Danford handled the bow cleverly, and played her little solo with ...
— Dorothy Dainty at Glenmore • Amy Brooks
... store door the place was empty; but from the rear came the quavering notes of a violin. Being drawn from the wailing strings was a new harmony—new, that is, for Hopewell Drugg. He was fond of the old tunes; but for the most part his musical tastes ran to cheerful ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long
... like to try your voice," he said, turning pointedly away from her companion. "I am interested in voices. Can you sing to the violin?" ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... but the boy had one way to amuse himself that served to pass many an hour when he would not otherwise have known what to do. He was very fond of music, and his father one day brought him from the town a small fiddle, or violin, which he soon learned to play upon. I don't suppose he was a very fine musician, but the tunes he played pleased himself; as well as his father and mother, and Bobby's fiddle soon became his ...
— Mother Goose in Prose • L. Frank Baum
... Paris, in addition to the general subjects and the lectures at the Sorbonne, Nelka also studied music, in particular the violin, and at a time was quite proficient in it, though she did not keep it up, as she did with painting, which she continued for a ...
— Nelka - Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch • Michael Moukhanoff
... of new and wonderful things that the pirates must have stolen from other ships: Kashmir shawls as thin as a cobweb, embroidered with flowers of gold; jars of fine tobacco from Jamaica; carved ivory boxes full of Russian tea; an old violin with a string broken and a picture on the back; a set of big chess-men, carved out of coral and amber; a walking-stick which had a sword inside it when you pulled the handle; six wine-glasses with turquoise and silver round the rims; ...
— The Story of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... seldom wrote but out of pique; and he probably owed his origin as an author to a circumstance of this nature. Middleton when young was a Dilettante in music; and Dr. Bentley, in contempt, applied the epithet "fiddling Conyers." Had the irascible Middleton broken his violin about the head of the learned Grecian, and thus terminated the quarrel, the epithet had then cost Bentley's honour much less than it afterwards did. It seems to have excited Middleton to deeper studies, which the great Bentley not long after felt when he published proposals ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... fill; Gold-cradled meats the menials bear From gilded chair to gilded chair: Now roars the talk like crashing seas, Foams upward to the painted frieze, Echoes and ebbs. Still surges in, To yelp of hautboy and violin, Plumed and bedazzling, rosed and rare, Dance-bemused, with cheek aglow, Stooping the green-twined portal through, Sighing with laughter, debonair, That concourse of the proud and fair— And lo! 'La, la! Mamma ... ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... a violin in dreams, foretells harmony and peace in the family, and financial affairs ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... joy I felt in hearing an orchestra play quite close to me still remains one of my most pleasant memories. The mere tuning up of the instruments put me in a state of mystic excitement; even the striking of fifths on the violin seemed to me like a greeting from the spirit world— which, I may mention incidentally, had a very real meaning for me. When I was still almost a baby, the sound of these fifths, which has always excited me, was closely associated in my mind with ghosts and spirits. I remember that ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... the instrument, in the intervals of the figures described, is covered with elaborate carvings. Groups of musical instruments, standing out almost detached from the background, occupy the panels. Ancient and modern, clustered with careless grace and quaint variety, from the violin down to a string of sleigh-bells, they call up all the echoes of forgotten music, such as the thousand-tongued organ blends together ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... nothing, after all, remarkable in Haldane's experience—save for him; nothing very far removed from the commonplace. His father—a simple-hearted musician—had trained his son in music since the days when the lad could first hold a violin under his little chin. He had died when the boy was twenty, and Haldane had gone on, contentedly enough and absorbed, to take his father's place among the violins of an orchestra, and to teach music. As he grew older his father's friends told him ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... One of the count's sons had brought his violin, his cousin had a balalaika, a triangular peasant guitar, and one of the lackeys had his harmonica, to play for the dancing. The young men sat on a rough improvised bench; the servant stood beside them. The peasants seemed shy. They hesitated ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... a bird." Yes! and that is exactly the difficulty with her. We want one who sings like a woman. The popular criticism of the mere musical expert that he has no soul, is profound and true. It is soul we want; for the piano, the organ, the violin, the orchestra, are only instruments for the transmission of soul. This is also the reason why the most flawless conductor is not always the best. He must have a soul capable of reading the soul of the composer; and the orchestra must receive the life of the composer as that is interpreted to ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... who had unconsciously lured her into the church the evening before by the power of his playing. No; she was conscious of nothing but her singing and the sweet, long notes she was drawing with her bow from the strings of her beloved violin. ...
— Dreamland • Julie M. Lippmann
... are the same to her; but that accomplishment has become so common in Britannula that but little is thought of it. I do not know whether she ravished our ears most with the old-fashioned piano and the nearly obsolete violin, or with the modern mousometor, or the more perfect melpomeneon. It was wonderful to hear the way with which she expressed herself at the meeting held about the rising buildings of the college when ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope
... unwonted tidiness, but the old landmarks were all in their place. There were the chemical corner and the acid-stained, deal-topped table. There upon a shelf was the row of formidable scrap-books and books of reference which many of our fellow-citizens would have been so glad to burn. The diagrams, the violin-case, and the pipe-rack—even the Persian slipper which contained the tobacco—all met my eyes as I glanced round me. There were two occupants of the room—one Mrs. Hudson, who beamed upon us both as we entered; the other the strange dummy which ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... quicksilver. The curve of his nose presented an aquiline silhouette, which suggested the Oriental or Jewish type. His hands—thin, slender, full of nerves which projected like strings upon the finger-board of a violin, and armed with claws like those on the terminations of bats' wings—shook with senile trembling; but those convulsively agitated hands became firmer than steel pincers or lobsters' claws when they lifted any precious article—an onyx cup, a Venetian glass, or a dish ...
— The Mummy's Foot • Theophile Gautier
... do my thoughts turn now and then to London. I should like to hear the long note of a master's violin, or the faultless cadence of an exquisite voice, and I should like to see pictures. Music and painting have always meant much to me; here I can enjoy ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... most pleasing euphonic words, especially in the realm of music, have been given to us directly from the Italian. Of these are piano, violin, orchestra, canto, allegro, piazza, ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... usual time, very little work, for I was tired, and had a job for the evening—to write parts for a new instrument, a violin. Lunch, chat, and up to my place to practise; but there was no practising for me—my flageolet was gone wrong, and I had to take it all to pieces, clean it, and put it up again. As this is a most intricate job—the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... had whirled her through many a fairy maze and turn of captivating dance-music, or in some less heated and crowded room, or cool conservatory, listened to the voice of the siren who walked by his side, "while the sweet wind did gently kiss the flowers and make no noise," and the strains of "flute, violin, bassoon," and the sounds of the "dancers dancing in tune," coming to them on the still air of night, seemed like the sounds from another and a far-off world,—listened, listened, listened, while his silver-tongued enchantress ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... to the Mother Superior that the mistake about the hour had been no fault of hers—and the Mother Superior, alas! would be sure to make inquiries as to the friends whom she had visited—the magic violin of M. Szmera played its first notes, accompanied by Madame Odinska on the piano, and by a delicious little flute. They played an overture, the dreamy sweetness of which extorted cries of admiration ...
— Jacqueline, v3 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... a crude materialistic fancy. Body, on the contrary, is the substance or instrument of mind, and has to be looked for beneath it. The mind is itself ethereal and plays about the body as music about a violin, or rather as the sense of a page about the print and paper. To look for it within is not to understand what we are ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... or Norse,—the songs were received with generous applause. Once or twice, a recitation, very spiritedly rendered in a powerful Scottish accent, varied the proceedings; and once we sought in vain to dance a quadrille, eight men of us together, to the music of the violin. The performers were all humorous, frisky fellows, who loved to cut capers in private life; but as soon as they were arranged for the dance, they conducted themselves like so many mutes at a funeral. I have never seen ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... lively, thoughtless, light-hearted son of the soil, who was very slow to understand sorrows of any kind; and least of all, those which lie in the fancy of a dreaming and a doubtful lover. At this moment, when the possession of a new violin absorbed all his thoughts, his mind was particularly obtuse on the subject of sentimental grievances, and the almost voluptuous delight which filled his eyes when William entered his chamber, entirely prevented him from seeing the heavy shadow which overhung the ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... take it, is what the author of the Annals means. "Tibicen" was, of course, not a violin, but species of pipe among the ancients; the Egyptians were not famous for their performances upon this instrument, if they were acquainted with the "tibicen" at all. The question then arises,—Was the author of the Annals cognizant ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... lies Charles Claudius Phillips, Whose absolute contempt of riches and inimitable performances upon the violin made him the admiration of all that knew him. He was born in Wales, made the tour of Europe, and, after the experience of both kinds of fortune, Died ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... themselves with a zest all the greater for the dullness of the weeks which had gone before. The floor had been sponged with milk until it was quite smooth and slippery, a table supplied with such refreshments as lemonade, ginger-beer, and sweet biscuits, was placed outside the door, and the violin pupils took it in turns to accompany the piano, so that nothing was lacking to enhance the grandeur of the occasion. Pretty little programmes were distributed around the room; blue for the ladies, pink for the "gentlemen," and after each dance the couples marched round and round ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... instruments; band; string-band, brass-band; orchestra; orchestrina^. [Stringed instruments], monochord^, polychord^; harp, lyre, lute, archlute^; mandola^, mandolin, mandoline^; guitar; zither; cither^, cithern^; gittern^, rebeck^, bandurria^, bandura, banjo; bina^, vina^; xanorphica^. viol, violin, fiddle, kit; viola, viola d'amore [Fr.], viola di gamba [It]; tenor, cremona, violoncello, bass; bass viol, base viol; theorbo^, double base, contrabasso^, violone^, psaltery [Slang]; bow, fiddlestick^. piano, pianoforte; harpsichord, clavichord, clarichord^, manichord^; clavier, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... maid is depicted as saying, "If you please, sir, here's the printer's boy called again;" again, in January, 1847, where we find him playing the clarionet as one of the orchestra at Mr. Punch's Fancy Ball. Other performers are—Mayhew, cornet; Percival Leigh, double bass; Gilbert a Beckett, violin; Richard Doyle, clarionet; Thackeray, piccolo; Tom Taylor, piano; while Mark Lemon, the conductor, appeals to Jerrold to somewhat moderate his assaults on the drum. Another hand portrays him seven years later, as armed with a porte crayon he rides his hobbyhorse at ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... of course, adding its vocal melody to the dulcet tones of the blacksmith's violin. Even the cats of the settlement were present, including that celebrated kitten which had been reduced to a state of drivelling imbecility by the furious advent of the Wild Man. Owls and other sagacious birds ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... Poons, who couldn't hear. But the men at the violin desks down front were rising and putting away their instruments, and the others ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... affair which was narrated in our last chapter. The two young men were at the house of the speaker, or rather at his mother's house; where, a favorite and only son, he had almost supreme dominion. He was putting his violin in tune, and the sentences were spoken at intervals with the discordant scraps of sound which were necessarily elicited by this unavoidable musical operation. These sounds might be said to form a running ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... at nine, and soon we heard the clarionet of Pfifer-Karl and the violin of big Andres resounding through the streets. They were playing the "March of the Swedes," an air to which thousands of poor wretches had left old Alsace for ever. The conscripts danced, linked arms, ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... to Interlachen! Ho for Lucerne and the Righi! Dined at Thun in a thunder storm. Stopped over night at Langnau, an out-of-the-way place. H. and G. painted Alpine flowers, while I played violin. This violin must be of spotless pedigree, even as our Genevese friend, Monsieur—, certified when he reluctantly sold it me. None but a genuine AMATI, a hundred years old, can possess this mysterious quality, that can breathe almost inaudible, ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... sniff. But the ragged little "poh white" used to sit beside her piano by the hour and try to get in an alto with one of those kazoos that boys hum through. Before he was thirteen he was picking up a living teasing ragtime out of a battered violin in little cafes round Nashville. Eight years later the ragtime craze hit the country, and he took six darkies on the Orpheum circuit. Five of them were boys he had grown up with; the other was the little mulatto, Babe Divine, ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... chanced that Oglesby could play a violin splendidly. A man came along with one in his hands, and Oglesby asked if he might borrow it for the evening, to which the man consented. He commenced playing in order to attract the crowd from Robinson, ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... The 'cello and the violin came next. The latter ran his bow across his stringed waistcoat in perfect time, while the former twanged the strings that covered his happy face in a jolly fashion. The rest of the band played on themselves beautifully, and the Gnome, with his baton, proved a most capable leader. ...
— The Magic Soap Bubble • David Cory
... Padua, whom Viotti pronounced the last great improver of the practice of the violin. Several of Tartini's compositions are particularized in that amusing little volume, "The Violin and its Professors," by Mr. Dubourg, who has recorded in quaint verse the well-known story of the "Devil's ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... then, a little later, the music once more signalled the dancers to take their places on the floor. Hour after hour it went on. After midnight another supper was served; but still "the band"—consisting of a violin and a concertina—played on, and still the moccasined feet pounded the floor without intermission. At the very height of the fun, when the Free Trader's charming daughter was being whirled about by a scarlet tunic, Mrs. Spear turned ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... evening, had suddenly demanded a popular song from Mr. Nokes, he (Triplet), seeing the orchestra thinned by desertion, and nugatory by intoxication, had started from the pit, resuscitated with the whole contents of his snuff-box the bass fiddle, snatched the leader's violin, and carried Mr. Nokes triumphantly through; that thunders of applause had followed, and Mr. Nokes had kindly returned thanks for both; but that he (Triplet) had hastily retired to evade the manager's acknowledgments, preferring to wait an opportunity like ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... great Romans, too, we have many words. If we describe a person as a Nero, every one knows that this means a cruel tyrant. Nero was the worst of all the Roman emperors, and the story tells that he was so heartless that he played on his violin while watching the burning of Rome. Some people even said that he himself set the city on fire. Again, the name of Julius Caesar, who was the first imperial governor of Rome, though he was never called emperor, has ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... his violin, which he had clung to through all their mad drive, and struck up "Money Musk," which he played as correctly and in as good time as was possible under the circumstance. Soon collecting his nerve and coolness as he went on, he scraped out his whole rpertoire of dancing tunes, "St. Patrick's ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... Handel's "Largo," and the suite from "Peer Gynt" with the frown of a man not to be taken in and unwilling to be influenced by the approbation exhibited by people round him. A song follows, and he remarks to Gertie that a recitation would be more in keeping with the style of the entertainment. A violin solo with a melody that cries softly about love, the love of two people, with anxieties at first, at ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... for a hollow bony vessel about the size of a large walnut, situated under the root of the tongue, and having an opening into the windpipe by which the animal can force air into it. This increases the power of its voice, acting something like the hollow case of a violin, and producing those marvelous rolling and reverberating sounds which caused the celebrated traveler Waterton to declare that they were such as might have had their origin in the infernal regions. The howlers are large and stout bodied monkeys, with bearded faces, and very strong and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... religious solemnity which struck every observant onlooker. No profusion of superlative adjectives can avail to reproduce such scenes, any more than words, no matter how skilfully chosen, can convey the tone of a violin in the hands of a master. Even the mere number of those who took part in the demonstration cannot be guessed with any real accuracy. There was a procession of men, whose fine physique and military smartness were ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... perceive them; nevertheless, it may have been perfectly plain that the player was not attending to what he was doing, but was listening to conversation on some other subject, not to say joining in it himself. If he has been playing the violin, he may have done all the above, and may also have been walking about. Herr Joachim would unquestionably be able to do all that has here ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... yet so dark with the white swans upon them. On the borders of the forest, amidst three or four houses, was erected a pole as high as a mainmast, and around it hung wreaths and ribbons. This was the Maypole. Girls and young men danced round it, and sang to the accompaniment of the fiddler's violin. All went on merrily till after the sun had set, and the moon had risen, but I took no part in the festivity; for what had a little mouse to do with a forest ball? I sat down amidst the soft moss, and ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
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