"Catgut" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... two-stringed bow to these huge twelve-stringed Egyptian harps, six feet high and beautifully finished with veneer, inlaid with ivory and mother-of-pearl, no one can say how many centuries elapsed. The catgut strings of the harps of three thousand years ago are still capable of giving a musical sound. The best workmen of the present time, we are assured, could not finish a harp more exquisitely than these are finished; yet they have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... a pair of peculiar goat-skin bellows, provided with wooden nozzles tipped with iron. A catgut bowstring drills for boring holes, and screw-drills for cutting threads, hammers, and an anvil. A rude but ingenious forge is constructed out of a few handfuls of stiff mud, and, building a charcoal ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... catgut and rawhide backing, we have not found that they add materially to the cast of a bow, only insure it against fracture. On the other hand, sap wood and hickory backing materially add to the power of ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... inch and a half in length. Many of them had a small canal extending from one extremity to the other, perfectly cylindrical, and of a size that readily admitted a coarse thread or a piece of fine catgut. Their colour was red or dull white. The natives were acquainted with this structure in crystals. I have mentioned these circumstances because, although no crystallised body is at present known to assume this form, it may lead some future traveller to investigate the ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... the threatened ignominy alike of sun-bonnet or nightcap, Leander sat in the flickering sunshine and shadow upon a rock beside the spring, and blissfully experimented with all the capacities of catgut ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... table and seized another foot and ankle. There was a greenish festering hole so high up the leg that it was impossible to use a tourniquet. So the surgeon laid bare the main artery by a longitudinal incision and tied it up with catgut to prevent excessive loss of blood. With a rapid stroke of his knife he then made a shallow cut right round the limb above the injured spot, and depressing the blade cut deeply down to the bone. The blood gushed up suddenly, formed a pool on ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... for not having gone far enough in the scientific direction in the right scientific fashion than for having taken that course at all. The famous reproach of poetry made by Huxley, that it was mostly "sensual caterwauling," might well have given the singer pause in striking the sympathetic catgut of his lyre: perhaps the strings were metallic; but no matter. The reproach had a justice in it that must have stung, and made the lyrist wish to be an atomic theorist at any cost. In fact, at that very moment science had, ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... cents, including war tax. But this is worth—well, it is what the novelists call an illuminating experience. This gentleman of music whose fingers have for twenty years absorbed the souls of Beethoven and Sarasate, Liszt and Moussorgski, this aristocrat of the catgut is posturing sardonically before the three bored fates. He is pouring twenty years, twenty well-spent years, into a tawdry little ballad. Ah, how our baron's fiddle sings! And the darkened faces in front hum to themselves: "When you're flirt-ing with ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... had set about to replace it. He had cut a button from another coat, by the easy method of amputating it with a surgical bistoury, and had sewed it in its new position with a curved surgical needle and a few inches of sterilized catgut. The operation was slow and painful, and accomplished only with the aid of two cigarettes and an artery clip. When it was over he tied the ends in a surgeon's knot underneath and stood back to consider the result. It seemed neat enough, but conspicuous. After a moment or two ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... last me for a whole month, and the Deer and the Boar for two more; then the Serpent will serve me a day; and let me taste the bow-string too. But, in the first place, let me try that which is the least savoury. Suppose, then, I eat this catgut line which is fastened to the bow": saying so, he drew near to eat it; but the instant he had bit the line in two, he was torn asunder by the spring of the bow; and he was reduced to the state of the five elements. I say, therefore, ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... sounds of music, there penetrated from an unseen source, a sawish, scraped, vibration of catgut, pathetic, insistent, painstaking, ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... was indeed a day of finery, which all my sumptuary edicts could not restrain. How well soever I fancied my lectures against pride had conquered the vanity of my daughters, yet I still found them secretly attached to all their former finery; they still loved laces, ribbons, bugles, and catgut; my wife herself retained a passion for her crimson paduasoy, because I formerly happened to ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... crisscrossed hands and with slack fingers plucked the slender catgut thong. He drew and plucked. It buzz, it twanged. While Goulding talked of Barraclough's voice production, while Tom Kernan, harking back in a retrospective sort of arrangement talked to listening Father Cowley, who played a voluntary, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... the so-called Hardanger-fiddle are four metal strings, which lie under the sounding-board. They are tuned in unison with the upper catgut strings, whereby, as well as by the peculiar form of the violin itself, this gives forth a singular strong, almost ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... gunpowder as the propelling agency, came into use in the fourteenth century. Prior to this time there were machines and instruments which threw stones and catapults and large arrows by means of the reaction of a tightly twisted rope made up of hemp, catgut or hair. Slings were also much employed for ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... was an ingenious little thing about six inches long, the bow of steel, the string of catgut, the stock and barrel of wood, and it projected marbles or spherical bullets with very considerable force. It would raise a bump on the head at twenty yards, and break a window at thirty. Griffiths also lived in Mr Cookson's house, so that Saurin had only to go to his ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... Townhall; Santerre with the National Guard?—It is very curious to think what a City is. Theatres, to the number of some twenty-three, were open every night during these prodigies: while right-arms here grew weary with slaying, right-arms there are twiddledeeing on melodious catgut; at the very instant when Abbe Sicard was clambering up his second pair of shoulders, three-men high, five hundred thousand human individuals were lying horizontal, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... instrument, whose name is derived from Aeolus, god of the wind. The aeolian harp consists of a sound-box about 3 ft long, 5 in. wide, and 3 in. deep, made of thin deal, or preferably of pine, and having beech ends to hold the tuning-pins and hitch-pins. A dozen or less catgut strings of different thickness, but tuned in exact unison, and left rather slack, are attached to the pins, and stretched over two narrow bridges of hard wood, one at each end of the sound-board, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... a Sort of Toys sold, with a Man and a Woman so fixed before the Door of a House, that at the Approach of wet Weather the Woman entered it, and when the Weather grew fair the Man. This was done by the Help of a Bit of Catgut, which shrinks in wet Weather, and stretches again when it is fair. This appears better by a Line and Plummet, especially if the Line be made of good Whipcord, that is well dried, for then if it be hung against a Wainscot, and a Line drawn under it exactly where the Plummet reaches, in very ...
— The Shepherd of Banbury's Rules to Judge of the Changes of the Weather, Grounded on Forty Years' Experience • John Claridge
... socket joint. My line was forty yards of untwisted silk upon a multiplying reel. The "leader" (I am very particular about my leaders) had been made to order from a domestic animal with which I had been acquainted. The fisherman requires as good a catgut as the violinist. The interior of the house cat, it is well known, is exceedingly sensitive; but it may not be so well known that the reason why some cats leave the room in distress when a piano-forte is played is because the two instruments are not in the same ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... surprise, fought feebly for the old ripple; but the Klosking, resolute by nature, was now mighty as Neptune, and would have her big waves. The momentary struggle, in which she was loyally seconded by the conductor, evoked her grand powers. Catgut had to yield to brains, and the whole orchestra, composed, after all, of good musicians, soon caught the divine afflatus, and the little theater seemed on fire with music; the air, sung with a large rhythm, swelled and rose, and thrilled every breast with amazement and delight; the house ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... retiring from business, in consequence of his daughter's marriage. That eminent antiquary, Dr. Dryasdust, is possessed of an antique watch, with a silver dial-plate, the mainspring being a piece of catgut instead of a chain, which bears the names of ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... Nooses.—Catgut (which see) makes better nooses than string, because it is stiff enough to keep in shape when set: brass wife that has been heated red-hot, is excellent; for it has no tendency whatever to twist, and yet is perfectly pliable. Fish-hooks are sometimes attached to springes; sometimes ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... consists of a stout piece of cane about a foot long, with a ball of five or six ounces of lead attached firmly to one end by catgut netting, whilst the other end is furnished with a strong leather or catgut loop to go round the wrist and prevent the weapon flying from or being ...
— Broad-Sword and Single-Stick • R. G. Allanson-Winn
... I suppose you have been serenading too! Eh, disturbing some peaceable neighbourhood with villainous catgut and lascivious piping! Out on't! you set your sister, here, a vile example; but I come to tell you, madam, that I'll suffer no more of these midnight incantations—these amorous orgies, that steal the senses in the hearing; as, they say, Egyptian embalmers serve mummies, extracting ...
— The Duenna • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... aboard the packet-boat, somewhere between Donaghadee and Portpatrick. By our common family, I mean, Sir, the family of the Muses. I am a fiddler and a poet; and you, I am told, play an exquisite violin, and have a standard taste in the belles lettres. The other day, a brother catgut gave me a charming Scots air of your composition. If I was pleased with the tune, I was in raptures with the title you have given it, and, taking up the idea, I have spun it into the three stanzas inclosed. Will you allow me, Sir, to present you them, as the ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... there as an example, or to increase the superstitious terror that was to help him in guarding the approaches to his lair! Then, upon reflection, Erik went back to fetch the Punjab lasso, which is very curiously made out of catgut, and which might have set an examining magistrate thinking. This explains ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... cross-legged on the hideous carpet, holding in his large, pale hands, artificially marked with blue spots and tinted at the nails with the henna, a strange little instrument of sand-tortoise, goat-skin, wood, and catgut, with four strings from which he was drawing the plaintive and wavering tune. He wore a moustache and a small, blue-black beard. His eyes were half shut, his head drooped to one side, his mouth was partly ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens |
