"Musical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ascertain the lucky times. When a person of note dies, the kindred clothe themselves in canvas or sackcloth, and accompany the body to the funeral, both men and women, people being employed to play on musical instruments, and singing all the way prayers to their idols; and being come to the place, they cast into the fire in which the body is burnt, many pieces of cotton paper, on which figures of slaves, horses, camels, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... of oppression and suffering have impressed their melancholy stamp on the feelings and manners of the people. This gloominess is strikingly manifested in their songs, their dances, their dress, and their whole domestic economy. The favorite musical instruments of the Indians are those called the Pututo and the Jaina. The former is a large conch, on which they perform mournful music, as the accompaniment of their funeral dances. In early times this conch was employed in the solemnities of royal interments; now its use is exclusively ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... jintlemen, do jist turn your swate little eyes upon me whilst I play for your iddifications the last illigant tune which my owld grandmother taught me. Och hone! 'tis a thousand pities that such musical owld crathers should be suffered to die, at all at all, to be poked away into a dirthy, dark hole, when their canthles shud be burnin' a-top of a bushel, givin' light to the house. An' then it is she that was the illigant dancer, stepping out so lively and frisky, ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... night had been spent, Dhananjaya, together with his brothers, paid homage unto Yudhishthira the just. And, O Bharata, at this moment, proceeding from the celestials there arose mighty and tremendous sounds of a musical instrument, and the rattling of car-wheels, and the tolling of bells. And there at all the beasts and beasts of prey and birds emitted separate cries. And from all sides in cars resplendent as the sun, hosts of Gandharvas ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... of God, knowing and executing the laws given it by God. But the means to this end, the instruments, the living members, are the Nationalities, in which all the varieties of the human race have their fairest bloom, their most precious flower. What the tones are in the musical chord they are in humanity, eternal variety in eternal harmony and concord. It is impossible to conceive Humanity without them; it would then be unity without variety, consequently no proper unity at all, a mere lifeness oneness. States are ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... whom it is employed. If we compare the language of these ballads with that of the sonnets or other poems spoken in the author's own person, we find it is not first of all gorgeous, condensed, emphatic. It is direct, simple, pure and musical; heightened, it is true, by imagery acquired in its passage through the medium of the poet's mind, but in other respects essentially the language of the historical personages who are made to speak. The diction belongs in each case ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... Yellin' Kid said he was going to send to Kansas City for a flute he could play on. This must be part of it! He dropped it here; though that couldn't 'a' been him sneaking around the tunnel. But this is Yellin' Kid's musical instrument all right! Oh, won't I rag him, though! I wonder ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker
... MELODEONS.—Augustus Newell, Chicago, Ill.—The object of this invention is to so construct the tongue-butts, or shanks, of musical reeds, that the same cannot, during the vibratory motion of the tongues, be raised from ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 • Various
... overconfident, and raising their spirits when they were cast down and disheartened. Thus, as Plato says, he was able to prove that oratory is the art of influencing men's minds, and to use it in its highest application, when it deals with men's passions and characters, which, like certain strings of a musical instrument, require a skilful and delicate touch. The secret of his power is to be found, however, as Thucydides says, not so much in his mere oratory as in his pure and blameless life, because he was so well known to be incorruptible, and indifferent to money; ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... eager for distinction, then first obtained the decree for a contest in musical skill to be held yearly at the Panathenaea, and he himself, being chosen judge, arranged the order and method in which the competitors should sing and play on the flute and the harp. And both at that time, and at other times also, they sat in this music-room to see and hear all ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... great cathedrals are begun, the wonder and despair of even twentieth-century resources. Royal ladies work on tapestries, queer things in their way, but certainly not barbaric. Musical notation is improved. Manuscripts are gorgeously illumined. Paintings and mosaics, though of the crudest, reappear on long-barren walls. Civilization begins ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... deprived of the protection of Krishna and of their sons as well, he was unable to look at them, his vision being obstructed by tears. The Dwaraka river had the Vrishnis and the Andhakas for its water, steeds for its fishes, cars for its rafts, the sound of musical instruments and the rattle of cars for its waves, houses and mansions and public squares for its lakes. Gems and precious stones were its abundant moss. The walls of adamant were the garlands of flowers that floated on it. The streets and roads were the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... after a while; and then the light began to change, the east came orange, the whole wood began to whirr with singing like a musical box, and there was the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... on?... (He rises and stands leaning against the piano) There can be no reasonable ground for changing our musical relationships. I think both of us would suffer equally from doing so. Without overestimating myself, I don't think it likely that you can find a better coach than I am. And as for my compositions, I don't know of anybody who could understand them better—with whom I would rather ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... so near her that she saw the regular quick flutter of the blue vein on his fair temples, and as the musical mastering voice so well remembered and once so fondly loved stole tenderly through the dark, lonely, dreary recesses of her desolate, aching heart, it waked for one instant a wild, maddening temptation, an intense longing to lift her arms, clasp them around his neck, lean ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... It was a musical sound, one that he had heard often in his native state, and, singularly enough, the lad drew encouragement from it. "Be of good cheer! Be of good cheer! Trust in the future! Trust in the future!" said all those ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... in a very clear, musical voice). THE DECAY OF LYING: A PROTEST.—One of the chief causes that can be assigned for the curiously commonplace character of most of the literature of our age is undoubtedly the decay of Lying as an art, a science, and a social pleasure. The ancient historians gave us delightful fiction in the ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... wanted than a frame and a good light. Literature permits such intervention, for a book can be read aloud. Music and song demand performance, and will continue to do so until the public can read musical notation, and probably afterwards, for even Mozart said that it does make a difference when you hear the music performed; while in the case of the drama and the dance the performers are so much part of the ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... mountaineers has long been enclosed within that small flat London district of Soho. Swiss watchmakers, Swiss silver-chasers, Swiss jewellers, Swiss importers of Swiss musical boxes and Swiss toys of various kinds, draw close together there. Swiss professors of music, painting, and languages; Swiss artificers in steady work; Swiss couriers, and other Swiss servants chronically out ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... the paper, Miss Stivergill lifted up her eyes and hands, pursed her mouth, and gave vent to a most unladylike whistle! She had barely terminated this musical performance, and recovered the serenity of her aspect, when Miss Lillycrop burst in upon her ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... and had some dinner. It was seasoned by small jokes and little personalities. A Teutonic journalist, a musical critic, I suppose, inquired as to the origin of the meagre pheasant. Fox replied that it had been preserved in the back-yard. The dramatic critic mumbled unheard that some piece or other was off the bills of the Adelphi. I grinned vacantly. Afterward, under his breath, Fox ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... musical service in England than that which Sunday after Sunday is conducted at St. Hilda's Chapel at Kingsdene. The harmony and the richness of the sounds which fill that old chapel can scarcely be surpassed. The boys send up notes clear ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... and I have at last consented to give her a box at the Bouffons. I have thus gained three quiet evenings out of the seven which God has created in the week. I am the mainstay of the music shops. At Paris there are drawing-rooms which exactly resemble the musical snuff-boxes of Germany. They are a sort of continuous orchestra to which I regularly go in search of that surfeit of harmony which my wife calls a concert. But most part of the time my wife keeps herself buried in ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... David, and some of the apostles. In a line at the bottom the word CATVSVIR is inscribed. Very much inferior to this in point of art is the illumination, at folio 31, representing David playing his harp, surrounded by a musical coterie; it is probably the workmanship of a more modern, but less skilful scribe of the Saxon school. The smaller ornaments and initial letters throughout the manuscript ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... bunk and cast things up in my mind. The patch of moonlight from the window moved slowly across the floor. One of the men was snoring, but with regularity, so he did not annoy me. The outside silence was softly musical with all the little voices that at Hooper's had so disconcertingly lacked. There were crickets—I had forgotten about them—and frogs, and a hoot owl, and various such matters, beneath whose influence customarily my consciousness merged into sleep so sweetly ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... always be resolved into the full and satisfactory harmony, of which the beauty is enhanced by the momentary lapse into strangeness. Dissonance is never the prevailing idea, and above all, never the final, closing one; it must always bear a certain relation to the key in which it is used, and the musical composition must be ended by the fullest and most satisfactory chord, or suggestion of a chord, found ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... annihilate the labour of hours. Nor are any of us prepared to understand the work of any great master, till we feel this, and feel it as distinctly as we do the value of arrangement in the notes of music. Take any noble musical air, and you find, on examining it, that not one even of the faintest or shortest notes can be removed without destruction to the whole passage in which it occurs; and that every note in the passage is twenty times more beautiful so introduced, ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... Palace of the Assembly, where M. Hippolyte Prevost corrected them. M. Hippolyte Prevost was chief of the stenographic staff, and in that capacity had apartments in the Legislative Palace. He was at the same time editor of the musical feuilleton of the Moniteur. On the 1st December he had gone to the Opera Comique for the first representation of a new piece, and did not return till after midnight. The fourth messenger from the Moniteur was waiting for him with a proof of the last slip of the sitting; M. Prevost corrected ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... theatrical approbation was signified by an artificial musical kind of noise, made by the audience to express satisfaction. There were three species of applause denominated from the different noises made in them, viz.: Bombus, Imbrius, ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... he was still shining brightly, and on the broad landscape beyond, which lay open to view through the gap in the trees. The glass door was open; the sweet summer air and the sound of birds and insects and fluttering leaves floated into the room, making the stillness musical. On the threshold pussy sat crouched, with his forefeet doubled under his breast, watching, with intense gravity, the operations of Margery, who was setting the table on the lawn, just before his ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Moorish, and strengthened by the admission of many words of foreign origin, introduced during the period of great commercial prosperity, possesses ample means for the expression of ideas and of shades of thought, and though it loses somewhat of the musical quality of the other languages in consequence of a rather large percentage of the nasal tones which are peculiar to it, yet it will hold its own well with the remaining members ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... devoted, or whether he merely longs for an amorous intrigue. That these Indian lovers may convey definite ideas to the minds of the girls is quite possible. Even birds have their love-calls, and savages in all parts of the world use "leading motives" a la Wagner, i.e., musical phrases with ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... Added to this, she was intellectual, refined, accomplished, and highly educated. I went back four years in life, and with all the enthusiasm of a college student I raved of poetry and romance. We read German together, and we talked of love in French; and the musical tongue of Italy, it seemed to me, befitted her mouth better than her own sonorous native language, and when in conversation she would look me one of those dreamy glances which had at the first set my heart ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... his brown velveteen coat, and wore his hair rather long; but we never saw much result from his Roman studies; latterly he had somewhat neglected his painting, and had taken to violin playing and musical composition. Uncle Geoffrey used to shake his head and say he was "Jack of all trades and master of none," which was not far from the mark. There was a great deal of talk between the three, ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... hers came into the restaurant, a girl in the chorus of a musical comedy here, and she had with her a young man. I recognised him at once. We didn't come across one another much, but ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... this song in 1687 for the festival of St. Cecilia, the patron saint of music. To be appreciated it must be read aloud, for it is full of musical effects, especially stanzas 3-6. St. Cecilia has been represented by Raphael and other artists as playing upon some instrument, surrounded by ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... he began to see progress. He was like a musical person beginning to learn an instrument; for, just as surely as there are scales to be run upon the piano before your virtuoso can weave music, binding the gallery gods with delicious meshes of sound, so in prose-writing there must be scales run, fingerings worked out, ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... diaeresis ['u] u with grave accent [^u] u with circumflex [:u] u with diaeresis [)u] u with breve [u] u with macron [:U] U with diaeresis [asterism] triangle of 3 asterisks, two at the top, one at the bottom [degrees] degree sign [pounds] pounds sign [1] upside down 1 [6] upside down 6 [b] musical flat ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... a regular museum of curiosities of every sort—books, paintings, carvings, busts, firearms, musical instruments. A long glass case contains a large number of autograph-letters from the world's celebrities, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... minced chicken and extraordinarily thin sandwiches, and a dry, pale wine that Claire found at first rather distasteful. Claire sat with a little group composed of Mrs. Condor, Ned Stillman, a fashionable young man, Phil Edington, who frankly confessed boredom at all things musical except one-steps and fox-trots, and two or three artistic-looking souls who pretended to be quite shocked by ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... Fontaine a leather bag, with a strap fastened round it. "The keys are inside," he explained. "I wore them loose this morning: and they made a fine jingle. Quite musical to my ear. But Mistress thought the noise likely to be a nuisance in the long run. So I strapped them up in a bag to keep them quiet. And when I move about, the bag hangs from my shoulder, like this, by another strap. When the keys are wanted, I open the bag. You ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... civilization, the smoother its speech. Age refines the vowels and makes the consonants suave. They spoke easily, not hastily, but as oil flows, continuously and without ripple. The younger voice was deep, soft enough to have been wooing and as musical as a chant. ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... shoulder on the dress, habits, and opinions of their Fathers; listening to the ministrations of such worldlings as William Lloyd Garrison, Theodore Tilton, and Oliver Johnson, in a new meeting house, all painted and varnished, with cushions, easy seats, carpets, stoves, a musical instrument—shade of George Fox, forgive—and three brackets with vases on the "high seat," and, more than all that, men and women were indiscriminately ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... as he unscrambled himself and resumed a normal posture, from his immediate rear there rent the quiet morning air a clear and musical laugh. It floated out on the breeze and hit him ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... once for all the fact that Toussaint stuttered. May we be permitted to dispense with it for the future. The musical notation of an infirmity is ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... Sonata". A trained musical critic would probably have found much to cavil at in his rendering of the piece, but it was undoubtedly good for a public school player. Of course he was encored. The gallery would have encored him if he had played with one finger, three mistakes ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... younger and brighter when he was there, thinking more of the future and less of the past. She could look at him, and that alone was happiness to her. And then he was pleasant-mannered with her; joking with her on her little old-world prejudices in a tone that was musical to her ear as coming from him; smiling on her, reminding her of those smiles which she had loved so dearly when as yet he was all her own, lying there in his little bed beside her chair. He was ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... which was consecrated to the care of their health and happiness. The public games, such as the Greek ambassador might politely applaud, exhibited a faint and feeble copy of the magnificence of the Caesars: yet the musical, the gymnastic, and the pantomime arts, had not totally sunk in oblivion; the wild beasts of Africa still exercised in the amphitheatre the courage and dexterity of the hunters; and the indulgent Goth either patiently tolerated or gently restrained the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... that they use it as snuff as well as to chew. Their noses looked like little round bits of flesh stuck on to their faces with nostrils so wide that they could push their fingers right up them. Denham's watch, compass, and musical snuffbox astonished them not a little. He defines these people as brutes ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... that rising moon, there came from a little distance down the street the sound of a young male voice, singing. It was not a musical voice, yet sufficiently loud; and it knew only a portion of the words and air it sought to render, but, upon completing the portion it did know, it instantly began again, and sang that portion over and over with ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... of relief, however, were as nothing in comparison with the irresistible charms of musical sound. Attempts had indeed been made in ancient times to mitigate the pain of sciatica, or the paroxysms of mania, by the soft melody of the flute, and, what is still more applicable to the present purpose, to remove the danger ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... their silence which makes them such very pleasant companions. At sunrise, however, like their forest brethren, they hail the sun for some minutes with a noise which I have never heard them make again during the day, loud and musical, as if uttered by human vocal organs, very clear and pleasant. Doubtless the Malays like Mr. Low all the better for ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... there, very silent,—faint and far-away upon the still night air, they heard a sound; a silvery, rhythmic sound, it was,—like the musical clash of fairy cymbals which drew rapidly nearer, and nearer; and Bellew felt that Miss Priscilla's hand was trembling upon his arm as she leaned forward, listening with a smile upon her parted lips, and a light in her ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... the confident look of luxury and social fame dropped their eyes abstractedly on the opera-glasses lying in their laps, or the programmes they mechanically fingered, and recalled, they knew not why—for what had it to do with this musical narration of a tragic Italian tale!—the days when, in the first flush of their wedded life, they had set a seal of devotion and loyalty and love upon their arms, which, long ago, had gone to the limbo of lost jewels, with ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... sincerest way of speaking. Though of course it's not a bit like other people's ways. She probably doesn't talk like anybody you've ever listened to. Not like anybody I've ever heard of anyway." The girl's eyes were glowing. "Are you musical?" she demanded. "Because I need a musical word to tell you how she talks. She talks rubato. Her short words drawl ever so long and her long ones hurry so's to let her make up for the stolen time. And she has a sort of trace of accent like—well, it's not like anything except ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... couldn't sleep all night, for the everlastin' noise these critters made. Their frogs have somethin' else to do here besides singin'. Ain't it a splendid prospect that, havin' these young frogs settled all round you in the same mud-hole, all gathered in a nice little musical family party. All fine fun this, till some fine day we Yankee storks will come down and gobble them all up, and make clear work ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... wait at the door of the dugout that serves as a first-aid dressing station, I gaze up into that mysterious dark, so alive with musical vibrations. Then a small shadow detaches itself from the greater shadow, and a gray-bearded sentry says to me: "You'd better come in out ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... harmony in the spirit of man. It does not demand impossibilities, that man should be at one with the universe or in tune with the infinite; but it does envisage the highest of all attainable ideals, that man should be at one with himself, obedient to his own most musical law. ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... she begs the harper to instruct the young girl. Iseult becomes perfect: "She can both read and write, she composes epistles and songs; above all, she knows many [Briton] lays. She is sought after for her musical talent, no less than for her beauty, a silent and still sweeter music that through the eyes insinuated itself into the heart." All her life she remembered the teaching of Tristan, and in her sorrows ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... understanding of German civilization would be incomplete without knowledge of the mythical prince Siegfried, hero of the earliest literature of the Teutonic people, finally immortalized in the nineteenth century through the musical dramas of Wagner. Any understanding of English civilization would be similarly incomplete without the semi-historic figure of King Arthur, glorified through the accumulated legends of the Middle Ages and made to live again ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... book with sparkling eyes, and discussed points in a low, musical voice, something crude and elemental flamed in the philosopher, something called to him to fuse himself with the universal life more tangibly than through the intellect. His doubts and vacillations fled: he must speak now, or the hour and the mood would never recur. If he could only drag the conversation ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... is in the best preservation, but the northern one is of greatest interest because for ages it was believed to give forth musical notes when the first rays of the rising sun fell on its lips. The Greeks called it the Statue of Memnon, and invented the fable that Memnon, who was slain at Troy by Achilles, appeared on the Nile as a stone image and ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... would be safe from rabid dogs that time at any rate. And certainly no mysterious influences intervened to prevent him sitting on the stile for a rest, and indulging in pleasant thoughts. Then he pulled out his pocket-volume of the beloved Eclogues, and read the musical contest between Menalcas and Damaetas with great enjoyment. Why, he wondered, were there no delightful shepherd-boys now-a-days, who spent their time in lying under trees and singing one against the other? Lubin ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... his assent by several yes's, and Chia Se also came forward to deliver his message. "The mission to Ku Su," he explained, "to find tutors, to purchase servant girls, and to obtain musical instruments, and theatrical properties and the like, my uncle has confided to me; and as I'm to take along with me the two sons of a couple of majordomos, and two companions of the family, besides, Tan P'ing-jen and Pei Ku-hsiu, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... the surface of the open lake through the veil of bushes and tall grass. The water broke in gentle waves under a light wind, and kept up a soft sighing that was musical and soothing. Had he been upon dry land he could have closed his eyes and gone to sleep, but, as it was, he did not complain, since he had found safety, if not comfort. He even found strength in himself, despite his situation, to admire the gleaming expanse of Andiatarocte with its ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... by continual novelty. And it is very characteristic both of my then state, and of the general tone of my mind at this period of my life, that I was seriously tormented by the thought of the exhaustibility of musical combinations. The octave consists only of five tones and two semi-tones, which can be put together in only a limited number of ways, of which but a small proportion are beautiful: most of these, it seemed to me, must have been already discovered, and there could not be room for a ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... darker on Count Conrad's forehead; he moved restlessly under the irony, and drank down a draught of red fiery Roussillon without tasting it more than if it had been water. Then he laughed; the same careless musical laughter with which he had made the requiem over a violet—a laugh which belonged at once to the most careless and the most evil side ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... sent by Curtis several poems, which were printed in the Harbinger, and he also sent two letters from New York on musical topics. Two of his letters to Dwight from Europe were also printed in the Harbinger. After he was settled in New York, Curtis did his part in an effort to get Dwight established in that city. When Dwight began his Journal of Music, Curtis wrote for it frequently over the signature of "Hafiz." ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... sounds. And, generally speaking, however these dreams began, the figure of Grace Carden would steal in ere he awoke. His senses, being only half asleep, colored his dreams; he heard her light footstep in the pattering rain, and her sweet voice in the musical moan of the desolate building; desolate as his heart when he awoke, and behold ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... itself,—there came a whiff of wind from the south and a feeling of thaw. The sled-runners began to cut through to the frozen ground, and about the tree-trunks, where thin crusts of ice were sparkling, came a faint musical sound of trickling drops. The sun was regnant, and little brown birds flew cheerily over the snow ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... Musical instruments they have but few; the latter Consists of 2 or 3 sorts of Trumpets and a small Pipe or Whistle, and the former in singing and Dancing. Their songs are Harmonious enough, but very doleful to a European ear. In most ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... proportion. For talkers, once launched, begin to overflow the limits of their ordinary selves, tower up to the height of their secret pretensions, and give themselves out for the heroes, brave, pious, musical and wise, that in their most shining moments they aspire to be. So they weave for themselves with words and for a while inhabit a palace of delights, temple at once and theatre, where they fill the round of the world's dignities, and feast with the gods, exulting ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in the quaint village of Warwick. Its old tower holds ten bells, and these play every four hours. There is a different tune for each day, which is always changed at midnight. The Warwick towns-people, living near their church, must have an enviable musical education, for they have continually dinned in their ears all sorts of tunes, from the "Easter Hymn" to "The Blue ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson
... the archetype. It is like an imperfect mirror that renders but a partial likeness, in which essential features are blurred or distorted. Dante himself, the first modern critic, declared that "nothing harmonized by a musical bond can be transmuted from its own speech without losing all its sweetness and harmony," and every fresh attempt at translation affords a new proof of the truth of his assertion. Each language exhibits its own special genius ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... the only person she had to depend upon. Others were lavish of their sympathy, but sympathy wears out quickly; others invited her to spend a month with them at their country-seat, for change of air; one hinted how valuable Miss Adams' exquisite musical talent would be now. Mary coloured, and said, "Yes," with the dignity of proper feeling; but her mother asked the lady what she meant, and a little scene followed, which caused the lady to visit all the families ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... we can induce reactions, day by day, to beautiful or sublime passages in literature, in due time the spirit will refuse to react to what is shoddy and commonplace. By inducing reactions to increasingly better musical compositions, day after day, we finally inculcate the habit of reacting only to high-grade music, and the lower type makes no appeal. By such a process we shall finally produce an educated, cultivated man or woman, the crowning ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... Orsino's music, which she had heard, on the preceding night, had she not known, that he had neither taste, or skill in the art. But, though she was unwilling to add to the number of Annette's surprises, by mentioning the subject of her own, she enquired, whether any person in the castle played on a musical instrument? ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... secession.) Any new formula which suddenly emerges in our consciousness has its roots in long trains of thought; it is virtually old when it first makes its appearance among the recognized growths of our intellect. Any crystalline group of musical words has had a long and still period to form in. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... change; partly because the world has become more liberal of late in these matters, and partly because he had contrived to gain a tolerably secure position in it already, by the help of a pleasant manner and the musical and dramatic accomplishments which had led him to adopt the stage ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... books printed in this time, were Edwards' "History of Redemption;" Bickersteth's "Scripture Hand-book," with additions by Mr. Calhoun; a large Psalm and Hymn Book; Curwen's "New System of Musical Notation;"[1] a Children's Hymn Book; Bistany's Arabic Dictionary, and his Elements of Grammar; and an Arabic Almanac, probably the first ever printed in Arabic, although "Al-Manakh" (the climate) is an Arabic word. The press was now under the direction of Mr. Henry Thomson, a son of Dr. Thomson, ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... the modern equivalent of psaltery and tabret and cymbals, all have their place in Dr. Conwell's scheme of church service; for there may be a piano, and there may even be a trombone, and there is a great organ to help the voices, and at times there are chiming bells. His musical taste seems to tend toward the thunderous—or perhaps it is only that he knows there are times when people like to hear the thunderous and ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... Vailly, Argent, Blancafort, and Aubigny, on the left bank, to be introduced to Madame de la Baudraye, as they used in Switzerland, to be introduced to Madame de Stael. Those who only once heard the round of tunes emitted by this musical snuff-box went away amazed, and told such wonders of Dinah as made all the women jealous for ten ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... The harp is a musical instrument invented many centuries ago. When properly strung and played upon it yields sweet music, making glad the heart. The first mention of the harp made in the Bible is in Genesis 4:21, and the inventor's name was Jubal. He was therefore ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford
... placing the covered body of the king with that of his queen on that excellent bier decked out so brightly, they caused it to be carried on human shoulders. With the white umbrella (of state) held over the hearse with waving yak-tails and sounds of various musical instruments, the whole scene looked bright and grand. Hundreds of people began to distribute gems among the crowd on the occasion of the funeral rites of the king. At length some beautiful robes, and white umbrellas and larger yak-tails, were brought ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... his tastes, quiet and gentlemanly in his manners, with a musical voice which won him friends at once, while in his soft black eyes there was a peculiar look of sadness, as if he were brooding over something which filled him with regret. Frank was very proud of his brother, and with Dorothy felt that he was honored when, six ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... Old Law God was praised with musical instruments and human song, according to Ps. 32:2, 3: "Give praise to the Lord on the harp, sing to Him with the psaltery, the instrument of ten strings. Sing to Him a new canticle." But the Church does not make use of ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... suddenly streaming up, bespoke the goodness of the crackling log from which a brilliant train of sparks was doubtless at that moment whirling up the chimney in honour of his coming—when, superadded to these enticements, there stole upon him from the distant kitchen a gentle sound of frying, with a musical clatter of plates and dishes, and a savoury smell that made even the boisterous wind a perfume—Gabriel felt his firmness oozing rapidly away. He tried to look stoically at the tavern, but his features would relax into a look of fondness. He turned his head the other way, and the cold black ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... proper bounds, and never permit them to exceed the limits assigned by nature. It is the part of reason to sooth the passions, and to keep the soul in a pleasing serenity and calm: if reason rules, all is quiet, composed, and benign: if reason rules, all the passions, like a musical concert, are in unison. In short, our passions, when moderate, are accompanied with a sense of fitness and rectitude; but, when excessive, inflame the mind, and hurry us on to action without due distinction ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... Madison, and Ingle the architect—had evidently dined well, preparing for a musical comedy, ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... is in a peculiar condition. In the French it has very various significations, but has come to be adopted in music and acoustics to connote the quality of a musical sound independent of its pitch and loudness, a quality derived from the harmonics which the fundamental note intensifies, and that depends on the special form of the instrument. The article Clang in the Oxford Dictionary quotes Professor Tyndall ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 3 (1920) - A Few Practical Suggestions • Society for Pure English
... time he had a growing consciousness that perhaps there was something in the reader also which mainly held his interest. It was pleasant to listen to the low, musical voice. It was pleasant to see the red lips drop the words so easily yet so distinctly, and chief of all was the consciousness of a vitalized presence that made the room seem full when she was in it, and empty when she was ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... Francis. At last she broke her 'worset,' drew the end of it through the final loop, and, drawing it, rose and scanned the side of the hill. Not far off she spied the fleecy backs of a few feeding sheep, and straightway sent out on the still air a sweet, strong, musical cry. It was instantly responded to by a bark from somewhere up the hill. She sat down, clasped her hands ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... in the course of the winter Mrs. Oliver gave a little musical party, at which Clarissa met the small gentry of Holborough, who pronounced her a very lovely girl, and pitied her because of her father's ruined fortunes. To her inexperience these modest assemblies seemed the perfection ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... are—the sweet little treasures," he went on. "From whom else, marm, could they have inherited these limpid eyes, these rosy cheeks, these profuse curls, these comely figures and these musical voices?" ...
— Good Stories from The Ladies Home Journal • Various
... past the sleeping, drunken sentinel, to the stables. She lead out a white horse, her own horse, Arthur was sure, for the creature caressed her with his head, and as she saddled him she talked to him in low tones, sweet, musical words of some foreign tongue. The handsome horse seemed to understand the necessity of silence, for he did not even whinny to the touch of his mistress' hand, and trod daintily and noiselessly as she led him to the mounting block, his ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... him the "small, yellow, one-keyed flute" which had superseded the musical reed provided by Nature, and practised upon it so fervently that a college-mate said that he "would play upon his flute ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... word glee, which peculiarly denoted their art (the minstrels'), continues still in our own language ... it is to this day used in a musical sense, and applied to a ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.
... clearer, more musical voice than his I have never heard—"I thank you for this honor. As you know, I opposed the platform you saw fit to adopt. I have nothing to retract. I do not like it. But, after all, a candidate must be his own platform. And ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... the text, which appears even to present lacunae. The English reader will naturally prefer the lively and charming version of Shelley to any other. The poet can tell and adorn the story without visibly floundering in the pitfalls of a dislocated text. If we may judge by line 51, and if Greek musical tradition be correct, the date of the Hymn cannot be earlier than the fortieth Olympiad. About that period Terpander is said to have given the lyre seven strings (as Mercury does in the poem), in place of the previous four strings. The date of Terpander is dubious, but probably the ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... or science, as well as of baths and orchestras. Of music in particular he said: "I think sometimes could I only have music on my own terms; could I ... know where I could go whenever I wished the ablution and inundation of musical waves,—that were a bath and a medicine." It has been a long road from that sentence, written probably in the forties, to the Symphony Orchestra in this Hall, and to the new singing classes on the East Side of ...
— Four American Leaders • Charles William Eliot
... since, I have been attracted by unusual sounds, and have surprised a flock of crows which were evidently watching a performance by one of their number. Once it was a deep musical whistle, much like the too-loo-loo of the blue jay (who is the crow's cousin, for all his bright colors), but deeper and fuller, and without the trill that always marks the blue jay's whistle. Once, in some big woods in Maine, ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... that it was over, Jasper put back his head and laughed long and loud as he remembered the rapid transit of the musical pair. ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney
... I was conscious then of a sound, like a single pleading word repeated softly, as though someone said "Please! Please! Please!" over and over again. The sound was not at all like the English word. It was a soft, musical beat, like the distant stroke of a mellow gong, but it had all the pleading quality of the word it seemed ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... curious sound in the laugh, it was mocking yet musical, it was eerie yet merry. Involuntarily Ralph thought of Grieg's "Dance of the Imps," and Auber's ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... appreciated by his friends. Besides, my own power of speaking foreign languages has always been very limited, and I have many times declined the compliment of being a second Mezzofanti.[5] I worked at languages as a musician studies the nature and capacities of musical instruments, though without attempting to perform on every one of them. There was no time left for acquiring a practical familiarity with languages, if I wanted to carry on my researches into the ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... Singh and Glyn descended from their dormitory, and were strolling down towards the Doctor's neatly-kept garden by a way which led them past the well-house, they stopped to listen to a clear musical pipe that was accompanied by the creaking of a wheel and the ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... Captain Genealogical Dictionary of Canadian Families Gien, a musical instrument Gillam, Captain Zachariah Gillam, —, son of Captain Zachariah Goats Godfrey, Marguerite Godfry, John Baptista Gooseberries Gorst, Thomas Grapes Green Point Groseilliers. (See Chouart, Medard.) Guillam. (See Gillam.) ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson
... and when they make water, presenly one of the women washeth their member, and so they sit playing all the day with their women: Many of them haue slaues that play vppon instrumentes much like our Shakebois, [Footnote: Musical instruments mentioned in Nichol's Coronation of Anne Boleyn, p. 2. Probably Sackbuts.] they haue likewise great basons whereon they strike, and therewith know how to make good musicke, whereat the women daunce, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt
... B., male, invert, younger of 2 sons, no other children, has extremely feminine disposition and appearance, of considerable personal attraction, and has great musical talent. Penis very small and ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... is the cadence of their speech. Whilst I was breakfasting, two women stood at gossip on a near balcony, and their utterance was a curious exaggeration of the Neapolitan accent; every sentence rose to a high note, and fell away in a long curve of sound, sometimes a musical wail, more often a mere whining. The protraction of the last word or two was really astonishing; again and again I fancied that the speaker had broken into song. I cannot say that the effect was altogether pleasant; in the end such talk would tell severely ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... to the seed; without good will all thinking must perish, or at best lie dormant. She wondered how much of good seed had perished under the bad weather of human weakness, prejudice and jealousy. But she was young, and hope her rightful heritage. The blessed word 'reconstruction' seemed to her as musical ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... makes the passage to us the easier. Were our club all removed to a future world but one or two, they, one should think, would incline to follow. By all means let me be on your list of subscribers to Mr. Morrell's Prometheus. You have enlivened the town, I see, with a musical piece. The prologue is admirably fancied arripere populum tributim; though, to be sure, Foote's remark applies to it, that your prologues {329} have a culinary turn, and that therefore the motto to your collection of them should be, Animus jamdudum in Patinis. A player ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 179. Saturday, April 2, 1853. • Various
... I requested Sejugah to collect his tribe, and to show me their dances and musical instruments. They readily consented, and about nine at night we went to witness the exhibition. The musical instruments were, the tomtom, or drum, and the Malayan gong; which were beat either slow or fast, according ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... lungs, and that the air she breathed was putrefied as from a noxious swamp. Sometimes a pain, sharp as a hatpin, entered between her shoulder blades. But what of that? When the heart is young the heart is bold, and Sara could laugh upward with the musical glee ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... and whistling, he organised musical chairs; and, after musical chairs, cock-fighting. Already he was limping on one knee, and his left eye was red and swollen. But he was enjoying himself so much that his enjoyment was infectious. To see him was to feel that Life was a riotous adventure, and this planet of ours the liveliest of lively ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... a martyr, to the number of thirty consecutive Popes. It is really and truly holy ground, and it is meet that the air, once rent by the death cries of Christ's innocent folk, should be enclosed in the world's most sacred place, and be ever musical with holy song, and sweet with incense. It needs fifty thousand persons to fill the nave and transepts in Saint Peter's. It is known that at least that number have been present in the church several times within modern memory; ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... still watched him he raised his muzzle; and there came from his throat a deep, musical, bell-like challenge that echoed loudly in the opening itself and more airily and sweetly between the ridge and the mountains beyond. In answer, from a mile behind, so Tom calculated, came a far more terrible sound—the wild, savage yells ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... House-boat on the Styx Coffee and Repartee Mollie and the Unwiseman Worsted Man; A Musical Play for Amateurs The Enchanted Typewriter Ghosts I Have Met Mrs. Raffles Olympian Nights R. Holmes & Co. ...
— Alice in Blunderland - An Iridescent Dream • John Kendrick Bangs
... that the pronunciation of the accented syllable was on a higher or lower note than the rest of the word. It was therefore a musical, not a quantitative symbol. The rules for its position are briefly as follows. No words but monosyllables or contracted forms have the accent on the last; dissyllables are therefore always accented on the first, and polysyllables on the first or second, according as the penultimate is short or long, ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... little ceremonial, in the course of which the count proffered a formal welcome to the deputation; and one of the ladies, who was richly attired and wore an air of much distinction, spoke for three or four minutes in a balanced, musical voice. The count whispered me her title—I have forgotten it ages ago, though she was a great personage in her time—and told me that she had lost her husband and her three sons in the struggle for independence. This ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... thinking how out of place you are, and how superior, and meet us all on a level? It won't hurt you to go to that dance, and it won't hurt you to play for them, if they want you to. You can play, you know; you used to play at all the musical doings in Fern Hill, and even in the city sometimes. And, let me tell you, Val, we aren't quite savages, out here. I've even suspected, sometimes, that we're just as good ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... interchange, her silver robe of alternating light over the midnight Heaven. There is a change in every sight and sound. White glaciers clash on the tormented waves, in fierce career waving eternally, and hoary whales, with musical din[12] booming along the deep, breathe forth in giant chorus, wondrously, the welcome of the Spirit of ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... morality of men. The text was as innocent as a baby: 'Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof.' And when he began in the usual way, the dear old goodies in glasses thought he had been wound up like the musical box and had just turned on the crank, so they cuddled in comfortably for forty winks before the anthem. There were two natures in man, and man's body might be good or bad according as spiritual or carnal affections ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... assembled at that place. A loud and varied murmur, resembling that of a thronged hive, floated from the camp of the crusaders to the neighbouring town of Scutari, and every now and then the deep tone was broken by some shriller sound, the note of some musical instrument, or the treble scream of some child or female, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... of the Princess; the little page had won the hearts of all the ladies; Mr. King had applauded himself hoarse, especially during the delivery of the prologue, when "I cry you mercy, sirs, and ladies fair," rang out; the musical efforts of Polly and Jasper in the "Wait" between the two acts were over, and the crowded house, in every way possible, had expressed itself delighted with all things from ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney
... up toward Effie very slowly, his head shaking all the time and his feet dragging one after the other as if he could hardly reach her. Effie began to be frightened, but when he spoke to her it was with such a sweet musical voice that she thought she had never ...
— Seven Little People and their Friends • Horace Elisha Scudder
... Street was the haunt of much voluntary minstrelsy. Bands of cockney darkeys came down it, tuning their voices to our native ragtime. Or a balladist, man or woman, took the centre, and sang towards our compassionate windows. Or a musical husband and wife placed their portable melodeon on the opposite sidewalk, and trained their vocal and instrumental attack upon ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... like a harmonium in distress!" replied Bob, with a slight laugh. And even as he spoke the wail was repeated, though this time could be distinctly heard the voice of some person struggling to articulate to some musical accompaniment the words— ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... the Plains were covered with water, and were musical with frogs in the spring, but in hot weather they dried up, leaving here and there a stagnant pond. I have heard father tell how one of his neighbors tried to break a field by beginning on the outside, ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... all came when Bryan Ormond, who had stirred the musical circles of two worlds, took his place on the little country platform and played for them on his 'cello. The Judge and Mrs. Ellis enjoyed it just as the Robbinses did. It was a novel treat to hear ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... comes from the pure and natural fountain right before their eyes. Two old sailors, each minus an arm, were singing patriotic songs and the signors, signoras and signoritas who listened to them at the doors and balconies, seemed thrilled with delight, at the musical recital of the grand victories of old Spain. Peddlers moved along with an immense heap of miscellaneous wares fixed in boxes on the backs of their mules. Tall, stately negresses, with long, trailing dresses, of flashy green and yellow, walked along quite independently, ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... closed behind us. What a relief it was to be in the street again, to see the sun and the trees, and to breathe the free air! A cart went by with a great racket, drawn by three mules, and the cries of the driver as he cracked his whip were almost musical; a train of donkeys passed; a man trotted by on a brown shaggy cob, his huge panniers filled with glowing vegetables, green and red, and in a corner was a great bunch of roses. I took long breaths of the free air, I shook myself to get rid of ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... manifested, of late, in repeated deeds of munificent, yet unobtrusive, charity, as well as in a passionate devotion to the intricacies, perhaps even more than to the orthodox and easily recognizable beauties, of musical science. I had learned, too, the very remarkable fact that the stem of the Usher race, all time-honored as it was, had put forth, at no period, any enduring branch; in other words, that the entire family lay in the direct line of descent, and had always, with very ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... of annals makes some people gather the mistaken impression that San Francisco's dramatic and musical history had its genesis when miners threw gold nuggets at the feet of Lotta Crabtree. But it has been pointed out by one musical critic that the Franciscan padres were chanting Gregorian measures in the Mission Dolores when the battles of Lexington and Concord were being fought, and that the Indians ...
— Fascinating San Francisco • Fred Brandt and Andrew Y. Wood
... on the outer side, here there is another open space, and on it are bells as large as church bells; they hang between two posts. Take up one of those deer's horns lying beside that one and stroke it hard. It gives out a clear musical note. Try now the piece of wood, that sounds different. Everyone who passes stops to strike one or the other of the bells, they want to call the attention of the "good nats," or spirits, to the fact that they ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... has a hand in all good deeds, but that's not the point. We have arranged a literary and musical matinee ... and at this matinee you may hear a girl ... an extraordinary girl! We cannot make out quite yet whether she is to be a Rachel or a Viardot ... for she sings exquisitely, and recites and plays.... A talent of the very first rank, my dear boy! I'm not exaggerating. Well ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... Prayer-book of the prayer of oblation.[72] He bestowed much pains in maintaining the dignity and efficiency of his cathedral;[73] but, with a curious intermixture of Puritan feeling, told one of his Nonconformist correspondents that he did not much approve of musical services, and would be glad if the law would permit an alteration.[74] In regard of the questions specially at issue with the Nonjurors, he heartily assented for his own part to the principles of the Revolution, maintaining ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... those bluish shadows that belong to gray days; it was charged, even more than usual, with mystery: the whole atmosphere tingled with it as with electricity. I couldn't read. I have never been able to play upon any musical instrument, much as I love music. I do not sing, either, except in a small-beer voice; and when I tried to sew I pricked my fingers with the needle. I went into the kitchen, consulted with Mary Magdalen as to the evening's dinner, weighed and measured such ingredients as she needed, ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... you have a musical quack, score it a point in his favour, Willoughby, though you ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... again and again from the trees. It was a sweet musical sound, and Yan remembered how squally the Coon call was in comparison, and yet many ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... from this dreadful scene naturally carried the whole of that scene, raised and idealised, into my dreams, and very soon into a rolling succession of dreams. The actual scene, as looked down upon from the box of the mail, was transformed into a dream, as tumultuous and changing as a musical fugue. This troubled Dream is circumstantially reported in Section the Third, entitled, "Dream-Fugue upon the Theme of Sudden Death." What I had beheld from my seat upon the mail,—the scenical strife of ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... and nobility of their character. And one, knowing them instinctively, felt that they realized our ideal of personality. I can see again the cultured Norton, whom Ruskin said was the only American he met who was a gentleman. I can see the tall, handsome, erect Thayer, with musical voice, gracious manners and buoyant walk, whom the boys called "the captain." I can see again Dean Everett, who blended the wisdom of a Nestor with a transparent simplicity who blended granite strength of character with a Christ-like tenderness. And I can see again that trio of famous Harvard ...
