"Fiddle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... understand. He learns to dance and to fence, by the masters of those noble sciences. He becomes a compleat connoisseur in dressing hair, and in adorning his own person, under the hands and instructions of his barber and valet de chambre. If he learns to play upon the flute or the fiddle, he is altogether irresistible. But he piques himself upon being polished above the natives of any other country by his conversation with the fair sex. In the course of this communication, with which he is indulged from ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... order, the first week commonly passes in reconnoitring, cool civilities, and cautious concessions, to yield at length to the never-dying charities; unless, indeed, the latter may happen to be kept in abeyance by a downright quarrel, about midnight carousals, a squeaking fiddle, or some incorrigible snorer. ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... asthma. I'm as fit as a fiddle. Doctors tell me to watch my blood pressure and cut off my toddies. Remember? I used ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... Maude, but this is a very old-fashioned and a very simple entertainment I'm going to give. Just the things that I play to myself when I'm weary of listening to humanity tell of its ills and aches—the egotist! Then I look down into the beautifully clean inside of my fiddle, its good old mechanism without a flaw, and listen to the things it has to tell.... Thank you, just the same, Miss Maude; this is not a theme worthy of your brilliant rendition, but, as I said, a simple, old-fashioned playing of the fiddle. I'll ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... better than you can tell me, Tony, but 'tis such an easy way to get a living; I could enjoy such glorious indolence; could fish, and hunt, and shoot, and play the fiddle, and attend feasts and merry-makings, with such a happy consciousness of being found in the path of duty, that it would give a double zest to enjoyment. Now don't be envious, my dear demure cousin, and forestall me in my project. I am sure to gain my father's consent. It will save ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... happy fields we till, And the homes of ancient stories, the tombs of the mighty dead, And the wise men seeking out marvels and the poet's teaming head. And the painter's hand of wonder, and the marvellous fiddle-bow, And the banded choirs of music—all those that do and know. For all these shall be ours and all men's, nor shall any lack a share Of the toil and the gain of living in the days when the world ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... 'Royal Edinburgh,' and enjoyed once more the restful calm of a quasi-tropical night, broken only by the Christmas twanging of the machete (which is to the guitar what kit is to fiddle); by the clicking of the pebbles on the shore, and by the gentle murmuring of the ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... not my best, only very ordinary and humdrum affairs—but ex pede Herculem! Hon'ble Sir, and you will see how transcendentally superior are even such poor effusions compared to the fiddle-faddle and gim-crack style of article with which you are being fobbed off ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... "Fiddle!" cried the iron pillars of the deep, dark hold. "Who ever heard of curves? Stand up straight; be a perfectly round column, and carry tons of good solid weight—like that! There!" A big sea smashed on the deck ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... emotions of the sublime was when he stood upon one of the summits of the Cordillera, and surveyed the magnificent prospect all around. It seemed, as he quaintly observed, as if his nerves had become fiddle strings, and had all taken to rapidly vibrating. This remark was only made incidentally, and the conversation passed into some other branch. About an hour afterwards Mr. Darwin retired to rest, while I sat up in the smoking-room ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... arrangement. The kitchen, however, besides being the warmest, was by far the gayest place. Here we watched our dinner cooked, and ate it afterwards; heard of wars and rumours of wars; listened to heroic ballads, chanted by a warrior, and accompanied by a species of one-stringed fiddle; and made the acquaintance of two very fashionable young men. One was the bishop's nephew, a handsome lad about seventeen, who was, on account of his youth, very shy and modest, and acted as cavaliero ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... as a souvenir of the occasion. Thereupon, Lola, always anxious to oblige, struck a bargain with him. "I have," she said, "a pet grizzly in my orchard. If you will wrestle with him for three minutes, you shall have enough of my hair to make a bow for your fiddle. Let me see what you can do." The challenge was accepted; and the amorous violinist, merely stipulating that the animal should be muzzled, set to work and secured ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... or seated at numerous small tables, men were drinking villainous liquor, smoking and talking, and paying but scant attention to the strains of the fiddle or the accordion, save when some well known air was played, when all would join in a boisterous chorus. Some were always passing in or out of a door which led into a room behind. Here there was comparative quiet, for men were gambling, ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... Weavers of Toulon " Wheelwrights of Paris Banquet, Grand, at the Court of France Barber Barnacle Geese Barrister, Fifteenth Century Basin-maker Bastille, The Bears and other Beasts, how they may be caught with a Dart Beggar playing the Fiddle Beheading Bell and Canon Caster Bird-catching, Fourteenth Century Bird-piping, Fourteenth Century Blind and Poor Sick of St. John, Fifteenth Century Bob Apple, The Game of Bootmaker's Apprentice working ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... a close:—the mouths in the boudoir are assuming the shape of elongated O's—an epidemic that has extended to the Wall-flowers; the "harp" has accompanied his instrument with fitful snores; the "violin" scarcely knows the back from the front of his fiddle, or the "cornet" which end to blow into;—yet, upon being asked for "Roger de Coverley," they make a desperate effort to awake, for they know it to be the last dance—which is supported by the whole strength of the company,—Captain de ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... a fiddle, a clarionet, and a flageolet from the Blind Asylum. The three were paid seven francs in a lump sum for the night. For the money, they gave us, not Beethoven certainly, nor yet Rossini; they played as they had the will and the skill; and every one in the room (with ...
— Facino Cane • Honore de Balzac
... a splendid baronial hall. In the Mitton village-church near by are the tombs of the Sherburne family, the most singular monument being that to Sir Richard and his lady, which the villagers point out as "old Fiddle o' God and his wife"—Fiddle o' God being his customary exclamation when angry, which tradition says was not seldom. The figures are kneeling—he in ruff and jerkin, she in black gown and hood, with tan-leather gloves extending up her arms. These figures, being highly colored, ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... Heroes and Peace Seem'd to smile at the sound of the fiddle, Proud to fill up each tall shining space Round the lanthorn[1] that stood in the middle. And GEORGE'S head too; Heav'n screen him! May he finish in peace his long reign! And what did we when we had seen him? Why—went ...
— Wild Flowers - Or, Pastoral and Local Poetry • Robert Bloomfield
... at her; even Johnny Whitelamb looked, with a face as long as a fiddle. The comment was quiet, but the note of scorn in it could not be mistaken. Molly in revolt! Molly, of all persons! Molly sat trembling. She knew that among them all Johnny was her one ally—and a hopelessly ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... years ago, at Skansen—the great park just outside of Stockholm where they have collected so many wonderful things—there lived a little old man, named Clement Larsson. He was from Haelsingland and had come to Skansen with his fiddle to play folk dances and other old melodies. As a performer, he appeared mostly in the evening. During the day it was his business to sit on guard in one of the many pretty peasant cottages which have been moved to Skansen from all parts of ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... the list? My initiation into music took place in the following manner. We had a dancing-master who came regularly to Mr. Cape's house to prepare us to shine in society, and his instrument was the convenient dancing-master's pocket fiddle or kit. Although this instrument gives forth but a feeble kind of music, I was far more enchanted with it than by the dancing, and wrote a most persuasive letter to my good guardian imploring her to let me study the violin. Those were the happy times when one had energy for everything! I had ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... lighted; two sheep were killed, and the cuscasoe was preparing, when the ladies arrived. The music consisted of an instrument similar to a flageolet, (tabla) a kettle-drum, and a sort of castanets of steel, an erbeb, or fiddle with two strings, played with a semicircular bow. The tunes 141 were gay and sprightly, and the damsels tripped along on the light fantastic toe in a very superior and elegant style. They danced without men; advancing gently at ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... downstairs. By-and-by, as she sat knitting, she heard Monsieur's fiddle as he played over a ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... below the bend; the half-breeds sauntered about, flashing bright teeth and wicked dark eyes at whom it might concern; the traders gazed stolidily over their little black pipes, and uttered brief sentences through their thick black beards. Everywhere was gay sound—the fiddle, the laugh, the song; everywhere was gay color—the red sashes of the voyageurs, the beaded moccasins and leggings of the metis, the capotes of the brigade, the variegated costumes of the ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... upon this discourse he said if ever there was another Dutch war they should not find a Secretary; "Nor," said I, "a Clerk of the Acts, for I see the reward of it; and, thank God, I have enough of my own to buy me a book and a good fiddle, and I have a good wife;"—"Why," says he, "I have enough to buy me a good book, and shall not need a fiddle because I have never a one of your good wives." This morning the House is upon a Bill, brought in to-day by Sir Richard Temple, for obliging the King to call Parliaments ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... gazed, two Bosnian minstrels, from bad memory and an indifferent ear, began playing on a fiddle and a guitar, and though their music was atrocious, the wild Turkish songs which they sang gave the finishing touch to the scene. It was not till they began playing snatches of music-hall airs, such long-forgotten tunes as "Daisy," that ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... dance contra dances. None of these new jigs and not wear any clothes to speak of. We covered our hides in those days; no tight skirts like now. You could take three or four steps inside our skirts and then not reach the edge. One of the boys would fiddle awhile and then someone would spell him and he could get a dance. Sometimes they would ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... The bugle, the violin, the fife and drum, furnished all the musical entertainments. These were much used and passionately admired. Weddings, military trainings, house-raisings, chopping frolics, were often followed with the fiddle, ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley
... Augustus Holyoke, of Salem, who died in 1829, aged one hundred and one years. It was recalled by an old lady that the scholars in the school of her youth marched through Boston streets, to the music of the fiddle played by "Black Henry," to Concert Hall, corner Tremont and Bromfield streets, to practice dancing; and that Mr. Turner walked at the head of the school. His advertisements may be seen in Boston ...
— Diary of Anna Green Winslow - A Boston School Girl of 1771 • Anna Green Winslow
... Kokem lay snoozing upon his brass bed— Oh, play an old tune on your fiddle! With shoes on his feet, and a crown on his head— Oh, tune ...
— The Peter Patter Book of Nursery Rhymes • Leroy F. Jackson
... for the dance the shepherd dressed, In ribbons, wreath, and gayest vest Himself with care arraying: Around the linden lass and lad Already footed it like mad: Hurrah! hurrah! Hurrah—tarara-la! The fiddle-bow was playing. ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... ungovernable, impenitent, or self-sufficient, especially Taberner, Phipps, and Church, who, as I am informed, have, in violation of my sub-dean's and chapter's order in December last, at the instance of some obscure persons unknown, presumed to sing and fiddle at the ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... Indians—to weave their own clothes, make rugs, tan leather, grow straw for hats,—all of which they do to this day, so that you may enter a habitant house and not find a single article except saints' images, a holy book, and perhaps a fiddle, which the habitant has not himself made. "The Jesuits assume too much authority," wrote the King. Talon lessened their power by inviting the Recollets to come back to Canada and by encouraging the Sulpicians. Instead of outlawing young Frenchmen for deserting to the English, Talon ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... is not much that I can do, For I've no money that's quite my own!" Spoke up the pitying child - A little boy with a violin At the station before the train came in, - "But I can play my fiddle to you, And a nice one 'tis, ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... some vary long spich," went on the orator, "as I know dat you all rather have de dance. Den I see, too, dat my friend Magloire Meloche, down dare, he look many time at de fiddle he brought and hang on de wall." This bantering allusion to the veteran fiddle-player of the district caused a hearty outburst of ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... for the most part. I might have had their names on my bills as long as their fingers could hold a pen, but slit me if I like bleeding my own companions. They might have found a place for me, too, had I consented to play second-fiddle where I had been used to lead the band. I' faith, I care not what I turn my hand to amongst strangers, but I would fain leave ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... is not he in Parliament? and then they could not take him up. They never could arrest Charles Fox. I have known him in as much trouble as anyone. Once he sent all his furniture to my house from his lodgings. He lodged in Bury-street. I always look at the house when I pass by. Don't fiddle the pens; I hate people who fiddle. Where is Gregory? where is my bell' Where is the page? Naughty boy! why do not you come? There, I do not want anything; I do not know what to do. The wicked men! The greatest favourite I had: he ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... a smile, "that's only the name the fellows gave to Sid Wilton. He plays second fiddle to Shanks. He's always at his beck and call, and ready to fetch and carry for him. He jumps through the hoop and rolls over and plays dead whenever ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport
... that went by that name, was furnished by two cowboys with banjos and an antediluvian gentleman with a fiddle. Nevertheless, it was music that could be danced to, and there ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... toys too were a great attraction. You dropped a penny into a little slit in a box and a doll would begin to dance and play the fiddle: and there was the Magic Mill, where for another modest copper a row of tiny figures, wrinkled and old and dressed in the shabbiest of rags, marched in weary procession up a flight of steps into the Mill, only to emerge again the next moment at a further door of this wonderful building looking young ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... a mighty leap that caught Shorty unawares and sent him into a crumpled heap in the sand. Dade's riata, tight as a fiddle-string at first, slackened as the buckskin, his breath coming in snorts, surged alongside. Jack leaned again—this time to snatch the ivory-handled revolver from the holster on Dade's saddle. As well as he could ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... to act up to it. He's not even told one of his fine friends what his brother does; he says it's for the sake of his school. He's living a lie for his own pride. He's got himself made master of a college, fine as a fiddle, and he cares more about that than about his brother. With all his prayers and his sermons in church every Sunday, he'd let me go to the dogs rather than live out the truth. He thinks I've gone to the devil now, because I left him in a rage, and I told him I'd go and learn ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... and change my dreaming. From the mufflers in which his father, the mountebank, has wrapped the child, to carry him across the heath, a little tumbling-boy emerges in soiled tights. He is half asleep. His father scrapes the fiddle. The boy shortens his red belt, kisses his fingers to us, and ties himself into a knot among the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... extremely poor, landlocked country, highly dependent on farming (wheat especially) and livestock raising (sheep and goats). Economic considerations have played second fiddle to political and military upheavals during more than 16 years of war, including the nearly 10-year Soviet military occupation (which ended 15 February 1989). Over the past decade, one-third of the population fled the ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Gaston brought his fiddle along, and those were wonderful tunes he drew from the strings. Sometimes he explained what they meant, his words running along in monotone that yet kept time to ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... and sliding about, but regular warm work, flying into corners, and diving among chairs, and shooting out at the door,—something like dancing! Signor Billsmethi in particular, notwithstanding his having a little fiddle to play all the time, was out on the landing every figure, and Master Billsmethi, when everybody else was breathless, danced a hornpipe, with a cane in his hand, and a cheese-plate on his head, to the unqualified admiration of the whole company. Then, Signor Billsmethi insisted, as they were so happy, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... said he wasn't going to play second fiddle to your crowd any longer. He tried to get into a quarrel with Ben, but Ben would have nothing ...
— Dave Porter and the Runaways - Last Days at Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer
... may. I'm feeling like a new fiddle—barring a bruise at the back of my head, which makes a 'hard hat' a burden. I may as well tell you first off that Mrs. McFarlane is the wife of the Forest Supervisor at Bear Tooth, and Miss Berea is the able assistant of her father. We are ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... last there rose a cry—Newport! The sleepers started to their feet. I started to mine, but I discreetly and quietly sat down again. Was it Newport, at last? Not at all. The harbor lights were gleaming from afar; and the cry was of the bandmaster shouting to his emissaries, arousing fiddle and flute and bassoon to their deceitful duty. They had played us out of port—they would play us in again. They had promised us that all should go merry as a marriage-bell, and—I would not be understood to complain, but it had ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... obtained his livelihood by giving lessons on the flute, on the guitar, and in teaching French during the day, and at night was engaged as second violin in the orchestra of the Opera House; so that he had many strings to his bow, besides those of his fiddle. His wife, a pretty little lively woman, taught young ladies to make flowers in wax, and mended lace in the evenings. They were a very amiable and amusing couple, always at good-natured warfare with each other, and sparring ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... the unseen musician, "you are spoiling your fiddle and breaking your promise. You said you wouldn't be silly. Go to bed now like ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... August. You go to them. You smoke your cigar or cigarette (and I regret to say that you strike your matches during the soft bars of the "Lohengrin" overture), and you enjoy the music. But you say you cannot play the piano or the fiddle, or even the banjo; that ...
— How to Live on 24 Hours a Day • Arnold Bennett
... colour changed in anxious faces when some greater billow struck the barrack, and its pillars quivered and sprang under the blow. It was then that the foreman builder, Mr. Goodwillie, whom I see before me still in his rock-habit of undecipherable rags, would get his fiddle down and strike up human minstrelsy amid the music of the storm. But it was in sunshine only that I saw Dhu-Heartach; and it was in sunshine, or the yet lovelier summer afterglow, that the steamer would return to Earraid, ploughing an enchanted sea; the obedient ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... lever have at his beddes heed [rather] Twenty bokes, clad in blak or reed, Of Aristotle and his philosophye, Than robes riche, or fithele, or gay sautrye [fiddle, psaltery]. But al be that he was a philosophre, Yet hadde he but liter gold in cofre; But al that he mighte of his freendes hente [get], On bokes and on lerninge he it spente, And bisily gan for the soules preye Of hem that yaf him wherewith to scoleye [gave, study]. Of studie took ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... their navigation. The bargemen were at once the envy and terror of the simple folk along the shores. A wild, turbulent class, ready to fight and to dance, equally enraptured with the rough scraping of a fiddle by one of their number, or the sound of the war-whoop, which promised the only less joyous diversion of a fight, they aroused all the inborn vagrant tendencies of the riverside boys, and to run away with a flatboat became, for the Ohio or Indiana lad, as much of an ambition as to run ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... "Fiddle-de-dee!" cried Keawe. "An old rogue, I tell you, and an old ass to boot. For the bottle was hard enough to sell at four centimes; and at three it will be quite impossible. The margin is not broad enough, the thing begins to smell of scorching—brrr!" ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to Fancy's fiddle, Hands across and down the middle— Life's perhaps the only riddle That we shrink ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... o' gold would buy anything you wanted, Peter says. He told me about it, Peter Fiddle did. Once a boy found a pot o' gold hangin' on to the end of a rainbow. There's always one there, Daddy. Yes, there is, Peter Fiddle says so. An' a boy travelled a long, long way to the end of a rainbow, an' he found it—the pot o' gold. An' he was rich, an' he gave money ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... was black. His great shoe-buckles glistened. His fur cuffs ended in a sheen of rings. And underneath his coat a case bulged blackly — He swept his beaver in a rush of wings! Then took the fiddle out, and, as I listened, Tightened and tuned the ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... hall a crowd, No more the music thunders loud, Some a mazurka occupies, Crushing and a confusing noise; Spurs of the Cavalier Guard clash, The feet of graceful ladies fly, And following them ye might espy Full many a glance like lightning flash, And by the fiddle's rushing sound The voice of jealousy ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... glibly enough, to do her justice, so long as there was no immediate question of dispensing alms. But for all that the next whining beggar would move her tender heart, his glib inventions playing upon it like a fiddle, and she would give as recklessly as though there were no such things in the whole wide world as soup-kitchens and organised charities and common-sense. "Because, you know," she would afterward salve her conscience, "I couldn't be sure ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... me, will yer?" he growled, "when I'm so jolly ill. Just let me get hold o' that there fiddle o' yours, Master Billy Mustard, and I'll smash ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... was a jolly old soul, And a jolly old soul was he; He called for his ale, and he called for his beer, And he called for his fiddle-diddle-dee. ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... Man of the Isles, Whose face was pervaded with smiles; He sang "High dum diddle," and played on the fiddle, That amiable Man ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear
... No stranger has a right to all the doctor. (rises and stands by table R., making notes in book) All right, Master Robjohns, you shall play the fiddle ...
— The Squire - An Original Comedy in Three Acts • Arthur W. Pinero
... "Fiddle-dee-dee! it's very nice to think so; I guess you're lazy. How soft and good those pillows do look, to be sure. Come, Ellen, try getting up a little. I believe you hurt yourself with sleeping. It'll do you good to be out of bed awhile; ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... female form, hooded in a veil, which, chameleon-like, sported all colours. She held Virtue and Vice by the hands, and danced a trio with them. For music, a naked savage played upon an oaten pipe, a European philosopher scraped the fiddle, while an Asiatic beat the drum; and although these contradictory tones would have distracted an harmonious ear, yet the dancers did not once lose the step,—so well had they learnt their parts. When the maiden gave Vice her hand, she coquetted and ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... ideas and brisk in movement stands in front of and facing the other players and rapidly repeats this verse, performing some action that the other players immediately imitate—such as beating a drum, playing a fiddle, sawing wood. Without pausing he varies his actions, the others continuing to follow his movements. Rapidity of time and vivacity determine the success of ...
— Games and Play for School Morale - A Course of Graded Games for School and Community Recreation • Various
... escapes from mimicry. He conjures, he juggles, he plays selections from Carmen and Cavaleria Rusticana on a fiddle made out of a cigar box and a broom-handle. The Provinces accept him with mild approbation. He tries Paris, the Paris of Menilmontant and the Outer Boulevards; but Paris, not being amused, prefers his mimicry. He is alone, mind you. No more Coincon combinations. If he is to be insulted, ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... as they cross de trestle. One pick a banjo, one play de fiddle. They sing and whoop, they laugh; they holler to de people on de ground, and sing out, "Good-bye." ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... he added, turning the subject. "Some of those fiddling fellows are extraordinary. They really play very decently. They must have a lot of talent, when you think of all the different things they do besides their feats of strength—they act, and play the fiddle, and sing, ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... its thin old walls, vibrates at night like a great dry fiddle; the slightest noises grow great in it, become disfigured and ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... alive for a week or two. And here was Edward, with a smooth brown leather wallet full of ten- and twenty-dollar bills, which he peeled off without counting, exactly as if money grew on trees, or as if coal came out of the earth and walked into furnaces to the sound of a fiddle and a flute! ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... much, and are sharp and symmetrical; the cut-water stretches, with a graceful curve, far out beyond them toward the long sweeping martingal, and is surmounted by a gilt scroll, or, as the sailors call it, a fiddle-head. The black stern is ornamented by a group of white figures in bas relief, which give a lively air to the otherwise sombre and vacant expression, and beneath the cabin-windows is painted the name of the ship, and her port of ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... Sam jerked his thumb back to show that he meant Si Lee; "sounds like a Chinese laundry. I guess that's the only thing he isn't. He can do any mortal thing but get on in life. He's been a soldier an' a undertaker an' a cook He plays a fiddle he made himself; it's a rotten bad one, but it's away ahead of his playing. He stuffs birds—that Owl in the parlour is his doin'; he tempers razors, kin doctor a horse or fix up a watch, an' he does it in about ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... always your million-and-one favorite melodies which nobody but that all-around musical amateur, the Auto-Comrade, can so exquisitely whistle, hum, strum, fiddle, blat, or roar. There is also a universe full of new ones for him to improvise. And he is the jolliest sort of fellow musician, because, when you play or sing a duet with him, you can combine with the exciting give-and-take ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... under different skies, but never such a one as this. So far, far from all that one associates with this evening. I think of the merriment round the bonfires at home, hear the scraping of the fiddle, the peals of laughter, and the salvoes of the guns, with the echoes answering from the purple-tinted heights. And then I look out over this boundless, white expanse into the fog and sleet and the driving wind. Here is truly no trace of midsummer merriment. ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... I discredits de imbimin' of awjus liquors. De imbimin' of awjus liquors, de wiolution of de Sabbaf, de playin' of de fiddle, and de usin' of by-words, dey is de fo' sins of de conscience; an' if any man sin de fo' sins of de conscience, de debble done sharp his fork fo' dat man.—Ain't that ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... not care how he turned you inside out. Never ask him a question, as if you sought to know what he did not himself confide. So there is some thing, you think, in a flute, after all? There are people who prefer the fiddle." ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... April 2, 1711, took note of the severance which had taken place between sign and trade, and of the absurdity that the sign no longer had any significance. After satirizing first, the monstrous conjunctions in signs of "Dog and Gridiron," "Cat and Fiddle" and so forth; and next the absurd custom by which young tradesmen, at their first starting in business, added their own signs to those of the masters under whom they had served their apprenticeship; the essayist goes on ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... do that same," he replied, with a modest air, which drew forth a peal of laughter. When the fiddle was produced and O'Rook struck up reels, and strathspeys, and hornpipes, with a precision of touch and time and perfection of tune that was far above the average of amateurs, the joy of the party could no longer find vent through eye and mouth. They were forced to open the safety-valves of ...
— Philosopher Jack • R.M. Ballantyne
... stood there thunderstruck. He saw that he had a successful rival: the reference to Madame made it obvious that this was the Duc de Guise, and left him in no doubt that his sister was to play second fiddle to the Princess de Montpensier. Jealousy, frustration and rage joining to the dislike which he already had for the Duc roused him to a violent fury; and he would have given there and then some bloody mark of ...
— The Princess of Montpensier • Madame de La Fayette
... but that Shakespeare is fairly chargeable with some breaches of good taste: these however are so few and of such a kind, that they still leave him just our highest authority in the School of Taste. Here, as elsewhere, he is our "canon of Polycletus." So Raphael made a painting of Apollo play the fiddle on Parnassus,—a grosser breach of good taste than any thing Shakespeare ever did. And yet Raphael is the painter of the finest taste in the world!—All which just approves the old proverb, that "no man is wise at all hours": so that we may still affirm without abatement the fine saying of Schlegel, ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... cat and the fiddle: The cow jump'd over the moon, The little dog laugh'd to see such sport, And the dish ran away ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... came along the road, and Br'er Rabbit called him, and Br'er Fox said: "What are you doing in there?" "They are going to have a ball here to-night and want me to play the fiddle for them, so they put me in here. I wouldn't disappoint them," said Br'er Rabbit. "But, Br'er Fox, you always could beat me playing the fiddle. Now, they offer to pay two dollars for every tune. Suppose you take my place; my wife is sick and I must ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... is," laughed his friend. "But she's a right smart filly; she looks much the best of the lot. Dixon's got her as fit as a fiddle string. When you're done with that man you might turn him ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... Somme fields for a week's rest-cure for jangled nerves. "I don't care a damn for death; but it's the waiting for it, the devilishness of its uncertainty, the sight of one's pals blown to bits about one, and the animal fear under shell-fire, that break one's pluck... My nerves are like fiddle-strings." ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... 'I have played second fiddle to you often, do let me take command this time—or, at all events, wait till you see my plot unfolded. Then you can take your part, or leave it alone, or modify to taste. Nothing can ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... inauguration business was commonplace. That is Ohio statesmanship, somehow. But good may come of it, and you and I want to help it, so far as it wants national food, to bear fruit. Damn all your politics and partisanship! Humbug—twaddle—fiddle- dee-dee, made for lazy louts who want jobs and bosses who want power. Well, we are out now for a long time, and we might as well forget bitterness, or rather submerge it in the bigger call of the nation. All of which you characterize ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... is jolly!" she piped, "and I've just had the very gloriousest tramp and I feel as fine as a—what is it they say? Oh, as fine as a violin—I—I mean fiddle. I walked miles and miles—perhaps not quite so far—and the wind was blowing a blue streak right in my face. Ugh! first it made me shiver and creep up into my collar. But bimeby I got nice and warmy, and my cheeks ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... versifier suspects that he lacks the true inspiration, he had better try the confidence game, and induce the public to admire by writing that which no one can understand. It would seem, too, that writing poetry and playing on the fiddle have this much in common, that a true genius at either is fit for nothing else. The amateurs can take care of themselves, but the born-masters display an amiable worthlessness for every thing but their art. Now General Thompson was thoroughly wide-awake and competent ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... moral, and patter won't level 'em up. Wy yer might as well talk of a popgun a holding its own with a Krupp. 'Ow the brains and the ochre got fust ladled hout is a bit beyond me, But to fancy as them as has got 'em will part is dashed fiddle-de-dee. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 22nd, 1890 • Various
... Wrangerton. There's but one inn there fit to put a dog to sleep in, and when we got there we found the house turned out of window for a ball, all the partitions down on the first floor, and we driven into holes to be regaled with distant fiddle-squeak. So Fitzhugh's Irish blood was up for a dance, and I thought I might as well give in to it, for the floor shook so that there was no taking a cigar in peace. So you see the stars ordained it, and it is of no use making a row about one's destiny,' ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... wintry sunset; but my boys saw only the bright side of the tapestry, and would have liked nothing better than to change places with little James Speaight. To stand in the midst of Fairyland, and play beautiful tunes on a toy fiddle, while all the people clapped their hands—what could quite equal that? Charley began to think it was no such grand thing to be a circus-rider, and the dazzling career of policeman had lost something of its glamour in the eyes ...
— The Little Violinist • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... riding-whips hung on them; and the pictures of his ancestors, in their antiquated dresses, and slender, tarnished, antiquated frames. In his drawing-room you will find none of your new grand pianos and fashionable couches and ottomans; but an old spinet and a fiddle, another set of those long-legged, tall-backed chairs, two or three little settees, a good massy table, and a fine large carved mantle-piece, with bright steel dogs instead of a modern stove, and logs of oak burning, if it be cold. At table, all his plate is of the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... fiddle of a rod, I'll have a husband; and if you won't get me one, I'll get one for myself. I'll marry our Robin the butler; he says he loves me, and he's a handsome man, and shall be my husband: I warrant he'll be my husband, and thank me too, ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve
... found them all in good health, and much pleased at having arrived at this long wished for spot, and in order to add in some measure to the general pleasure which seemed to pervade our little community, we ordered a dram to be issued to each person; this soon produced the fiddle, and they spent the evening with much hilarity, singing & dancing, and seemed as perfectly to forget their past toils, as they appeared regardless of those to come. in the evening, the man I had sent up the river this morning ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... may talk their fill, For dreams are good, and my life stands still While their lives' red ashes the gossips stir; But my fiddle knows—and I talk ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... evidently has the remnants of a harp in his raised hands. The third or central figure is supposed merely to have held a hawk upon his wrist; whilst the fourth seeks to extract harmony from a dilapidated bagpipe; and the fifth, with crossed legs, strums complacently away upon the fiddle. The ground floor of the quaint old tenement is to-day an oil and colour shop, the front of which is covered with chequers in all ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... As a fiddle and tambourine band were sitting among the company, Quickear suggested why not strike up? 'Ah, la'ads!' said a negro sitting by the door, 'gib the jebblem a darnse. Tak' yah ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... 'em, Peter. Look at 'em," laughed the captain. "It's a most noble sight! Watch the old fellow playing the fiddle, and I'll lay my eyes that in a half minute or so you'll have ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... contradict her. You puff and blow like a seal when you come upstairs; your paunch rises and falls like the diamond on a woman's forehead! It is pretty plain that you served in the dragoons; you are a very ugly-looking old man. Fiddle-de-dee. If you have any mind to keep my respect, I recommend you not to add imbecility to these qualities by imagining that such a girl as I am will be content with your asthmatic love, and not look for youth and good looks and pleasure ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... of rope, now taut, and resembling a huge "fiddle string," as Bandy-legs remarked, testing it as he passed along. It led them to the brow of an abrupt little descent, a sheer drop of perhaps twenty feet. Down this slope they followed the rope with their eyes and then discovered it was attached ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie
... parties." Publisher and author were for the nonce on the best of terms. The latter, no doubt, saw his opening; was more than ready to undertake the work, and had no quarrel with the remuneration offered. But even then he was not the man to play second fiddle to anybody. Before they parted, he had quite succeeded in turning the tables on Seymour. The original proposal had been that the artist should produce four caricatures on sporting subjects every month, ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... "Precisely the fiddle-stick, Mr Forster! you did mean it, and you do mean it, and this is all the return that I am to expect for my kindness and anxiety for your welfare—slaving and toiling all day as I do; but you're incorrigible, Mr Forster: look at you, helping yourself out of your ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... second fiddle—" she began, with an assumption of scornful irascibility which became her less than ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... Monkey, "wait a little! How can we get our music right? It's plain, you mustn't sit as you are. You, Mishka, with your counter-bass, face the alto. I will sit opposite the second fiddle. Then a different sort of music will begin: we shall set the very ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... more like one of the family, and there was a couple of good-looking daughters. One of them was clean gone on me. There are some grand girls down that way. I always got on well with the girls, because I could play the fiddle and sing a bit. They'll be glad to see me when I get back there again, I know. I'll be all right—no more bother about tucker. I'll just let things slide as soon as I spot the house. I'll bet my boots the kettle will be boiling, and everything ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... Pete home ter take keer dem chillen, an' I done set him a good job o' whitewashin' to do while I'm gone, too. De principles' weddin'-present I gwine fetch Pete is a fiddle. Po' Pete been wantin' a good fiddle all his life, an' he 'ain't nuver is had one. But, of co'se, I don't 'low ter let him play on it tell de full year ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... once, and then a grand clatter and scramble and string of jumps, up and down, back and forward, one hand over the other, like a stampede of rats and mice more than like anything I call music. I like to hear a woman sing, and I like to hear a fiddle sing, but these noises they hammer out of their wood-and-ivory anvils—don't talk to me; I know the difference between a bullfrog and a wood-thrush.—The ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... 'bout dem times. Disher house was full up all de time wid comp'ny; gran' comp'ny, what dress all de time in silk an' go walkin' 'bout under de trees an' ridin' 'bout over de prairie in de day time; and mos' every night dey call my ole man in to play de fiddle an' den, laws, how dem young folks dance! An' ole Mas' an' ole Mis' an' all de young ladies an gentlemen use to come down to de cabins—dey was all burnt up, time o' de war—an' sakes, honey! de hosses an' de cayages an' de niggers an' disher big plantation, ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.
... that's waur!' returned Steenie. 'I wudna gang intil sic a place wi' feet siclike's my ain—na, no for what the warl cud gie me!—no for lang Lowrie's fiddle and a' the tunes intil't! I wud never get my feet oot o' ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... Mrs. Hargrave, beating a tiny hand on the arm of her chair. "Fiddle-dee-dee and fiddlesticks with your 'lowering influences'! What did you do but leave her to her own thoughts and no one to talk to but a stiff old woman and a houseful of servants? Well, you have done it! What are you doing to ...
— The Girl Scouts at Home - or Rosanna's Beautiful Day • Katherine Keene Galt
... stiff and unyielding. Both sails were snow-white, semi-transparent and supple in movement, like the ivory sails on the model ships in Rosenborg Palace. The mast seemed to bend slightly and the stays were as taut as fiddle-strings. The boat quivered like a leaf. The waves pounded hard against the thin strakes of the boat's side. I could feel them on my cheek, though their dampness never penetrated; but in between these hammer blows their little pats were ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... first fiddle;—not in the concerts—but every where else, and the company would not spare me twenty minutes together. Sunday I dedicated to the drawing up my sketch of education, which I meant to publish, to try to get a school!" He speaks of "the thrice lovely valley of Ilam; a vale hung with beautiful woods ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... welcomed and kissed by the aged mulatto nurse. On rivers, boatmen safely moored at nightfall, in their boats, under shelter of high banks, Some of the younger men dance to the sound of the banjo or fiddle—others sit on the gunwale, smoking and talking; Late in the afternoon the mocking-bird, the American mimic, singing in the Great Dismal Swamp-there are the greenish waters, the resinous odour, the plenteous ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... Fiddle was handed over. She was rosy and round with her mother's blue eyes. She wore a little buttoned hat of white pique, with strings tied ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... mathematical genius, had been able to pay his way through Cambridge University by the scholarships and prizes which he had won. One beautiful little dark-eyed daughter of seven was playing in a West End Theatre as the dormouse in "Alice in Wonderland." She was second fiddle to Alice herself, also, and could sing all her songs. Her pay was some five pounds a week, poor enough for the attraction she proved, but more than all the rest of the family put together earned. At that time I never went to theatres. Acquaintances had persuaded me that ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... a fiddle-stick! None of the Binnies were ever married, but by word of the kirk, and none of them shall be, if I can help it. Licence indeed! Buying the right to marry for a few shillings, and the next thing will be a few more shillings for the right to ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... she said. "I never do. And I've no enmity against all manner of fiddle-faddling, if folks have got nothin' better to do. But 'tain't so with our girls. They work for their livin', and they've got to work; and what I say is, they're in a way to get to hate work, if they don't despise it, and in my judgment that's a poor business. It's going the wrong way to ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner |
