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Bass   Listen
noun
Bass  n.  
1.
A bass, or deep, sound or tone.
2.
(Mus.)
(a)
The lowest part in a musical composition.
(b)
One who sings, or the instrument which plays, bass. (Written also base)
Thorough bass. See Thorough bass.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Bass" Quotes from Famous Books



... hope it won't go off.) They agreed that to boycott English goods was the correct thing, and of course they were for burning all but English coals, when the leader of the gang said, 'Now, boys, what will you drink,' and hang me! if they didn't every one take a bottle of Bass's bitter beer! Did you ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... must cease. Orders were given, and Rento and Franci set to work in good earnest. The wind was fair, the tide was setting out. What should keep them longer here? The sails were hoisted to the tune of "Baltimore," and Rento's gruff bass and Franci's melting tenor were mingled ...
— Nautilus • Laura E. Richards

... among the new members were Martin I. Townsend of the Troy district, New York, not more distinguished for his knowledge of the law than for his rare gifts of wit and humor; Elbridge G. Lapham of Canandaigua and Lyman R. Bass of Buffalo, both well known at the bar of Western New York; Simeon B. Chittenden, a successful merchant of the city of New York; Winthrop W. Ketchum, for many years in the Legislature of Pennsylvania; Charles H. Joyce of Vermont, ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... Eidgeville overnight, I roll into Cleveland, and into the out-stretched arms of a policeman, at 10 o'clock, next morning. "He was violating the city ordinance by riding on the sidewalk," the arresting policeman informs the captain. "Ah! he was, hey!" thunders the captain, in a hoarse, bass voice that causes my knees to knock together with fear and trembling; and the captain's eye seems to look clear through my trembling form. "P-l-e-a-s-e, s-i-r, I d-i-d-n't t-r-y t-o d-o i-t," I falter, in a weak, gasping voice that brings tears to the eyes of the ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... figure of this addition to the party, was completely puzzled how to act. Such a character had never before come within the range of his experience. He knew not what to make of this fierce, ragged, desperate man, who wept and threatened by turns—who was now snarling in the most repulsive bass of the convict gamut, and now calling upon Heaven in tones which were little less than eloquent. At first he thought of precipitating himself upon the sleeping wretch and pinioning him, but a second glance at the sinewy, though wasted, ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke

... Majesty visited Lord and Lady Burton at Rangemore, and while there inspected the famous Bass and Company brewery and started a special brew to be called "the King's Ale"—only to be used on special occasions. Early in the year it had been decided by the King to pay what might be termed a Coronation visit to Ireland, accompanied by his wife. Unfortunately, unpleasant ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins

... in every tune and key soon resounded from all sides of the hut, the deep bass contribution ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne

... more—led down to the very brink of the first cascade; yet through all these years, with their freshets and floods, the cabin had clung to its perch. Within doors the ears never lost the drone of the waters. There were top-notes that lifted or sank as the wind blew, but below them the deep bass ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... with a symphony on the full band—mandolins leading, drums doing bass, and the whole lot of ugly fellows screeching forth what might have been esteemed air or accompaniment, as the case might be. That a sorry musical effect was produced will surprise no one who considers the build of the most musical of their instruments. The mandolin ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various

... became serious. "I'll tell you a place— it's honest. It's the next street, a few hundred yards down, on the left. There's a wooden fish over the door. It's called The Black Bass —that hotel. Say I sent you. Good luck to you, countryman! Ah, la; la, there's the second bell—I must be getting to Mass!" With a nod he turned and went ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... novelist present whose first story, "The Girl I Left Behind Me," had made a hit the last season. It was thought to take a profound hold upon life, because it was a book that could not be read aloud in a mixed company. Margaret was very much interested in him, although Mr. Summers Bass was not her idea of an imaginative writer. He was a stout young gentleman, with very black hair and small black eyes, to which it was difficult to give a melancholy cast even by an habitual frown. Mr. Bass dressed himself scrupulously in the fashion, was very exact ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... you would dress as the postillion de Longjumeau, you would appear as Debardeurs, sup in the morning, and breakfast at night at Very's—sometimes even at the Rocher de Cancale.—Dry bread for you, my boys! Why," said I, in a big bass voice, "you deserve to sleep under the bed, you are not worthy ...
— Z. Marcas • Honore de Balzac

... diggings are large tents, generally square or oblong, and everything required by a digger can be obtained for money, from sugar-candy to potted anchovies; from East India pickles to Bass's pale ale; from ankle jack boots to a pair of stays; from a baby's cap to a cradle; and every apparatus for mining, from a pick to a needle. But the confusion—the din—the medley—what a scene for a shop walker! Here lies a pair of herrings dripping into a bag of sugar, or a box ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey

... places, while the elders seated themselves at a table in the order of their rank—the Vice-Governor and Doulebov in the middle, with the others to their right and left. Doulebova looked round with an anxious, angry expression. At last she said in a bass voice, ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub

... 'ave killed 'er good old father; I 'ave falsely accused 'er young man of all the crimes that I 'ave myself committed; I 'ave robbed 'er of 'er ancestral estates. Yet she loves me not! It is streeange!" Then changing his bass to a shrill falsetto: "It is a cold and dismal night: the snow falls fast. I will leave me 'at and umbrella be'ind the door and go out for a walk with the chee-ild. Aha! who is this? 'E also 'as forgotten 'is umbrella. Ah, now I know 'im in the pitch ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome

... somebody shouted, as if that were the very war-cry of the saints of God. Then in a splendid bass voice he began to sing a hymn, and some women joined him. So Fred Oakes fell to his old accustomed task, and played them marching accompaniments on his concertina until his fingers ached and even he, the enthusiast, loathed the thing's bray. In one way and another a little of ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy

... of treading out eels from the brook with his feet and catching them with his hands. And every ship brought in either cod-hooks and lines, mackerel-hooks and lines, herring-nets, seines, shark-hooks, bass-nets, squid-lines, eel-pots, coils of rope and cable, "drails, ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle

... is scored for three flutes, one piccolo, one bass piccolo, seven oboes, one English horn, three clarinets in D flat, one clarinet in G flat, one corno de bassetto, three bassoons, one contra-bassoon, eleven horns, three trumpets, eight cornets in B, four trombones, two alto trombones, one viol da gamba, one mandolin, two ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken

... whiskey every day, and yet lived to be one hundred years old; but do not believe, therefore, that by taking two drinks a day you will live to be two hundred years old." "I have known a man who had not a single tooth, and yet he could play a bass drum better than any man I ever knew;" but do not infer that the pulling of sound teeth will aid in bringing out all the possibilities of harmony, melody, and delicacy of tone of this particular instrument of song without words. I have seen a man seemingly ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey

... exciting race of sounds—a sort of handicap. The circular glow of the street-lamp became the social center of Benton. At last the mad race was ended. I think it was the cornet that won, with the clarinet a close second. The tuba, as I recollect it, complacently claimed third money, and the bass-drum finished last with ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt

... Antoine seemed interested. There were two flashes in the pan, and two hearts sank simultaneously. They searched for their knives in vain. Antoine appeared amused and looked encouragement. It was a very nightmare to the two warriors. Then, from the rock over their heads, they heard a deep bass voice of such volume that it sounded like half-a-dozen ordinary voices rolled ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie

... we ought to hear some decent Gregorian music in this old place. See, where they have put the choir, nearly under the dome. Yes, we must attend a service. The bass should roll ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy

... and noble throats, and above all, their musical hearts, they poured out the harmony so clear and full, that every glass in the room rang like a harp, and a bolt of ice seemed to shoot down Grace Carden's backbone; and, in the chorus, gentle George's bass was like ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade

... Hairless face Skin coarse and lean Skin fine and plump Muscles powerful Relatively weak Bones heavy Bones light Aggressive—bass ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.

... managed to frown him down, and went on trying to placate me. But through the argument I could hear the old man muttering in his collar a kind of double bass pizzicato: "Suffragettes! Fanatics! Hysteria! Woman's ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair

... well filled with spectators—idlers who never find anything better to do than gazing at street spectacles, and people of both sexes, with more or less of business on hand, who cannot avoid pausing for a moment when the police sweep by to clear the street and the tap of the bass-drum is heard,—just to see what the excitement is all about. In this instance a file of policemen extending almost from curb to curb were marching abreast to keep the way clear in front of the regiment; close behind them sounded the crashing of brass, the screaming of clarionet-reeds ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford

... you say such a thing!" cried Bunny indignantly. "Why, mama, he plays just like Miss Kerr does. He plays away up in the treble with two hands, and then he plays pum, pum, pum away down in the bass; oh, it is most beautiful! Do play ...
— Naughty Miss Bunny - A Story for Little Children • Clara Mulholland

... the country's cause has been dropped. Our conversation nowadays has become full of modern sex-problems, and various other matters, with a sprinkling of poetry, both old Vaishnava and modern English, accompanied by a running undertone of melody, low down in the bass, such as I have never in my life heard before, which seems to me to sound the true manly note, the ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore

... meditation returns in double figure,—the slower, heavier pace below. Its shadows are all about as in a fugue of fears, flitting still to the tune of the dance and anon yielding before the gaiety. But through the returning festal ring the fateful motive is still straying in the bass. In the concluding revel the hue of meditation ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp

... an hour or two, Godfrey would stroll into the Isaac or Kasan cathedrals, both splendid structures, and wonder at the taste that marred their effect, by the profusion of the gilding lavished everywhere. He was delighted by the singing, which was unaccompanied by instruments, the bass voices predominating, and which certainly struck him as being much finer than anything he had ever heard in an English cathedral. There was no lack of amusement in the evening. Some of his English friends at once put Godfrey up as a member of the Skating Club. ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty

... the shrill-voiced leader of the choir sounded the key-note of the hymn-tune through his nose, and the growling bass-viol joined in unison, while the congregation rose, and Dr. Peewee surveyed his people to mark who had staid away from service, then Hope Wayne looked at the choir as if her whole soul were singing; and ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis

... to Chervonaneva. The road was white and straight, bare as one's empty hand. Here I endured the most curious experience of my life. Myself and companion, John Bass, correspondent of The Chicago Daily News, were walking in our heavy furs between the glaring moon and the German gunners, who will fire extravagantly at anything. Their guns got to work along the road and a shell came screaming up and burst perhaps twenty feet ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various

... glanced in I saw a rumply and tumbly and sleepy-eyed tot with his kinky head against his father's shoulder. As I took up my sewing again and heard Dinky-Dunk singing to his son, it seemed a proud and happy and contented sort of voice. It rose and fell in that next room, in a sort of droning bass, and for the life of me I can't tell why, but as I stopped in my sewing and sat listening to that father singing to his sleepy-eyed first-born, it brought the sudden tears to my eyes. It has been a considerable length of time, en passant, since I found myself sitting down ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer

... entered his village a little bantam walked up the road shrilling and clapping his wings, advancing to the fight. The priest admired his courage, and allowed him to peck at his knees. Close by Tom Mulhare's dorking was crowing hoarsely, 'A hoarse bass,' said the priest, and at the end of the village he heard a bird crowing an octave higher, and from the direction he guessed it must be Catherine Murphy's bird. Another cock, and then another. He listened, judging their voices to range over nearly ...
— The Lake • George Moore

... Jemima," interposed her sister, in a feminine bass, "that time is always on the wing. I should have thought we were both decidedly middle-aged, though you are the elder by I will not say ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald

... in a voice of thunder, "there is thy weapon and defence!"—flinging the weighty hammer on the ample shield, the collision of which produced a sound in unison with the deep bass of Muloch's voice; nor did the reverberation that succeeded cease to ring in the ears of Abad until several minutes after ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 404, December 12, 1829 • Various

... musketry from many parts of the city, accompanied by the grumbling bass of the gattling guns, then the defiant yells ceased, and ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss

... some brilliant waltzes, after which, her daughter accompanied her in the small bass of ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale

... cultivating the land. The people here described have disappeared from the face of the earth. The last remnant, who had become exceedingly ferocious and mischievous, were collected and carried to an island in Bass's Straits, where they were allowed to roam at large, it having been found impossible to tame them. It is believed that they finally died out. Mr Anderson records the beauty of the scenery and of the climate, though he remarks that not one single ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston

... intended to propose any counsel, any course for the purpose of maintaining the authority of the House and of the Chair." And so it was on many occasions. When Mr. Bradlaugh did rush up to the table of the House, escorted by Mr. Labouchere and Mr. Bass, and went through the amusing part of taking the oath, he brought the book which he kissed and the papers which he signed, and then rushed back into his seat. The House witnessed the scene indescribable ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... think only of the poetry, we shall admit that it has never been surpassed in energy and magnificence. Sophocles made the Greek drama as dramatic as was consistent with its original form. His portraits of men have a sort of similarity; but it is the similarity, not of a painting, but of a bass-relief. It suggests a resemblance; but it does not produce an illusion. Euripides attempted to carry the reform further. But it was a task far beyond his powers, perhaps beyond any powers. Instead of correcting what was bad, he destroyed ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord

... strength as terrified his judges. He simulated madness, foamed at the mouth, and finally tore up the benches in order to attack the judges with the fragments. He was sent first to the castle of Edinburgh and afterward to the Bass (an island), "for a change of air," as the record quaintly says. Finally, he was despatched to Blackness Castle, where he remained close in ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... which one must be a huntsman to understand. My companion shot one, and, if I had been well, I might have shot two; I was too exhausted. After three it cleared and became wonderfully fine, the horn-owl gave place to the thrush, and at sunrise the bird-chorus became deafening; the wood-pigeons singing bass, withal. At five I was down again, and, as it began to pour once more, I abandoned further attempts, returned hither, ate very heartily, after a twenty-four hours' fast, and drank two glasses of champagne, then slept for fourteen ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... spoon took a few small trout. A salmon rose to the fly of Kingfisher, but was not hooked; this was the first fish that we saw. (The term "fish" is always applied to the salmon by anglers: other inhabitants of the water are spoken of as "trout" or "bass;" a salmon is a "fish.") Although we had seen none before, our keen-eyed Indians had seen many as we ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various

... Orleans, and the difference between two ages and two literatures is illustrated in a few poems of thirteen lines. Something, certainly, has been retained of the old movement; the refrain falls in time like a well-played bass; and the very brevity of the thing, by hampering and restraining the greater fecundity of the modern mind, assists the imitation. But de Banville's poems are full of form and colour; they smack racily of modern life, and own small kindred with the verse of other days, when it seems ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... It is a small orchestra to be sure. But if you have two double-basses and enough fiddles on top you can manage to make the flowing of a river sound quite well. The music makes you think of the Styx (which is a deep bass, never ending, four in a bar, sort of river) before ever Uncle Edward and Alice draw you the curtains and show you the picture. Rather an awesome picture it is with the cold blue river and the great black cliffs and the blacker cypresses ...
— The Harlequinade - An Excursion • Dion Clayton Calthrop and Granville Barker

... Dick with the roar of the wind of the open sea about his ears as the deep bass voice let ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... not your voice that I take down to the State House with me," broke in their representative. "Freight charges on it would more than eat up my mileage allowance. Now let's call off this bass-drum solo business. Pull down your kite. To business!" He snapped his ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day

... hear, no solitude for those who could see. And he was riding into it with a young companion who saw and heard and loved and understood it all. Nothing escaped her; no frail air plant trailing from the high water oaks, no school of tiny bass in the shallows where their horses splashed through, no gopher burrow, no foot imprint of the little wild things which haunt the water's edge ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers

... Punt, the region on both sides of the Red Seamouth, including El-Yemen and Cape Guardafui, was made holy by the birth of Osiris, Isis, and Horus. Dr. Brugsch-Bey shows that one of the titles of the he-god was Bass, the cat or the leopard (whence our "Puss"); whilst his wife, Bast (the bissat or tabby-cat of modern Arabic), gave her name to Bubastis (Pi-Bast, the city of Bast). From the Osiric term (Bass) the learned Egyptologist would derive Bacchus ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... and this time more strongly than by the flare of light against his eyes. For in the voice he recognized the quality of the girl—the same softness, the same velvety richness, though the pitch was a bass. In the voice of this man there was the same suggestion that the tone would crack if it were forced either up or down. With this great difference, one could hardly conceive of a situation which would push that man's voice beyond its monotone. ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand

... kerchiefs, that their cunning hands have wrought. Or, again, more often still, before his dinner he waits on a client, copies the page of a newspaper, or carries to the doorkeeper some goods that have been delayed. Every other day, at six, he is faithful to his post. A permanent bass for the chorus, he betakes himself to the opera, prepared to become a soldier or an arab, prisoner, savage, peasant, spirit, camel's leg or lion, a devil or a genie, a slave or a eunuch, black or white; always ready to feign joy or sorrow, pity or astonishment, to utter cries that ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac

... Black River, and Great Pedee. Fortune seemed to smile on our enterprise; for by the time we reached Pedee, we had enlisted thirty-seven men, proper tall fellows, to whom we gave furloughs of two days to settle their affairs, and meet us at the house of a Mr. Bass, tavern-keeper, with whom we lodged. I should have told the reader, that we had with us, a very spirited young fellow by the name of Charnock, ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems

... scenes; at the card-tables, sharpened faces seeing nothing in the universe but their cards; and at the piano-forte a set of signers and signoras, and ladies of quality, mingled together, full of duets, solos, overtures, cavatinas, expression, execution, and thorough bass—mothers in agonies, daughters pressed or pressing forward—some young and trembling with shame—more, though young, yet confident of applause—others, and these the saddest among the gay, veteran female exhibitors, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth

... light. So at His cradle, which seems to be the identifying of Him with humanity in its most helpless and lowest condition, there shall be angels, and the stars in their courses shall bow and move to guide wise men from afar with offerings to His feet. And at His Cross, where He sounds the very bass string and touches the lowest point of humiliation and defeat, a clearer vision sees in ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... usual, the colonel ordered the music to start up and the men to fall into step and approach camp in order (the march is usually in route step,—i.e., every man marches and carries his gun as he pleases). The fifes and the snare-drums promptly obeyed, but the big bass drum was silent. The men fell into cadence step in fine shape, including the bass drummer, but his big shell gave forth no sound. The colonel called out, "What's the matter with the bass drum?" Still no response. A second ejaculation from head-quarters, a little more emphatic, fared no ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock

... that'll sink this town in the mud." Mr. Wiggins' voice was what might be called thorough-bass, and was apt to carry more weight with his townspeople than his opinions, which latter were not always acceptable to Colonel Caukins. "Look at it now! This town has never been bonded; we're free from debt and a good balance on hand for improvements. Now along comes ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller

... none of the high drama he had authored and he gave his own familiar role everything he had. Frowning and running his finger along each line, as though he were seeing the will for the first time, he read aloud in a deep portentous monotone, like a bass ...
— The Big Trip Up Yonder • Kurt Vonnegut

... lamp of a strange shape, standing up to the height of four or five feet from the floor, on a pedestal; and behind it stood the Genie, a fearful and wonderful apparition who said things, in a deep bass voice, which made everybody shout with laughter. "It's Fred Kane, the great ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... huge-wheeled, swinging old coach of my Great-grandmother Craddock, sitting pensively alone while father occupied the front seat beside Uncle Cradd, both of them in deep converse about a line in Tom Moore, while Uncle Cradd bumbled the air of "Drink to me only with thine eyes" in a lovely old bass, I should have been softly and pensively weeping at the thought of the devastation of my father's fortune, of the poverty brought down upon his old age, and about my fate as a gay social being going thus into exile; but I wasn't. Did I say that I was sitting alone in state upon ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess

... raise it, wave it, and throw it, and sometimes even touch her hand as he took it from her or gave it back, watching her all the time with an admiration and delight which no speckled trout or gamy black bass had ever yet aroused in him, and all this without fear that a gentleman out on the lake might possibly be observing them with the idea that he was more interested in his work than the ordinary guide might be supposed to be. But luck was against him, and Martin, who did not ...
— The Associate Hermits • Frank R. Stockton

... bluefish are especially valuable as food. Of the salt-water fishes that go up the rivers into fresh water to breed, the salmon and the shad are widely known. Of a strictly fresh-water fish, the sunfish and catfish are very common. Among the game-fish are the trout, bass, pickerel, and salmon. ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts

... miles from the city here, and on the sloping banks of the stream noted more for its plenitude of "chubs" and "shiners" than the gamier two-and four-pound bass for which, in season, so many credulous anglers flock and lie in wait, stands a country residence, so convenient to the stream, and so inviting in its pleasant exterior and comfortable surroundings—barn, dairy, and spring-house—that the weary, sunburnt, and disheartened ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)

... assistance of a young musician, later the well-known composer and Concert Director, Victor Bendix, I plunged into the mysteries of thorough-bass, and went so far as to write out the entire theory of harmonics. I learnt to express myself in the barbaric language of music, to speak of minor scales in fifths, to understand what was meant by enharmonic ambiguity. I studied voice modulation, ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes

... name wuz Catherine Bass an' my pappy wuz Ephriam Butts. Us b'longed ter Mars' Ben Bass an' my mammy had de same name ez marster twell she ma'ied pappy. He b'longed ter somebody else 'til marster bought him. Dey had ten chillun. No, mam, Mammy didn't have no doctor," Aunt Carrie chuckled, "Didn't nobody ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration

... remained his easiest task, and he did it all with a pole that he cut with his clasp knife, a string and a little piece of bent and stiffened wire. He caught perch, bass, suckers, trout, sunfish, catfish, and other kinds, the names of which he did not know. Sometimes when his hook and line had brought him all that was needed, and the day was hot, he would take off his clothing and plunge into the deep, cool pools. Often his friend, Paul Cotter, ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler

... while a black bass will be caught, though it is not believed that this is a native fish. It does not seem to thrive in Tahoe though the boatmen tell me they occasionally see a few, especially off the docks at Tallac and other points at the south end ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James

... moment's wait, then Jimmie Dale spoke again—his voice still pleasant, but changed in pitch and register to a bass that was far from Jimmie Dale's, though one ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... district attorney. The county was strongly Republican, but young Cleveland received a support beyond his party strength and was beaten, by a few hundred majority only, by the Republican nominee, Lyman K. Bass, then and ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various

... wrote a neat hand, and was a good arithmetician, kept all the house accounts and farm accounts. She was a musician, too,—not profound, but very correct. She would take her turn at the harmonium in church, and, when she was there, you never heard a wrong note in the bass, nor an inappropriate flourish, nor bad time. She could sing, too, but never would, except her part in a psalm. Her voice was a deep contralto, and she chose to be ashamed of this heavenly organ, because a pack of envious girls had giggled, and said it ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade

... tournays, the champion riding into the ring at the last moment. He was half sob, half song. The wine of glory flushed his veins as at the moment when he stormed with the crew of the Tremendous at the heels of Lushy. His eyes ran; his voice broke. Now it was a shrill treble, now a hoarse bass. ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant

... the noun and those which all admit are adjectives, it will be no indifferent task to satisfy them. What is the difference in the construction of language or the sense conveyed, between Hudson's river, and Hudson river? Davis's straits, or Bass straits? St. John's church, or Episcopal church? the sun's beams, or sun shine? In all cases these words are used to define the succeeding noun. They regard "property or possession," only when attending circumstances, altogether foreign from any ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch

... drum). Classical 'tuck' from Italian 'toccata,' the preluding 'touch' or flourish, on any instrument (but see Johnson under word 'tucket,' quoting Othello). The deeper Scottish vowels are used here to mark the deeper sound of the bass drum, as in ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... could see a long wavering line of torches drifting down the main street, and could hear the throbbing of the bass drum, the clash of cymbals, the squeaking of a fife or two, and the faint roar of remote hurrahs. The tail end of this procession was climbing the market house stairs when the twins arrived in its neighborhood; when they reached ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... references: Southeast Asia, Standard Time Zones of the World Area: total area: 73.6 million km2 comparative area: slightly less than eight times the size of the US; third-largest ocean (after the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Ocean, but larger than the Arctic Ocean) note: includes Arabian Sea, Bass Straight, Bay of Bengal, Java Sea, Persian Gulf, Red Sea, Straight of Malacca, Timor Sea, and other tributary water bodies Coastline: 66,526 km International disputes: some maritime disputes (see littoral states) ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... answered Jethro, still looking out through the window curtains at the ever ganging groups of gentlemen in the street. These groups had a never ceasing interest for Jethro Bass. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... Westward, makes me Doubtfull whether they are one land or no.* (* Had not the gale on the day before forced Cook to run to the northward, he would have made the north end of the Furneaux Group, and probably have discovered Bass Strait, which would have cleared up the doubt, which he evidently felt, as to whether Tasmania was an island or not. The fact was not positively known until Dr. Bass sailed through the Strait in a whale-boat in 1797. Point Hicks was merely a rise in the coast-line, where ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook

... Atlantic City, for he had removed from the Airedale mansion before her return, and had made himself a bed in the corner of the vestry-room. He feared she was angry: there had been a vigorous growling note in some of the bass pipes of the organ as she played the opening hymn. He had not seen a tall white-haired figure who came into the chapel rather late, after the service had begun, and took a seat at the back. Bishop Borzoi had seized the opportunity to drive ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley

... heard them, and in her answer it seemed to Diamond that just because she was so big and could not help it, and just because her ear and her mouth must seem to him so dreadfully far away, she spoke to him more tenderly and graciously than ever before. Her voice was like the bass of a deep organ, without the groan in it; like the most delicate of violin tones without the wail in it; like the most glorious of trumpet-ejaculations without the defiance in it; like the sound of falling water without the clatter and clash in it: it was like all of them and neither ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald

... it cut! what unheard-of combinations of fearful sounds it was guilty of! Up and down it jumped and flourished, careering about in a manner as far as possible removed from that of a sober, well-conducted scale. Bass notes and treble notes ran against each other; high notes and low notes played leap-frog—they groaned, shrieked, and wheezed in a horrid discord, which could not have been worse if a thousand imps had been let loose in the ...
— Harper's Young People, June 29, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... to his talents under the English Government. The most direct course for New South Wales would have been through Torres Straits, but the east trade wind still blowing, compelled us to take the longer route round the south of New Holland, and through Bass's Straits, not many years before discovered, between that vast island and the smaller one of Van Diemen's Land. A northerly breeze at length coming on, enabled us to sight the south-west point of New Holland, and thence we sailed along the coast, occasionally seeing tall ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston

... and bass, wild turkey with oysters and fruit preserved in white brandy, he maintained a sombre silence. His mother, on the right, her sister opposite—Phebe's place seemed scarcely emptier than when she had actually occupied it—held ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... but as these were not asked for at the door, it was of no consequence. About the centre of the room, at two small tables joined together, were to be seen the party from the Yungfrau; some were drinking beer, some grog, and Jemmy Ducks was perched on the table, with his fiddle as usual held like a bass viol. He was known by those who frequented the house by the name of the Mannikin, and was a universal object of admiration and good-will. The quadrille was ended, ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat

... strict attention to propriety, when the master of the band summoned McFittoch to his post, by the following ireful expostulation:—"What are ye about, sir? Mind your bow-hand. How the deil d'ye think three fiddles is to keep down a bass, if yin o' them stands girning and gabbling as ye're doing? ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott

... croakers, deacons of the mire, That led the deep batrachiain choir, Uk! Uk! Caronk! with bass that might Have left Lablache's out of sight, Shook knobby heads, and said, "No go! You'd better let 'em try to grow: Old Doctor Time is slow, but still He does know ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various

... his Adventures at Home and Abroad. The Second Part; wherein are set forth the misfortunes in which he was involved upon the Appin Murder; his troubles with Lord Advocate Prestongrange; captivity on the Bass Rock; journey into France and Holland; and singular relations with James More Drummond or Macgregor, a son of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... stole upon the air from the hiding place of Mrs. Powder's troup. The lady's voice they had heard before; it was one of great power and training, and it came now mingling with a sweet full bass voice. There was no more talking until the music ended. It was a fine bit from ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner

... shall take high ground. The alarm must be perpetual." A voice of remonstrance, with thunder growl accompaniment, was rising higher and clearer from the pen of the young editor. His tone of earnestness was deepening to the stern bass of the moral reformer, and the storm breath of enthusiasm was blowing to a blaze the glowing coals of his humanity. The wail of the fleeing fugitive from the house of bondage sounded no longer far away and unreal in his ears, but thrilled now right under ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke

... coming to that. Highly delighted by this immediate response to my request, I said to the 'forces': 'Can't you demonstrate to us that these sounds are not accidental or caused by the jarring of cars in the street? Can't you pluck the bass strings?' Instantly, and with clangor, the lower strings replied. Thereupon I said: 'Can't you play a tune?' To this only a confused jangle made answer. I was unable to secure any orderly succession of notes. 'Can't you keep time while I whistle?' I insisted, with intent ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland

... a voice, another voice unheard before, spoke in murmured accents, and then a deeper bass than that which had previously called shouted again ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... class-mates at New Haven when our fathers were working our way through college. How far away it all seemed on that torrid Fourth of July as we sat on the Kawa's deck singing "Oralee", to which we had taught Triplett the bass. ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock

... small and short as to necessitate a constant shifting for the high notes, from which he scrambled back to the first position with sounds not of unmixed purity of tone. At seven the shrill tweedle-dee of this youngster had begun, accompanied by a booming ground-bass from Elijah New, the parish- clerk, who had thoughtfully brought with him his favourite musical instrument, the serpent. Dancing was instantaneous, Mrs. Fennel privately enjoining the players on no account to let the dance exceed the length of a ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy

... ago Mr. William Shriver, a primitive pisciculturist, took from the Youghiogheny River eleven black bass, and conveyed them in the tank of the tender of a locomotive to Cumberland, in the coal-region of Western Maryland. There he deposited them in the Potomac, with the injunction which forms the heraldic ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various

... wood that lay on the floor, thus producing tones of a low pitch. Another departure from the usual style of this hula was that the hoopaa, at the same time, devoted themselves with the right hand to playing upon the pu-niu, the small drum, while with the left they developed the deep bass of the pahu. The result of this outre combination ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson

... victor clouds, led by the conquering wind. Victory: it was in the cold, pure ether filling the heavens, in the solemn gladness of the hills. The great forests thrilling in the soft light, the very sleepy river wakening under the mist, chorded in with a grave bass to the rising anthem of welcome to the new life which God had freshly given to the world. From the sun himself, come forth as a bridegroom from his chamber, to the flickering raindrops on the road-side ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various

... the passengers and late freight coming aboard gradually grew less. Whistles sounded their bass notes, ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms - Or Lost in the Wilds of Florida • Laura Lee Hope

... sang—for I was there, Occupied a singer's chair Next to—well, no prouder man Ever lifts the bass, nor can, Sometimes held the self-same book, (How my nervous fingers shook!) Sometimes—wretch—while still the air Echoed to the parson's prayer, I would whisper in her ear What she could not help but hear. Once, I told her my desire. ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles

... poor attempt to imitate for his friend Wallis the rector's pedantic bass and then, laughing at his failure, asked Stephen ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce

... steady flow of supplication. The eldest Miss Beecher—the Canon had altogether two daughters and three sons—played a harmonium. The other girl and the three boys, with the assistance of an uncertain bass from Mr. Quinn, gave utterance to the congregation's praise. Hyacinth tried to join in the first hymn, which happened to be familiar to him, but quavered into silence towards the end of the second verse, ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham

... to her conversible readiness, and at once fell into the background, as he did only with her, to perform accordant bass in their dialogue; for when a woman lightly caps our strained remarks, we gallantly surrender the leadership, lest she should ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... close by. He did not see a living thing in the water, not a crawfish, turtle, nor even a frog. He peered round closely, then flipped in one of the bugs he had brought along. A shiny yellow fish flared up from the depths of the deep hole and disappeared with the cricket; but it was a bass or a pike, not a trout. Wetzel had said there were a few trout living near the cool springs of these streams. The lad tried again to coax one to the surface. This time the more fortunate cricket swam and hopped across the ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey

... Mr. Brown, three times, and taken up for dead—that is, once in Gibraltar Bay, and once when I was a total wreck in the old Seahorse, that was in the hurricane in the Indies; after that when I fell over quay-head here, fishing for bass,—why, I know well how quick the prayer will run through a man's heart, when he's a-drowning, and the light of conscience, too, all one's ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... our choir is so excellent—two violins, a viola, clarinet, 'cello, double bass, the trumpets and drums, and of course the ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine

... Bass and Flinders. Clarke. Shortland. Discoveries of Bass to the southward of Port Jackson; of Flinders; and of Flinders and Bass. Examinations to the northward by Flinders. ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders

... the centre, his fat, brown hands wield the tiny clappers with unerring precision, up and down the strings, with that soft, lingering tone which partakes of the clavecins and the harp alike. At the back the double-bass, lean and dark, with jet-black eyes that stare stolidly ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... the horizon wall, And with softness touching all, Tints the human countenance With a color of romance, And infusing subtle heats, Turns the sod to violets, Thou, in sunny solitudes, Rover of the underwoods, The green silence dost displace With thy mellow, breezy bass. ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various

... road we are confronted by a smiling old peasant with gold rings in his ears, who in the expectation of forestieri coming this way has been patiently sitting for hours on a boulder. Doffing his battered hat and putting a sunburnt hand to his mouth, the old fellow in a deep musical bass wakens all the sleeping echoes that lie in the many folds of the valley, so that we hear the words of welcome repeated again and again, growing fainter and fainter as the sound of the voice travels from cliff to cliff. ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan

... thrust inside his belt, wore an indulgent smile upon his countenance. He seemed to find Sydney amusing. He spoke in a deep bass voice,—as if it issued from ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh

... it is a devil of a lot of trouble to put 'em on. Of course every sort of man here but the Americans wears some sort of decorations around his neck or on his stomach, at these functions. For my part, I like it—here. The women sparkle with diamonds, the men strut; the King is a fine man with a big bass voice and he talks very well and is most agreeable; the Queen is very gracious; the royal ladies (Queen Victoria's daughters, chiefly) are nice; you see all the big Generals and all the big Admirals and the great folk ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick

... Barsidge William Bartlet Joseph Bartley Charles Barthalemerd Charles Bartholemew Joseph Bartholomew —— Bartholomew Benjamin Bartholoyd Petrus Bartlemie Michael Bartol Thomas Barton John Basker William Bason Donnor Bass Juvery Bastin Michael Bastin Louis Baston Asa Batcheler Benjamin Bate Benjamin Bates Henry Bates James Bates William Batt John Battersley John Battesker Adah Batterman Adam Batterman George Batterman (2) Joseph Batterman —— Baumos Thomas Bausto Benjamin ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge

... but shad, trout, bass, pike, pickerel, grayling, have no plural form. "I caught three bass and ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel

... night was filled with a howling tumult that deafened the men inside; the blizzard had burst upon the mesa. Through the windows one could see nothing, for the air had become a black maelstrom of whirling snow and darkness where a choked roar persisted as steadily as the bass thunder of Niagara. The warmth had vanished; a cutting cold, as if striking direct from arctic ice, minute by minute drove the mercury in the thermometer on Bryant's wall downward with unbelievable swiftness. If anything, the fury of the storm seemed to increase as time passed, swelling to such ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd

... on Fenna.' They whoop niggers black as me. Fenna waited on Master Brutten Williams. Fenna was half white. He was John Williams' boy. John was Brutten's brother. John Williams went to Mississippi and overseed for Mr. Bass. Mars Brutten got crazy. He'd shoot at anything and call ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration

... have it. For note you, all these interrogative categories must be met, faced, resolved and answered exactly—or you have no more knowledge of the matter than the Times has of economics or the King of the Belgians of thorough-Bass. Yea, if you miss, overlook, neglect, or shirk by reason of fatigue or indolence, so much as one tittle of these several aspects of a question you might as well leave it altogether alone and give up analysis for selling stock, as did the Professor of Verbalism in the University of Adelaide to ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc



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