— Alexander Crummell: An Apostle of Negro Culture - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 20 • William H. Ferris
... caricatured by many comedians with the aid of eccentric costumes and weird make-ups are usually as far from being real national types as one could well imagine. Humor must have more than mere extravagance or caricature for its basis. Even in farce and in musical comedy, as well as in vaudeville, the once familiar green-whiskered Irishman, the Frenchman who is all shrugging shoulders and absurd gestures, the negro who walks as if he were trying to take two steps backward for every one forward, and whose most noticeable facial feature is an ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... ten on its musical chimes before they re-entered the big hall, and, being relieved by Hill of the wraps, passed together into the library, where, from a locked cabinet in a corner, Gabrielle took a number of business papers and placed them upon the ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... apprentices and those of other towns or villages are often attracted. After they have a school certificate, entrance to the works is optional. From the age of twelve to sixteen years they must do military preparation, with flags and musical band. The brightest children go to high school to become engineers, and they are taught by the best professors in France. They pay back the cost of their education only when they have secured a good position. A thorough medical ...
— A Journey Through France in War Time • Joseph G. Butler, Jr.
... difficult to resist the illusion that it was "declaimed" before it was written. We catch the oratorial tags and devices, the repeated phrase, the incessant antithesis, the alternate rise and fall of eloquent speech. It is declamation—fine declamation—but we miss the musical undertones, the subtle involutions, the unexpected bursts, and mysterious cadences of really great written prose. The term "the Republic of Venice" is repeated three times in three lines: the term "the Papacy" is repeated three times ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... talents than for his warm and affectionate heart, rich imagination, great love of humour, and deep and earnest piety. He was a facile versifier, an elegant prose writer, an able botanist and physiologist. Possessing a fine ear, rich voice, and great musical taste, he not only took his vocal share in part-song, but wrote several melodies, which have been published. In one species of rapid mental calculation, or rather combination of figures—giving in ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... musical scholar many years since promised a new edition of the first two volumes of his Irish Airs. Is there any hope of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 70, March 1, 1851 • Various
... was time for conundrums, and asked, "Why is a pastoral musical play better than the music we have here? Because one is a grasshopper, and the other ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... me! It stuns. God! I have heard you read from your Browning—no, no; do not speak—and watched the play of your face, the uplift and the passion of it, and all the while the words droning in upon me, meaningless, musical, maddening. And Mrs. Schoville sitting there, nursing an expression of idiotic ecstasy, and understanding no more than I. ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... CRESCENT, TURKISH JINGLE, or JINGLING JOHNNY (Fr. chapeau chinois; Ger. tuerkischer Halbmond, Schellenbaum; Ital. cappello chinese), an instrument of percussion of indefinite sonorousness, i.e. not producing definite musical tones. The chapeau chinois was formerly an adjunct in military bands, but never in the orchestra, where an instrument of somewhat similar shape, often confused with it and known as the Glockenspiel (q.v.), is occasionally ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... Arts et Metiers, tome 3, part 1, page 393, you will find mentioned an instrument, invented by a Monsieur Renaudin, for determining the true time of the musical movements, largo, adagio, &c. I went to see it. He showed me his first invention; the price of the machine was twenty-five guineas: then his second, which he had been able to make for about half that sum. Both of these had a mainspring ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... mistress, that a single one of your fancies has not been fulfilled at once? If you want a jewel, you give the workman an ingot of pure gold, cornelians, lapis-lazuli, agates, and hematite, and he carries out the wished-for design. It is the same way with gowns, cars, perfumes, flowers, and musical instruments. From Philae to Heliopolis your slaves seek out for you what is most beautiful and most rare; and if Egypt does not hold what you want, caravans bring it to you from ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... extremely active and neat in its manners and an untiring singer, morning, noon, and night his rapid chanting being heard, sometimes loud and sometimes hardly audible, as if he were becoming quite exhausted by his musical efforts. He mounts the highest tops of a large tree and sings for half an hour together. The song is not one uninterrupted strain, but a repetition of short notes, "commencing loud, and rapid, and full, and by almost imperceptible gradations for six or eight seconds until ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [May, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... scene. In one walk of the garden, Mr. Gyngell's theatre of arts was erected, where were exhibited balancing, the Ombres Chinoises, gymnastic exercises, and other feats, and Mr. Gyngell performed several airs on the musical glasses; in another, Punchinello delighted the beholders with his antics; in a third a very expert Juggler played a variety of clever tricks and sleight-of-hand deceptions, and a couple of itinerant Italians exhibited their musical and mechanical show-boxes; in ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... of spice and frankincense, Which smiled upon the flowery vales below, Where living crystal found a sweet pretence With musical impatience to flow, And delicately chide the gems beneath Because no smoother they ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... 'Exquisite, enchanting, adored being! Without thee what is existence? How dull, how blank does everything even now seem! It is as if the sun had just set! Oh! that form! that radiant countenance! that musical and thrilling voice! Those tones still vibrate on my ear, or I should deem it all a vision! Will to-morrow ever come? Oh! that I could express to you my love, my overwhelming, my absorbing, my burning passion! Beautiful Henrietta! Thou hast a name, methinks, ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... been so practical, making a garage pay, never thought much about how I said things as long as I could say 'No!' and say it quick. 'Cept maybe when I was talking to the prof there. But it's great sport to see how musical you can make a thing sound. Words. Like Shenandoah. Gol-lee! Isn't that a wonderful word? Makes you see old white mansion, and mocking birds—— Wonder if a fellow could be a big engineer, you know, build ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... meeting with her gay lover, Harry Carson; forgot Miss Simmonds' errands, and her anger, in the anxious desire to comfort the poor lone woman. Never had her sweet face looked more angelic, never had her gentle voice seemed so musical as when she murmured her broken sentences ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... prefer to live in St. Louis, because I have a few friends there," she said. "But I am studying music, and when my mother died, father suggested that I live in Chicago where I could attend a better musical college. Then, too, father could get home more often as he travels ...
— The Sheridan Road Mystery • Paul Thorne
... as well—Lord forbid that I should forget her. And her laugh as I heard it that evening is ringing now in my ears. And yet it was not a laugh. Musical it was, yet there seemed no pleasure in it: rather irony, and a great weariness of the amusements of this world: and a note, too, from a vanity never ruffled. It stopped abruptly as the negro pulled up his horse before her, and she stared ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill |
