"Falsetto" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... European churches, and in a considerable number in the United States, it is customary to have boys with unchanged voices sing the soprano part, men with trained falsetto voices (called male altos) taking the alto,[32] while the tenor and bass parts are, of course, sung by men as always. Since the child voice is only useful when the tones are produced with relaxed muscles, and since the resonance cavities have not developed sufficiently to ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... Stooping forward, Abraham Lincoln began to speak, and Stephen Brice hung his head and shuddered. Could this shrill falsetto be the same voice to which he had listened only that morning? Could this awkward, yellow man with his hands behind his back be he whom he had worshipped? Ripples of derisive laughter rose here and there, on the stand and from the crowd. Thrice distilled ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... has since been altered and enlarged, but Hugh drew an amusing set of sketches to illustrate the life there, in which it appears a rueful and rather tawdry building, of yellow stone and blue slate, of a shallow and falsetto Gothic, or with what maybe called Gothic sympathies. It is at Mirfield, near Bradford, in the Calder valley; the country round full of high chimneys, and the sky much blurred with smoke, but the grounds and gardens were large, and suited to a spacious sort of retirement. ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... coward," cried Reddy, talking in a high falsetto voice, "to hit a man when his back is turned. I'll slap you for that," and he landed a snowball on ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower
... principle of life to maintain himself at the height which his courage warranted. His thickness of wit was never a bar to the success of his irony. For the irony of the ignorant Scot is rarely the outcome of intellectual qualities. It depends on a falsetto voice and the use of a recognized number of catchwords. "Dee-ee-ar me, dee-ee-ar me;" "Just so-a, just so-a;" "Im-phm!" "D'ye tell me that?" "Wonderful, serr, wonderful;" "Ah, well, may-ay-be, may-ay-be"—these ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... now in every limb. Escape was almost his. He knew he could not be done away with. "I'll give her to him!" He staggered toward Lopez, "I will! I swear I will!" he screamed, his words reaching a high falsetto. ...
— The Bad Man • Charles Hanson Towne
... making angry answer. A very tall, old, white-headed man came, shading a candle, at the summons. He had been of great strength in his time, and of a handsome countenance; but now he was fallen away, his teeth were quite gone, and his voice when he spoke was broken and falsetto. ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the worst instances is in 'In Memoriam', where what is appropriate to the simple sentiment finds, as it should do, corresponding simplicity of expression in the first couplet, to collapse into the falsetto of strained ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... is done in a peculiar, high and long-drawn note, varying with the motion of the windlass. This requires a high voice, strong lungs, and much practice, to be done well. This fellow had a very peculiar, wild sort of note, breaking occasionally into a falsetto. The sailors thought it was too high, and not enough of the boatswain hoarseness about it; but to me it had a great charm. The harbor was perfectly still, and his voice rang among the hills, as though it could have ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... merely waving a red flag at an already exasperated bull. The president got upon his feet, and his shrill falsetto cut the air ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... place about the end of June—the young crows with their bob-tails, soft wings, and falsetto voices are brought by their parents, whom they nearly equal in size, and introduced to society at the old pine woods, a woods that is at once their fortress and college. Here they find security in numbers and in lofty yet sheltered ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... the power of the charm ceased. A Maori sorcerer intent on bewitching somebody sought to get a tress of his victim's hair, the parings of his nails, some of his spittle, or a shred of his garment. Having obtained the object, whatever it was, he chanted certain spells and curses over it in a falsetto voice and buried it in the ground. As the thing decayed, the person to whom it had belonged was supposed to waste away. When an Australian blackfellow wishes to get rid of his wife, he cuts off a lock of her hair in her sleep, ties it to his spear-thrower, and goes with it to a neighbouring ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... been accustomed to do many things for himself, and he had discovered that it saves time and temper to be methodical. He had arranged with the wife of the long-nosed Barrett, a stout Welsh woman with a falsetto voice, the Merionethshire accent of which long residence in London had not perceptibly modified, to come across the square each morning to prepare his breakfast, and also to "turn the place out" on Saturday mornings; and for the rest, he even welcomed a little housework as a relaxation from the ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... the fireflies glistened amongst the heavy leaves of the mamayes and the orange-trees, whilst from the Chaco rose the mysterious voices of the desert night, and from the outskirts of the town the wailing Indian Jarabis and Cielitos sung in a high falsetto key to the tinkling of a cracked guitar, but broken now and then by the sharp warning cry 'Alerta centinela!' of the soldiers on the walls. Could one have landed there, one would have felt much as a sailor feels, dropped on the beach of Eromango or on some yet unbemissionaried ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... he said this, a mysterious falsetto voice, which seemed to come from behind the copper basins, repeated, in ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... whined the man in a sharp falsetto voice. "I reckon if you're Mistress Scarlet, you're the ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... very different aspect from that under which we are wont to think of him. By them he was regarded as an illustrious declaimer, in an age when declamation was the most valued of all accomplishments. It was true that there was a sort of "tinkle," a certain falsetto tone in his style, which offended men of robust and severe taste; but this meretricious resonance of style was a matter of envy and admiration when affectation was the rage, and when the times were too enervated and too corrupt for the manly conciseness ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... an admirable mimic, he imitated her strut before the looking-glass, and general coquettish behaviour in the dressing-room at the villa, while he sang in a falsetto voice— ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... limbs, except the King's, were drawn in tension. Then from the prostrate body of the witch-doctor, whose legs and arms were twisted as in agony, whose dribbling mouth was closed like a vise, came a ventriloquous falsetto: ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... turn to sing comes he, knowing only the old refrains of the mountain, intones in an Arabic falsetto voice the complaint of the linen weaver; and then Ramuntcho, who had sung it the day before in the autumn twilight, sees again the darkened sky of yesterday, the clouds full of rain, the cart drawn ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... what the critics said,—only they've got a set of phrases for expressing it. They said it was amateurish, that it was in a falsetto key, etc." ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... description is applicable to another man, excepting that he generally foams at the mouth and spits, dancing and jumping about in a strange rapid manner, shrieking out his maledictions in a shrill falsetto voice. ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... of the epiglottis attended with a species of double voice possess great interest. French described a man of thirty, by occupation a singer and contortionist, who became possessed of an extra voice when he was sixteen. In high and falsetto tones he could run the scale from A to F in an upper and lower range. The compass of the low voice was so small that he could not reach the high notes of any song with it, and in singing he only used it to break in on the falsetto ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... he has a rigid throat, and the longer he sings the more rigid it becomes. By the time he decides to go to a teacher his voice is in such a condition that he must take his upper tones with a thick, throaty quality or with a light falsetto. Among female voices I have seen many that could sing nothing but a full tone in the upper register, and that only with ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger
... Accordingly, in the manner of most other two-guinea clairvoyants, she composed herself in a graceful and recumbent attitude, made a lot of queer grimaces and still queerer noises, and spoke in a falsetto voice, which purposed to be that of Tillie Toot, once a barmaid in Edinburgh, now one of Madame's familiar spirits. And the gist of what "Tillie" told them was that Hamar & Co. derived their powers from Black Magic; and that the secrets thereof could only be learned from Madame, after ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... wife were sitting. The others had almost forgotten them in the darkness and exchanged frightened glances when they heard a voice that scarcely one of them knew, and the man with the glazed eyes and uncertain gestures, a marionette with broken joints, began to speak hastily in a falsetto like the crowing of ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... in a fuming hurry to start ran round in front of the car at the precise moment that the other ran round behind it, and they both banged loudly on each other's knockers. These knocks were not so precisely simultaneous as the shouts had been, and this led to mutual discovery, hailed with peals of falsetto laughter on the part of Captain Puffin and the more manly guffaws of the Major.... After that the Royce lumbered down the grass-grown cobbles of the street, and after a great deal of reversing managed to turn ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... and provisions; a tall man with a grayish beard threw branches on the fire, which was enveloped in thick, whitish smoke. The damp branches, falling on the fire, crackled and rustled plaintively, and the accordion teasingly played a lively tune, while the falsetto of the singer reinforced and ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... familiar, but a grand apartment, filled with old armor, and pictures, and cabinets, and showing glimpses of a balcony and fair gardens beyond. There were two figures in this hall, and they spoke—in the high and curious falsetto of the stage. Macleod paid no more heed to them than if they had been marionettes. For one thing, he could not follow their speech very well; but, in any case, what interest could he have in listening ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... many, he also nourished strong antipathies. The appearance in Madame Novikoff's rooms of a certain Scotch bishop invariably drove him out of them, "Peter Paul, Bishop of Claridge's," he called him. To Von Beust (the Austrian Chancellor), who spoke English in a rapid half-intelligible falsetto, he gave the name of Mirliton (penny trumpet). His allusions to Mirliton and to the Bishop frequently mystified Madame Novikoff's guests. For he loved to talk in cypher. Canon Warburton, kindly searching on my behalf his brother Eliot's journals, tells me that he ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... a-goin' to be pretty late agin to-night, Jim," he remarked in a squeaky falsetto. "S'pose it's ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... directed backwards, others, wearing scarlet aprons, carry brooms and with slow and mystic movements sweep widely on either side with the intent of gathering up the wandering soul. Meanwhile crackers are fired to the weird sound of a minor, falsetto lilting. After a considerable journey over the countryside they return to prove the success of their venture. For this the clothes of the sick man must be reweighed to see whether the weight of the spirit has been added to that of the patient's garments. Should the smallest discrepancy ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... smoothing his broadcloth, and, turning up the whites of his eyes, uttered a despairing groan. "Oh, that child! that child! that child!"—his voice running up into a wild falsetto howl. ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... playing Juliet to the Romeo of the tall young surgeon, singing falsetto like a fat German angel dressed in loose-fitting khaki, with his belt undone. There were charades in the tent. The boy from Barts' did remarkable imitations of a gamecock challenging a rival bird, of a cow coming ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... 'bout ship!" now resounded through the ship as it was repeated in the variety of basses of the boatswain and his mates, at either hatchway—one of the youngsters of the watch running down at the same time to acquaint the officers, in his shrill falsetto, with that which had been roared out loud enough to startle even the deaf purser. The first-lieutenant, followed by the master, brushed by him, and was up the ladder before his supererogatory communication could ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... of railroad securities brings the brokers to their feet, and the real business of the day begins. Offers and bids, shouted in deep bass, high treble, or shrill falsetto, resound through the hall, and in a few minutes the jovial-looking brokers seem to be on the verge of madness. How they yell and shout, and stamp, and gesticulate. The roar and confusion are bewildering to a stranger, but the keen, practised ears of the Vice-President at once ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... called, in a high, almost falsetto voice. "I thought you would have eight or nine. Blessed hot, isn't it?" He had a smart though somewhat effeminate manner, and Cowperwood at once wrote him down as an ass. Berenice took the mail with an engaging smile. She sauntered past him reading, without so much as a glance. ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... contemptuous air of a boy who scorns tears and girls, Job stood there; and, posing dramatically, sang in a falsetto voice: ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... been struck with dismay by the loudness of Maryanne's tone as she rebuked her father. Then Mrs. Jones had joined them, and the battle had raged still more furiously. The voice of the old man, too, was heard from time to time. When roused by suffering to anger he would forget to speak in his usual falsetto treble, and break out in a few natural words of rough impassioned wrath. At about ten, Mr. Brown came down into Robinson's room, and, seating himself on a low chair, remained there for awhile without moving, and almost without speaking. "Is she gone, George?" he asked at last. "Which of them?" ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... run away?" But Smerdyakov did not deign to reply. After a moment's silence the guitar tinkled again, and he sang again in the same falsetto: ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... he mimicked her in a quivering falsetto. "Have a care of my frock—do not crush my chiffons.... And these are the women for whom men break ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... It came down out of the northwest, like a cloudburst. It hummed and sang, and then it whined, and then it screamed, screamed in a high falsetto that made you think poor old Mother Earth was in her last throes! The snow was fine and hard, really minute particles of ice, and not snow at all, as we know it in the East, little sharp-angled diamond-points that stung the skin like fire. It came in almost ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... Ben Griebler, his little shrewd eyes sparkling, his voice more squeakily falsetto than ever, surveyed the youngster before ...
— Personality Plus - Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock • Edna Ferber
... there were no empty chairs. Until, in the midst of Part II ("A Laughable Sketch"—vide the programme—wherein female roles were doubly coy by reason of the masculinity of their falsetto dialogue and remarkable ankles) a messenger stole hither and thither, whispering to the orderlies, who ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... language and the gay, could be sublime with Johnson, or blackguard with the groom; could dispute, could rally, could quibble, in our language. Baretti has, besides, some skill in music, with a bass voice, very agreeable, besides a falsetto which he can manage so as to mimic any singer he hears. I would also trust his knowledge of painting a long way. These accomplishments, with his extensive power over every modern language, make him a most pleasing ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... the family Caesar conceived that Mlle. Cadet was the most intelligent. She was a French country girl, very jovial, blond, with a turned-up nose, and on the whole insignificant looking. When she spoke, her voice had certain falsetto inflexions ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... white, black, and scarlet motley of his tribe, had leaped cat-like upon the window sill and swept the room with his painted grin. In his hands he held a great bunch of variegated circus bills. Tossing a half-dozen of these at the feet of the all-absorbed spectators, he cried in high cracked falsetto: ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... into the groping arms of her father and stood for a few moments reflecting on their desperate plight. He was not hopeful. In his heart he agreed with the convictions which his mates were expressing in childish falsetto. But being a young sailor who found his head above water, he resolved to keep on battling in that emergency; the adage of the coastwise mariner is: "Don't die till Davy Jones sets his ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... said," he went on, screwing up his nose and speaking in a falsetto to express the intensity of his scorn—"she said she was ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... jealous distance, might lead to something like an accommodation. What was the event? A strange uncouth thing, a theatrical figure of the opera, his head shaded with three-coloured plumes, his body fantastically habited, strutted from the back scenes, and, after a short speech, in the mock heroic falsetto of stupid tragedy, delivered the gentleman who came to make the representation into the custody of a guard, with directions not to lose sight of him for a moment; and then ordered him to be sent from Paris in ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... of precipice. Here, in the strong thorough-draught, Her Majesty received us in a simple gown of print, and with no mark of royalty but the exquisite finish of her tattooed mittens, the elaboration of her manners, and the gentle falsetto in which all the highly refined among Marquesan ladies (and Vaekehu above all others) delight to sing their language. An adopted daughter interpreted, while we gave the news, and rehearsed by name our friends ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... evening and heard Tacius—a portly gentleman in a ball dress and a yellow wig, who after squeaking five-sixths of a love song in a timid falsetto which might pass for a woman's voice, roared out the balance like a bull. He ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... a child somewhere in the forest pricked our ears, the clear falsetto of its fright silencing the singer and leaving his mouth agape. I began drawing on my moccasins, but before I could finish a wonderful transformation had taken place in the clearing. As if the cry had been a ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... you, your reputation stands or falls on your decision! This is a public charge! The people rely upon you! If you won't, for some reason of your own, come to the rescue now, when you are publicly called upon, you'll be a ruined man!" The voice of the Boss ascended in a shrill falsetto of remonstrance. ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... and rearranged for the tenor Legros; who, judging from the extreme altitude of the tessitura employed, must have possessed either a haute-contre, or a very high light-tenor voice, and who may have employed the falsetto. This high tessitura, combined with the fact that the pitch has risen considerably since it was composed, renders the French version impracticable for tenors of the present day. Here are the concluding bars of the famous air as written in the original Italian ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... house, Jacoba was waiting for him. She was a woman of more than fifty years of age, of portly form and demeanour. She moved with difficulty, for her breath was short, from her extreme fatness, and she always spoke in a falsetto voice. She was discretion itself, a sealed book. The count and Amalia had never had any other confidante. Nobody else in the world was acquainted with their love affair, and she had served them wonderfully ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... the song died down into a hum. But soon a quavering falsetto was heard formulating a new motive, expressing a new thought. Other voices joined the leader's; a minor refrain swept up and down the line; and abruptly the climax swelled out in a diapason descending far into the bass. So that every one could sing, the improvisor had phrased ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... moment for reflection, Mrs. Barraclough removed her veiled motor bonnet and put it on the couch. Then she turned and descended upon Dirk with outstretched hands and a high pitched falsetto that fairly ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... amusement; more than once I caught them exchanging looks, or regarding me from the corners of their eyes in such fashion as set my ears a-tingling. The Captain was possessed of a peculiarly high-pitched, falsetto laugh, which, recurring at frequent intervals (and for no reason as I could see), annoyed me almost beyond bearing. But I paid no heed, staring straight before me and meditating upon a course of action which had been in my head for days past—a ...
— The Honourable Mr. Tawnish • Jeffery Farnol
... with Uncle Ike's waterworks. "I would like to be an Indian, or a squaw, and never have anything to do but travel with a show, and yell. They just have a soft snap, dressing up in feathers, and paint, and buckskin, and living on the fat of the land, and yelling ki-yi! in a falsetto voice." ...
— Peck's Uncle Ike and The Red Headed Boy - 1899 • George W. Peck
... morality, to be sure, the seven relatives were still beginners—but likewise treated everything so derisively and possessed a heart so full of tricks and surprises that there was no dependence to be placed upon him. The eternal smile hovering around his temples and thick lips, and the mocking falsetto voice, impaired the good impression that might otherwise have been made by his nobly cut face and a pair of large hands, from which New Year's presents, benefit performances, and gratuities were continually falling. Wherefore ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... kill what he loved; he would have his way with what he loved, whether or not it was the way of law or custom or right. Outside, the wedding song still made musical the night. Women's voices, shrill, and with falsetto notes, made the trees ring with it; low, bass voices gave it a kind of solemnity. The view which the encampment took of her captivity was clear. Where was the woman that brought her to the tent—whose tent it was? She seemed kind. Though her face had a hard look, surely she meant ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... "Orphan"—Monimia you know, Devereux.' And the table being by this time in high chat, and the chairs a little irregular, Puddock slipped off his, and addressing himself to Devereux and O'Flaherty—just to give them a notion of Mrs. Cibber—began, with a countenance the most wobegone, and in a piping falsetto— ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... brilliant eyes shone like two angry meteors; but she merely bowed and laughed; and the laugh was echoed by the dwarf in his shrillest falsetto. ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... what-you-call-ums for you," interrupted a voice, which began in a shrill falsetto and ended in a gruff bass, as a flushed, dusty, long-legged boy burst in, with a bleeding hand obligingly extended ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... give vent to what is supposed to be an imitation of the hikuli's talk, which reminded me of the crowing of a cock. Beating their mouths quickly three times with the hollow of their hands, they shout in a shrill, falsetto voice, "Hikuli vava!" which means, "Hikuli ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... what he did. He sat down on a Windsor chair, without a harp; he put his hands in his pockets, cleared his throat, looked up at the ceiling, and suddenly burst into a series of the shrillest falsetto screeches I ever heard in my life. My own private opinion is that he was suffering from hydrophobia. I have lost all belief, henceforth and forever, in bards—all belief in everything, in short, except your very delightful stories ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... swordplay are highly interesting. The book was born, as all good books, because its mother could not help it. Behind every page and between the lines you see the fevered toss of human emotion and hot ambition—these women were rivals. There were digs and scratches, bandied epithets in falsetto, and sounds like a piccolo played by a man in distress, before all this; and these are not explained, so you have to fill them in with your imagination. But the Bernhardt is the bigger woman of the two. She goes her splendid pace alone, and all the other woman can ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... know that, my de-ar," came in sweet, falsetto tones from Phil. "We ought to have no end of sport, ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... sake!" grumbled Vic, stooping reluctantly to pick up the old hoe-handle he used for a staff. "What ridge?" He paused to thunder up at her, his voice unexpectedly changing to a shrill falsetto on the last word, as frequently happens to rob a mancub of his dignity just when he needs ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... range, and enabling him to render even these excepted parts after a tuneful, elaborate, and never ignoble method of his own, might debar him from giving them their highest interpretation,—or, at least, from sustaining it, without sharp falsetto effort, throughout the entire passage of a play. In a few impersonations, where Kemble, with all his mannerisms and defective elocution, and Macready, notwithstanding his uninspired, didactic nature, were most at their ease ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... from the village, he lingered outside on the terrace with the boys. Marie could hear him talking and strumming on his guitar while Raoul Marcel sang falsetto. She was vexed with him for staying out there. It made her very nervous to hear him and not to see him; for, certainly, she told herself, she was not going out to look for him. When the supper bell rang and the boys came trooping in to get seats at the first table, she forgot ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... of falsetto, Constance, and speak seriously to each other. I have come to you for help in this crisis of our lives. Sit down. (Gives her ...
— The Black Cat - A Play in Three Acts • John Todhunter
... future; he evidently thinks me very odd for having none to entertain him with in return; he points out to me the pretty (or ugly) servant-girls and dressmakers as we walk in the street, sighs deeply or sings in falsetto behind every tolerably young-looking woman, and has finally taken me to the house of the lady of his heart, a great black-mustachioed countess, with a voice like a fish-crier; here, he says, I shall ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... lay the Marjorie W. herself, quite ready to sail so soon as they should have clambered aboard and swung the long boat to its davits. Presently the attention of every man was drawn from his dreaming or his gossiping to the northern bank of the river. There, screaming at them in a cracked falsetto and with skinny arms outstretched, stood a strange apparition of ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and yearning notes of violins wailing despairing love. And Isidro, seated on the bamboo ladder of his house, went through an independent performance. He sang "Good-night, Ladies," the last song given to the school, sang it in soft falsetto, with languorous drawls, and never-ending organ points, over and over again, till it changed character gradually, dropping into a wailing minor, an endless croon full of obscure melancholy of a ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... I knew that high falsetto tone. It was the voice of Mr. Tubbs, but pitched in a key of quite insane excitement. I sprang up and ran, Crusoe and the Honorable Cuthbert at my heels. There in the midst of the camp Mr. Tubbs stood, the center of a group who were regarding him with astonished looks. Mr. Shaw ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... the former ore vein. This alone was enough to get hopelessly lost in, even without its many blind-alley branches. Now and then we came upon another shaft-opening that seemed a bottomless hole a few feet in diameter in the solid rock, from far down which came up the falsetto voices and the stinking sweat of peons, and the rap, rap of heavy hammers on iron rock-bars. But we had only started. Far back in the gallery we took another hoist and descended some two hundred feet more, then wound off again through the mountain ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... attorney. I knew him intimately, as for six years he was a close neighbor and we were associated in lodge-work. He was an effeminate little fellow: height, 5 feet 2 inches; weight, 105 pounds; very near-sighted; and he had a light voice, not a treble or falsetto, but still a voice that detracted materially from the beautiful rhetoric that flowed from his lips. He had served his country as its representative in the Legislature and had received the nomination for senator, over ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... now—with his fluttering curls, and his cheeks so chubby and round, Which a cherub might have been proud of, in snowiest linen bound! Then—he hailed us, in infant accents, so innocent, fresh, and blithe— That our nest of human snakes was stirred to a conscience-stricken writhe! (In soft falsetto, as Child). Dear Pirates, I am so sorry—I did want to see you so. I'm afraid you'll be disappointed—but you mustn't come near, you know! I wish I could ask you on board to tea, for I feel so down in the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 13, 1892 • Various
... A high falsetto voice from the gathering' audience cried: 'Oh, ye bad boy, come here till I skelp ye!'—and there was a general laugh, in which the hapless object ...
— Wee Macgreegor Enlists • J. J. Bell
... Their method consisted in making a healthy man ride horseback constantly, until an irritable weakness of the reproductive organs ensued, and a paralytic impotence followed. The exhausted testes would then atrophy, and the voice ring falsetto, muscular tone and energy diminish, inclinations and habits become feminine. The Mujerado lost his position in society as a man, assumed female clothing, manners and customs, and to all intents and purposes was treated ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... Burlingham's voice stern and gruff—"Get back to your bed and let her alone, you rolling-eyed——" The sentence ended with as foul a spatter of filth as man can fling at man. Silence again, and after a few minutes the two snores resumed their bass accompaniment to the falsetto of ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... upon all sides the voice of falling water, not condensed and formidable as in the gorge of the river, but scattered and sounding gaily and musically from glen to glen. Here, too, the spirits of my driver mended, and he began to sing aloud in a falsetto voice, and with a singular bluntness of musical perception, never true either to melody or key, but wandering at will, and yet somehow with an effect that was natural and pleasing, like that of ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the whole, an artificial writer, while the best parts of Ossian are natural. He allowed himself therefore to see distinctly and to characterise severely the bad things in the book—where it sunk into the bathos or soared into the falsetto,—but ignored its beauties, and was obstinately blind to those passages where it rose into real sublimity or melted ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1875 • Various
... indeed a delight: loads of incense were burned, there were plenty of Latin chants, large quantities of holy water were expended, and Padre Irene, out of regard for his old friend, sang the Dies Irae in a falsetto voice from the choir, while the neighbors suffered real headaches from so ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... the resolution meant initiation of money grants. When this announcement was made I heard a shout from the direction of my honourable friend, Mr. Partelow, in a tenor voice, and an honourable member in the rear [Mr. Barberie] joining in a sort of falsetto accompaniment. I think my honourable friend [Mr. Hazen] is much to blame for having accused his honourable colleague [Mr. Woodward] with writing an article in a city paper. What, suppose he did write it, do not some of the first ...
— Wilmot and Tilley • James Hannay
... the other, "keeping it, I should say. Just imagine!" he added, pointing to the vinegar on the plate from which Lucia had been eating her artichoke, "pickling that falsetto of hers!" ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... Mrs. Romulus in shrill falsetto; "say rather loaves of plaster and alum crumbed into bowls of chalk-mixture! This is the sort of bread and milk furnished by your barbarous civilization! But the beginning of the end of this priestridden ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... Heaven, and Dante conducts us through Hell, but it was left for Whitman to show us Earth. His voice never goes so high that it breaks into an impotent falsetto, neither does it growl and snarl at things it does not understand and not understanding does not like. He was so great that he had no envy, and his insight was so sure that he had no prejudice. He never boasted that he was higher, nor claimed to be less than any of the other ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... Hidest Thyself," there is an abundance of fictitious emotion and spurious rhetoric. From beginning to end there is a painful strain that never relaxes, reminding us of singers who pitch their voices too high and have to render all the upper notes in falsetto. An attempt is made to employ poetical imagery, but it ludicrously fails. The heaven of the Book of Revelation, with its gold and silver and precious stones, is nothing but a magnified jeweller's shop, and a study of it has influenced the style of later writers. At present Christian gushers ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... chin with lines that spoke of indecision. It was not of him that Margery got her firm round chin, or her steadfast eyes that knew not how to quail, nor aught of anything she owed a father save only her paternity, you'd say. And when he spoke the thin falsetto voice matched the weak chin ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... in the sea') I had paused over, but my instinct was to strike it out, and now your suggestion comes to confirm this instinct, I shall act upon it. The same with 'Second Best.' It is quite true there is a horrid falsetto in some stanzas of the 'Gipsy Child'—it was a very youthful production. I have re-written those stanzas, but am not quite satisfied with the poem even now. 'Shakespeare' I have re-written. 'Cruikshank' I have ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... man with kid gloves and a top-hat entered the shop. It was growing dark, and he had peered carefully about before entering. He hurried up to Jason Philip, and said in a cracked falsetto: "How about the new publications? Anything very fine?" He rubbed his hands, and stared stupidly from under his thin, reddish lids. It was Count Schlemm-Nottheim, a cousin of the Baron von Auffenberg, the leader ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... longer able to contain himself, objected at last, and began in a slightly unsteady tone of voice (not due to fear, of course) defending the ideals, the hopes, the principles of the modern generation. Kollomietzev soon went into a squeak—his anger always expressed itself in falsetto—and became abusive. Sipiagin, with a stately air, began taking Nejdanov's part; Valentina Mihailovna, of course, sided with her husband; Anna Zaharovna tried to distract Kolia's attention, looking furiously at everybody; Mariana did not move, she seemed ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... found Fanny standing gloomily by a dull, soot-grimed window, which looked out on the dead walls of a small yard. Mrs. Boxer, seated by a table, was employed in trimming a cap, and putting questions to Fanny in that falsetto voice of endearment in which people not used to children are apt to ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... shrill penetrating tone, like the wildly weeping voice of Rachel; tragical, painful, gone quite to falsetto and above pitch; but with a melody in its dissonance like the singing of the stars. My poor ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... flights of thought so common in dreams I heard the hoarse falsetto of the bric-a-brac dealer, repeating like a monotonous refrain the phrase he had uttered in his shop with so enigmatical ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... into a wail, in which the other members of the camp joined, a penetrating falsetto cry which continued for two days, mingled with the strong man's expression of woe, a low, weird yet not inharmonious hum. For two days they chanted the virtues of the dead, told of her likes and dislikes, and of their grief, crouching beside the blanket-covered form. Then ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... fruits. Why then may not Shakespeare's idea have been so to order things that the full strength of the man should not appear in the play, as it did not in fact, till after his fall? This view will both explain and justify the strange disguise—a sort of falsetto greatness—under which Caesar ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... from them I was in the vestibule of my uncle's house, a place always kept tightly closed during the hours of intense heat. From the wing of the house I heard my cousin singing in the thin and plaintive falsetto of a mountaineer; he often sang in that manner, and when he did so his voice always gave me a feeling of unusual melancholy as it broke the stillness of the late September noons. He sang over and over the same old refrain: "Ah! Ah! The good, ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... Malkin!' exclaimed the widow, with a stress on the exclamation peculiar to herself—two notes of deprecating falsetto. 'How can you say it is good of me, when I'm sure there are no words for your kindness to us all! If only you knew our debt to your friend, Mr Earwaker! To our dying day we must all remember it. It is entirely through Mr. Malkin that we are ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... so too. Woodhouse undeceived them both. To the sergeant he said, 'Will you or will you not enter the charge?' To the village solicitor he gave the name of his lawyers, at which the man wrung his hands and cried, 'Oh, Sir T., Sir T.!' in a miserable falsetto, for it was a Bat Masquerier of a firm. They conferred ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... cigars, and the new fish stories, and the general invoice of the old ones, it was delectable to get back to the girls again, and in the old "best room" hear once more the lilt of the old songs and the stacattoed laughter of the piano mingling with the alto and falsetto voices of the Mills girls, and the gallant soprano ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... the pale rose wave of the almonds, he saw Peter's dome and St. Angelo. He was conscious of a fatigue of his powers, a melancholy that they gave him no more than they did. "How it is all tinsel and falsetto!... I want a clean, cold, searching wave—desert and night—not life all choked with wax tapers and harlequins! I want something.... I don't know what I want. I only know I ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... down, and round about, roaring cheers greeted him, followed him—men flung up their hats for him, women in shrill falsetto cried his name. Nobody could fail to understand that he carried the hopes and the fortunes of a great multitude. Nobody could fail to understand either that Aldegonde, who followed right on his heels, would win or lose for as many. The ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... before Miraudin, and then ran a few paces and did the same thing in front of the Marquis, imploring both men not to fight,—not to get killed, on account of the trouble it would cause to him, the coachman;—and with a high falsetto shriek a lady flung herself out of the recesses of the closed vehicle, and clung ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... could, Mr. Barmby,' sounded Jessica's voice, in an unsteady falsetto, whilst her eyes were turned upon the floor. 'You would have thought nothing of this matriculation, which ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... the bar, and Mr. Henshaw, after some persuasion, was induced to try a few experiments. He ranged from bass, which hurt his throat, to a falsetto which put Mr. Stokes's teeth on edge, but in vain. The rehearsal was stopped at last by the landlord, who, having twice come into the bar under the impression that fresh customers had entered, spoke ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... salutary effect. It frightened Sally out of her feeble old wits, confirming, as it did, Dr. Guy's fable of the periodical fits of madness to which the young lady was prone. She related to her mistress, in shrill falsetto, what had occurred. ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... the scoffing of those outside the pale and hinted at the uncomfortable future that awaited them. He ran over the various denominations one by one, and one by one showed them to be worshipers of idols and followers after strange gods. He sank hoarsely into the bass and quavered up into falsetto and a chorus of ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... find pleasure in the day. Pain is an extinguisher that can put out the sun. She had ceased to find pleasure in the singing of the birds, the voice of the pigeon sounded to her no more than an unbeautiful falsetto growl. She was irritated by the fact that the cuckoo had only one song to sing. She tried not to hoe in time to that song, but the monotony of it possessed her. Her row of beans stretched in front of her right across the world; every time she looked along it the end seemed ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... listening to make sure that the constable and his wife were in the bedroom the other side of the flimsy wall, complied, and in a voice that rose gradually to a piercing falsetto told Mr. Grummit things that had been rankling in her mind for some months. She raked up misdemeanours that he had long since forgotten, and, not content with that, had a fling at the entire Grummit family, beginning with her mother-in-law and ending with Mr. ...
— Captains All and Others • W.W. Jacobs
... made like that. Ah, tiens, here she comes. How could you keep ces dames waiting like this? It is shameful, shameful!" cried the woman, as she half shook the panting girl, in anger. "If ces dames will enter,"—her voice changing at once to a caressing falsetto, as the door flew open, opened by Augustine's trembling fingers—"they will find ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... suit stolen," Advena finished for him. "As Disraeli said—wasn't it Disraeli?" She heard, and hated the note of constraint in her voice. "Am I reduced," she thought, indignantly, "to falsetto?" and chose, since she must choose, ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... were pouring over with joy? You say that he carols. Does he sing with vibratory notes and little runs, as in bird-music? You say that he warbles. Does he sing loudly and freely? You say that he trolls. Does he sing with peculiar modulations from the regular into a falsetto voice? You say that he yodels. Does he sing a simple, perhaps tender, song in a low tone (as a lullaby to an infant)? You say that he croons. Does he sing with his lips closed? You say that he hums. Does he utter the ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... hypodermics," directed the chemist. He had to repeat this in a falsetto voice before June understood. ...
— The End of Time • Wallace West
... allow his death to stop your life. It would not be right. No trouble came near his stainless heart, no shadow of sin; his old age was a peaceful day which lasted until sunset. He was a creature that had no falsetto in a single fibre of his being, no shadow of affectation. He kept like this through all our complicated existence in this artificial world, absolutely unconscious of the hollowness and pretension and sham that surrounded him—tolerant, too, and kind to all. Then why mourn for him? He is gathered ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... oratorio, or in the grandest dramatic music, the largeness and nobility of his style were matched by a voice which in its prime was almost peerless. His compass extended over nineteen notes, and his falsetto from D to A was so perfect that it was difficult to tell where the natural voice ended. When Weber composed his opera "Oberon" for the English stage in 1826, Braham was the ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... were in falsetto and not without effect; for presently the parson's indignation and anger began to melt. "Don't ask me, Jools, I can't help you. It's no use; it's a matter of conscience with ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... got a wrist watch!" gasped Will Ford in falsetto tones. "The saucy little humming ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Ocean View - Or, The Box That Was Found in the Sand • Laura Lee Hope
... with suffering womanhood. She could only writhe her hand from his grasp with childish contortions; she could only glare at him with eyes that were prettily and piquantly brilliant; she could only slap at his detaining hand with a plump and velvety palm, and when she found her voice it was high falsetto. And all she could say was, "Leave me ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... thoughtful, was always the same as he rolled through the streets and lanes, for he sat "as though carved in stone." His love of children was marked. "He would address them in his small, high-pitched falsetto voice, and if their answers pleased him he would reply; and occasionally, lifting them on to a chair or table, he would measure their heads with his broad hand, as though reading character, and ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... below, Miss Vance sat stiffly erect, while the prince talked in his shrill falsetto. Although he set forth his affection for the engelreine Madchen as simply as the little German baker in Weir (whom he certainly did resemble) might have done, she could find, in her agitation, no fitting words in which to answer him. That she, Clara Vance, should be the arbiter ...
— Frances Waldeaux • Rebecca Harding Davis
... leave me alone," she shouted in shrill falsetto. "You have got yourself up to look like my Joe—and that idiotic grin on your homely face is just like my Joe, but no city sharper can fool me, and if you don't go right along I'll ...
— The Mintage • Elbert Hubbard
... for my years, from the professors to the poets, listening—to the lyric tenor of Swinburne and the tenor robusto of Shelley, to Shakespeare with his first bass and his fine range, to Tennyson with his second bass and his occasional falsetto, to Milton and Marlow, bassos profundo. I gave ear to Browning chatting, Byron declaiming, and Wordsworth droning. This, at least, did me no harm. I learned a little of beauty—enough to know that it had nothing to do with truth—and ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... with stuff, and there seemed less room for us than ever, except in the hateful cabin. The boys sang monotonously "for wind," quite convinced that the next breeze would be due to their efforts. A fat old man sang all night long in falsetto in three notes; it was unbearably silly and irritating, yet one could hardly stop the poor devil and rob him of his only pleasure in that dark night. We felt damp, restless and sleepless, and tried in vain ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... ecstasy). Eh, lass, yer du keep us old 'uns in order. (He bursts into a falsetto chuckle, loses the note, blushes and buries his head in ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... them blamed stampedes?" the old blind trapper asked in a queer and petulant falsetto, as the cries of men and dogs and the grind of the sleds swept the ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... paid by the Pope. There are some radical differences between the two. By a very ancient and inviolable regulation, the so-called 'musico,' or artificial soprano, is never allowed to sing in the Chapel of the Choir, where the soprano singers are without exception men who sing in falsetto, though they speak in a deep voice. On great occasions the Choir of the Sixtine joins in the music in the body of the church, but never in the Chapel, and ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... office he also gives him sense; that's the case with the Archduke. Before he was a priest he was much wittier and intelligent; spoke less but more sensibly. You ought to see him now! Stupidity looks out of his eyes, he talks and chatters eternally and always in falsetto. His neck is swollen,—in short he has ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel |
