"Piper" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Rat-Wife was "a little old woman who came to kill rats at the school where he was educated. She carried a little dog in a bag, and it was said that children had been drowned through following her." This means that Ibsen did not himself adapt to his uses the legend so familiar to us in Browning's Pied Piper of Hamelin, but found it ready adapted by the popular imagination of his native place, Skien. "This idea," Ibsen continued to Count Prozor, "was just what I wanted for bringing about the disappearance of Little Eyolf, in whom the infatuation [Note: The French word used ...
— Little Eyolf • Henrik Ibsen
... S. Agostino in the latter town. Geri also made intarsie for S. Michele, Arezzo. Milanesi says Girolamo della Cecca was of Volterra, and calls Baccio, di Andrea Cellini; he was in Hungary in 1480 with his brother Francesco; they were brothers of Giovanni, who was father of Benvenuto and piper also. The stalls in S. Miniato, Florence, were made in 1466 by Francesco Manciatto and Domenico da Gajuolo; but perhaps the highest point reached by Florentine intarsia is shown by the stalls of S. Maria Novella, made by Baccio ...
— Intarsia and Marquetry • F. Hamilton Jackson
... the plants, offer us, in its different parts, a state of things perfectly similar? In short, what difficulties do not arise in the study and in the determination of species in the genera Lichena, Fucus, Carex, Poa, Piper, Euphorbia, Erica, Hieracium, Solanum, Geranium, ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... see the Rambler with fastidious smile Mark the lone tree, and note the heath-clad isle; But when th' heroick tale of Flora's[786] charms, Deck'd in a kilt, he wields a chieftain's arms: The tuneful piper sounds a martial strain, And Samuel sings, "The King ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... flying after the sea-gulls. In short, I shouldn't like to say what I won't do, I'm so wild at the prospect of a week with you. Of course, the dear old people growl at me for leaving them in the lurch; but they are glad for us to get the blow; indeed, my pater insists on paying the piper, which is handsome of him. I expect I shall get a day in London on my way, either going or returning; and if you can put me up at your diggings for the night, we'll have a jolly evening, and you can show me all ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... ago, in a backwoods town. But look at her feet, and you must laugh! Her shoes were of the finest red broadcloth, and Mrs. Lyman had made them herself out of pieces of her own cloak and some soft leather left in the house by Mr. Piper, the shoemaker. He went from family to family, making shoes; but he could not make all that were needed in town, so this was not the first time Mrs. Lyman had tried her hand at the business. She used a pretty last and real shoemaker's ...
— Little Grandmother • Sophie May
... He was distinguished too both by land and by water; for while he was amongst the most informed of his time, in school hours, in the playing fields, on the water, with the celebrated boatman, my guinea piper at cricket, or in rowing, he was always the foremost. He used to boast, that he should in time be as good a boxer as his father was, though he used to add, that never could be exactly known, as he could not decently ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... Cumires, Hautvillers, Ay, and Mareuil, and the more distant slopes of Ambonnay and Bouzy, while on the other side of the famous Epernay thoroughfare we encounter beyond the establishments of Messrs. Mot and Chandon and Perrier-Jout the ornate monumental faade which the firm of Piper and Co.—of whom Messrs. Kunkelmann and Co. are to-day the successors—raised some years since above their extensive cellars. A little in the rear of the Rue du Commerce is the well-ordered establishment ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... from the foremast of the Nausicaae as the piper on the flag-ship gave the time to the oars. The triple line of blades, pumiced white, splashed with a steady rhythm. The long black hull glided away. The trailing line of consorts swiftly followed. From the ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... was an apple pie. A was an archer who shot at a frog. This is the house that Jack built. Three little kittens lost their mittens. Old Mother Hubbard. Sing a song of sixpence. The Queen of Hearts. I saw a ship a-sailing. Tom he was a piper's son. London Bridge is broken down. Cock Robin and Jenny Wren. ...
— Lists of Stories and Programs for Story Hours • Various
... reges. The kings of the earth stood up and violently raged together; their subjects died. But now the kings of the earth are raging financiers with a shrewd eye to business, and their subjects starve to pay them. We used to be told that the man who paid the piper called the tune. Do the people call the tune of peace or war? Not at all. The ruling classes both call the tune ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... punishment of flaying alive could not be introduced into Persia by Sapor, (Brisson, de Regn. Pers. l. ii. p. 578,) nor could it be copied from the foolish tale of Marsyas, the Phrygian piper, most foolishly quoted as a precedent by Agathias, (l. iv. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... most famous piper of his times, and a choice company of musicians to play with him were hired for the occasion, and, in short, the event was so glorious that its wonders have been sung in ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... strange that is! I thought he was better known than the Duke of Wellington or the travelling piper. Well, I must tell you the story, for it has a moral, too—indeed several morals; but you'll find that out for yourself. Well, it seems that one day the Knight of Kerry was walking along the Strand in London, killing an hour's time, till the house was done ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... imagination." I am, of course, very proud and glad in having had the opportunity of helping to make it known, and the task has been pleasant, although toil-some. Just now, indeed, on the 6th October, I am tired enough, and I think with sympathy of the old Highland piper, who complained that he was "withered with yelping the ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... dining-rooms as she came in. Be they old or young, weak or strong, grave or gay, intelligent or dull, at sight of her the same pagan light of romance springs into their eyes. Mysterious and irresistible as the lure of the Pied Piper is the lure of this child who knows nothing of her ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... who had a lighted bedroom-candle in his hand, descended the spiral staircase; at a turning he thought he saw, 'with the tail of his eye,' a plaid, draping a tall figure of a Highlander, disappear round the corner. Nobody in the castle wore the kilt except the piper, and he had not rooms in the observatory. Merton ran down as fast as he could, but he did not catch another view of the plaid and its wearer, or hear any footsteps. He went to the bottom of the staircase, opened the outer door, and looked forth. Nobody! ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... of the Guards' clubs in gold and scarlet coats, and in spurred boots which reach above their knees, clank through the halls. Scotch lords sit about, and exhibit legs of which they are justly proud. Here, with swinging gait, wanders the queen's piper, a sort of poet-laureate of the bagpipes, arrayed in plaid and carrying upon his arm the soft, enchanting instrument to the music of which, no doubt, the queen herself dances. The music of the orchestra is perfect, and he must be a dull man who does not feel the festivity, the buoyancy ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... them legs." The audience piped them—they were encased in black stockings—and laughed again, whereupon William advanced to the front and, pointing an accusing finger in the direction of the original "piper," shouted, "I'm on to you, Tom Edwards: everybody knows you're so bow-legged you wouldn't dare wear anything but long pants." It took the audience some time to recover its equilibrium, but eventually the play proceeded to the scene where Eliza made the perilous ...
— William Adolphus Turnpike • William Banks
... Fancies and fashions come and go, but stamp collecting flourishes from decade to decade. Princes and peers, merchants and members of Parliament, solicitors and barristers, schoolboys and octogenarians, all follow this postal Pied Piper of Hamelin, ...
— Stamp Collecting as a Pastime • Edward J. Nankivell
... applause (Rowcliffe had joined in it), she took her place between Greatorex and the schoolmaster. The glee-singers, two men and two women, came forward and sang their glees, turning and bowing to each other like mummers. The schoolmaster recited the "Pied Piper of Hamelin." A young lady who had come over from Morfe expressly for that purpose sang the everlasting ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... had you to keep me in countenance. He looked so shocked that he made me feel as if it were you and I, instead of Terry, who were doing the eloping. I'm sure that's what he thought. There'll be gossip. I shall have to pay the piper; but I'm too happy to-night to ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... Nora, and as she spoke, just above the line of shadow a door opened out, and through its portals came a little piper dressed in green and gold. He stepped down, followed by another and another, until they were nine in all, and then the door slung back again. Down through the heather marched the pipers in single file, ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... P.M. sighted Gebel Lardo, bearing S. 30 degrees west. This is the first mountain we have seen, and we are at last near our destination, Gondokoro. I observed to-day a common sand-piper sitting on the head of a hippopotamus; when he disappeared under water the bird skimmed over the surface, hovering near the spot until the animal reappeared, when he ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... drags at every college gate to take college teams down to Cowley. There is the beautiful scenery of the "stripling Thames" to explore; the haunts of the immortal "Scholar Gipsy," and of Shelley, and of Clough's Piper, ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... game for children. A blackboard is needed upon which the verse, "Peter Piper," etc., is illustrated or written so that the words are mixed up and it will be difficult to point out. Some older person will be needed ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... "Oh, Canada." A little high but our hearts were in it. And so the program goes on. Single bands and massed bands with solos from French Horns, Trombones and Cornets, varied delightfully with the Highland Fling by Pipe Major Johnson of the 42nd, and the Sword Dance by Piper Reid of the 43rd followed by an encore, the "Shean Rheubs" which I defy any mere Sassenach to pronounce or to dance, at least as Piper Heid of the twinkling feet danced it that night. For he did it ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... remember, we remember The flourishing of trumps, When Parliament took up our wrongs, And manned the legal pumps. Those noble Acts (they said) would end Obstructions and delay, And ne'er again would litigants The piper ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 30, 1892 • Various
... of romantic materials,—at the realism of his touch and the romanticism of his thought. It is true that many foreign critics consider Poe America's greatest author. An eminent English critic says that Poe has surpassed all the rest of our writers in playing the part of the Pied Piper of Hamelin to other authors. At home, however, there have been repeated attempts to disbar Poe from the court of great writers. Not until 1910 did the board of electors vote him a tablet in the Hall of ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... gout since four this morning, held by the foot fast—else I'd not be writing, but would have gone every inch of the way for you myself in style, in lieu of sending, which is all I can now do, my six-oared boat, streamers flying, and piper playing like mad—for I would not have you be coming like a banished man, but in all glory, to Cornelius O'Shane, commonly called King Corny—but no king to you, ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... the last little quaver had died away, and then said: "Whew! That was purty, anyhow. Where is the piper, I wonder!" He looked about for the musician, but could see no one. He was the only ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... would have to be cleaned from end to end, there was the supper to be cooked, and she did not pause in her work until everything was ready. At five the pig's head was on the table, and the sheep's tongues; the bread was baked; the barrel of porter had come, and she was expecting the piper every minute. As she stood with her arms akimbo looking at the table, thinking of the great evening it would be, she thought how her old friend, Annie Connex, had refused to come to Peter's wedding. Wasn't all the village saying that Kate would not have ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... certainly not," exclaimed Mazarin. "Diavolo! my dear friend, you are going to spoil everything—everything is going on famously. I know the French as well as if I had made them myself. They sing—let them pay the piper. During the Ligue, about which Guitant was speaking just now, the people chanted nothing except the mass, so everything went to destruction. Come, Guitant, come along, and let's see if they keep watch at the Quinze-Vingts as at the ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... HARRIS, and the scene-painter, only know—and here comes on a mighty illigant shepherd with a pipe—to play, not to smoke—and one clever person near me was sure it was Miss EAMES in disguise, but it turned out to be Miss REGINA PINKERT, a piper of whom some present would willingly have paid to hear a little more; but she vanished, probably in search of her flock in the desert,—by the way, an excellent place for golf this desert,—and then in came Mireille and Taven, when ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 27, 1891 • Various
... of that time—Smith and Barry for instance. When the veteran actor Macklin first played Macbeth in 1774, however, he assumed a "Caledonian habit," and although it is said the audience, when they saw "a clumsy old man, who looked more like a Scotch piper than a general and a prince of the blood, stumping down the stage at the head of an army, were generally inclined to laugh," still the attempt at reform won considerable approbation. At that time it was held to be unquestionable that the correct costume of Macbeth should be that ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... salsus (juvenis tum) more vetusto; Wintoniaeque (puer tum) piperatus eram. Si quid inest nostro piperisve salisve libello, Oxoniense sal est, Wintoniense piper." ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.02.23 • Various
... are influenced by a Pied Piper kind of fellow who calls himself a conjurer, and is rather too ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... a good tinker, and worship god Pan, or I might grind scissors as sharp as the noses of bakers. But, as a matter of fact, I'm a piper, not a rat-catcher, you understand, but just a simple singer of sad songs, and a mad ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... pugree! Who is there here that knows not the difference between yonder yellow-skinned coward and Gahagan Khan Guj—I mean Bobbachy Bahawder? I am ready to fight one, two, three, or twenty of them, at broad-sword, small-sword, single-stick, with fists if you please. By the holy piper, fighting is like mate and dthrink to Ga—to Bobbachy, I mane—whoop! come on, you divvle, and I'll bate the skin ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... they call it) in their habits, and similarly the Midland county men of England enter into their Caledonian custom, from the harmless orgies of 'Hagmenae' to the frantic capers of 'Gillie Cullum,' to the skirl of the panting piper." ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... the concert gave way, And for dancing no souls could be riper, So they struck up the 'Devil to Pay,' But Johnny Fig he paid the piper. But the best on't came after the ball, For to set off the whole to perfection, Madam Fig ax't the gentlefolks all, To sup ...
— Deborah Dent and Her Donkey and Madam Fig's Gala - Two Humorous Tales • Unknown
... as he pleases; I don't know how far Mr. Thibaudier has got with you, but Mr. Thibaudier is no example for me. I don't like to pay the piper for ...
— The Countess of Escarbagnas • Moliere
... "By the piper that played before Moses, and ye're right, Dick Doherty," exclaimed another Irishman; "sure, and it isn't the officer at all! Just look at the great black fist of him too, and never call me Phil Shehan, if it ever was made for the handling ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... and the streets were crowded. Blue-jackets from the Fleet, country-folk in to shop, and every kind of military detail thronged the pavements. Fish-hawkers were crying their wares, and there was a tatterdemalion piper making the night hideous at a corner. I took a tortuous route and finally fixed on a modest-looking public-house in a back street. When I inquired for a room I could find no one in authority, but a slatternly girl informed me that there was one ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... sea, and upon thy fat ones like the waves thereof (Jer 50:41,42). Yea, when they begin, they will also make an end, and will leave thee so harbourless and comfortless, that now there will be found for thee no gladness at all, no, not so much as one piper to play thee one jig. The delicates that thy soul lusted after, thou shalt find them no more at all (Rev 18:12-22). 'Babylon the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency, shall be as when ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... nice king of Rome Nero was next morning! By the Lord, if I couldn't swear you'll be down on your knees to an innocent fresh-hearted girl 's worth five hundred of the crew you're for partnering now while you've a penny for the piper.' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... devilry and dash, We must put our hands in pockets deep and shovel out the cash. When you want to hire a shooting you will gladly pay a "pony," Yet when asked to give it to the hounds you're apt to say you're "stony." Pay the piper, and the sport you love so well will flourish yet, Flourish in the dim hereafter; and its sun will never set. Help the noble cause of freedom; rich and poor together blend Hands and hearts for ever working for a great ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... Our street musicians are growing worse and worse. There is a piper who infests the street in which I live, and sets my nerves on edge with his horrible droning. What am I to do ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 34, November 19, 1870 • Various
... for the night under the lee of reef e of King's chart—one of the most extensive we had hitherto seen, being fourteen miles in length—on September 26th, the ship anchored under the largest of the Piper Islets. ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... been so long in possession. They almost blessed me for saying so. There, however, can be very little doubt that the title and estate, more than a million acres, belong to the claimant by strict law. Old Fraser's brother was called Black John of the Tasser. The man whom he killed was a piper who sang an insulting song to him at a wedding. I have heard the words and have translated them; he was dressed very ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... workman or artist himself, as, for instance, in perfumes and purple dyes, we are taken with the things themselves well enough, but do not think dyers and perfumers otherwise than low and sordid people. It was not said amiss by Antisthenes, when people told him that one Ismenias was an excellent piper, "It may be so," said he, "but he is but a wretched human being, otherwise he would not have been an excellent piper." And king Philip, to the same purpose, told his son Alexander, who once at a merry-meeting played a piece of music charmingly and skillfully, "Are you not ashamed, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... of the country weddings of the spring a piper in full Scotch costume discoursed most eloquent music on the lawn during the wedding ceremony. This was a compliment to the groom, who is a captain in a ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... the subsidence of the ground, fresh depositions of sand having taken place on the layers, on which the birds walked after the subsidence. They must have been of various sizes,—some no larger than a small sand-piper, while others, judging from their footprints, which measure no less than nineteen inches, must have been twice the size of the modern African ostrich. The distances between the smaller measure only about ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... keeper was in excellent spirits this morning. Long before he drew near, Lavender could hear, in the stillness of the morning, that he was telling stories about John the Piper, and of his adventures in such distant parts as Portree and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... the brigade improved very much. Fortunately several of the best officers of the old command, who had escaped capture, were with it at the time that I took command, Captains Cantrill, Lea and Messick, and Lieutenants Welsh, Cunningham, Hunt, Hawkins, Hopkins, Skillman, Roody, Piper, Moore, Lucas, Skinner, Crump and several others equally as gallant and good, and there were some excellent officers who had joined the command just after General Morgan's return from prison. The staff ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... Here and there were heaps of bones, relics of the former day's entertainment, which the dogs, seizing their opportunity, had picked. Three or four of the Bacchanalians lay fast asleep upon chairs—one or two others on the floor, among whom a piper lay on his back, apparently dead, with a table-cloth spread over him, and surrounded by four or five candles, burnt to the sockets; his chanter and bags were laid scientifically across his body, his mouth was wide open, and his nose made ample amends for the silence of his drone. ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... Bronte had been sitting quiet and constrained till they began "The Bonnie House of Airlie," but the effect of that and "Carlisle Yetts," which followed, was as irresistible as the playing of the Piper of Hamelin. The beautiful clear light came into her eyes; her lips quivered with emotion; she forgot herself, rose, and crossed the room to the piano, where she asked eagerly for song after song. The sisters begged her to come and see ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... me?" We forget that there are five chords in the great scale of life—sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch and—few of us ever master the chords well enough to get the full symphony of life, but are something like little pig-tailed girls playing Peter Piper with one finger while all the music of the universe is in the Great Instrument, and all to be had for ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... reasonable; but then also, which is intolerable, every Arminian. Is philosophy able to account for this morbid affection, and particularly when it takes the restricted form (as sometimes it does, in the bagpipe case) of seeking furiously to kick the piper, instead of paying him? In this case, my brother was urgent with me to mount en croupe behind himself. But weak as I usually was, this proposal I resisted as an immediate suggestion of the fiend; for I had heard, and have since known proofs of it, that a horse, when he is ingeniously ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... was intense. They could prepare a drink, deadly intoxicating in its nature, from a mountain plant called the awa (Piper methysticum). A bowl of this disgusting liquid was always prepared and served out just as a party of chiefs were sitting down to their meals. It would sometimes send the victim into a slumber from which he never awoke. The confirmed awa drinker could be immediately ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... Hamlin followed the Pied Piper to the sea, so the black browed children of Eze followed the Christmas visitors from crooked street to crooked street, up to the castle ruins and back again. They did not shout as they took their gifts; but still the murmur ran ...
— Rosemary - A Christmas story • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the hunters returned to Fort Gibraltar (Winnipeg), on Red River, with store enough of pemmican for all the fur posts of the Nor'westers, many a wild happy winter night was passed dancing mad Indian jigs to the piping of the Highland piper and the crazy scraping of some Frenchman's fiddle; how when morning came, in a gray dawn of smoking frost mist, a long line of the colonists could be seen winding along the ice of Red River home to ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... Andy," said he, "and these two gallant animals will never recover it after the severe day's hunting they've had. Poor Fiddler and Piper," he exclaimed, "this has proved a melancholy day to you both. What is to be done, Andy? I am scarcely able to stand, and feel as if my strength had utterly ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... to the room, and walked down again to the door, where he stands like a tower, only condescending to see the boys at his base occasionally; but whenever he does see them, they quail and fall back. Mrs. Perkins, who has not been for some weeks on speaking terms with Mrs. Piper in consequence for an unpleasantness originating in young Perkins' having "fetched" young Piper "a crack," renews her friendly intercourse on this auspicious occasion. The potboy at the corner, who is a ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... "I'm called the Pied Piper," he began. "And pray what might you be willing to pay me, if I rid you of every single ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... The largeness of his nose, tilted a little to one side, gave sculptural strength to his face. His great mouth with its fleshy underlip, supplemented the nose. Both were material for grotesque caricature. He looked like an educated gawk, a rural genius, a pied piper of motley followers. He was a sad clown, a Socratic wag, a countryman dressed up for a state occasion. But he was not a poor man defending the cause of the poor. There was nothing of the dreamer in his make-up, the eccentric idealist. ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... shrieked Crevel, positively bounding with excitement. "Good Heavens! by the Holy Piper! By all the joys in Paradise!—The rascal!—I beg your pardon, Cousin, I am going crazy!—I think I would give a hundred ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... played at bragg the first part of the even. After ten we went to supper, on four broiled chicken, four boiled ducks, minced veal, cold roast goose, chicken pastry, and ham. Our company, Mr. and Mrs. Porter, Mr. and Mrs. Coates, Mrs. Atkins, Mrs. Hicks, Mr. Piper and wife, Joseph Fuller and wife, Tho. Fuller and wife, Dame Durrant, myself and wife, and Mr. French's family. After supper our behaviour was far from that of serious, harmless mirth; it was downright obstreperious, ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... day before the match, which was to be a one-day game, Honion might have been seen crossing the field from the pavilion, where a council of war had just concluded. He was approaching the school-buildings, and, like the Pied Piper, had an enormous crowd of small boys at his back. In his hand was the paper which bore the ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... of Piper nigrum, "whose drupes form the black Pepper of the shops when dried with the skin upon them, and white Pepper when that flesh is removed by washing."—LINDLEY. It is, like all the pepperworts, a native of the Tropics, but was well known both to the Greeks and Romans. By the Greeks it was probably ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... backwards and forwards with their many loads of ladies and finery. There were some postchaises, and some 'flys,' but after mature deliberation Miss Browning had decided to keep to the more comfortable custom of the sedan-chair; 'which,' as she said to Miss Piper, one of her visitors, 'came into the parlour, and got full of the warm air, and nipped you up, and carried you tight and cosy into another warm room, where you could walk out without having to show your legs by going up steps, or down steps.' Of course only one could go at a time; ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... of the Plains of Abraham we had but one Piper, and because he was not provided with Arms and the usual other means of defence, like the rest of the men, he was made to keep aloof for safety:—When our line advanced to the charge, General Townshend observing that the Piper was missing, and knowing well the value ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... Hameln? (better known to us as "Hamelin"), but saw no signs of the Pied Piper. Now there was a man who was not brought into the world for nothing, but used his genius to the destruction of small Huns! The higher the train climbed into the Hartz Mountains the deeper became the snow. From the dimly-lighted carriages we could sometimes see ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... without ever asking a dollar of any person which they had not earned. But these are exceptional cases. There are horse-tamers, born so,—as we all know; there are woman-tamers, who bewitch the sex as the pied piper bedeviled the children of Hamelin; and there are world-tamers, who can make any community, even a Yankee one, get down and let them jump on its back as easily as Mr. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... was weary physically, and intended to retire early. AEmilia, who felt sorry enough for the plight of her rather distant cousin, had tried to console him and divert him with guitar[84] music, and had called in an itinerant piper,[85] but these well-meant efforts at amusement had been dreary failures. Drusus had just bidden his body-servants undress him, when he was informed that Agias had come from the Lentulan villa, and wished ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... [radiant with hope.] — I would surely, and I'd give you the wedding-ring I have, and the loan of a new suit, the way you'd have him decent on the wedding-day. I'd give you two kids for your dinner, and a gallon of poteen, and I'd call the piper on the long car to your wedding from Crossmolina or from ...
— The Playboy of the Western World • J. M. Synge
... found in some shape in many countries and languages, of the boy with the fiddle who compels king, cook, peasant, clown, and all that kind of people, to follow him through the land; and in the myth of the Pied Piper of Hamelin we discern abundant reason to think the instinct of rhythm an attribute of rats. Soldiers march so much livelier with music than without that it has been found a tolerably good substitute for the hope of plunder. When the foot-falls are audible, as on the deck of a steamer, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... boarding school. I met him hobbling from West Inch the first time after she came, with pink in his cheeks and a shine in his eye that took ten years from him. He was cocking up his grey moustaches at either end and curling them into his eyes, and strutting out with his sound leg as proud as a piper. What she had said to him the Lord knows, but it was like old wine ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... this cave I cannot tell with any tolerable exactness; but it seemed to be very lofty, and to be a pretty regular arch. We penetrated, by candlelight, a great way; by our measurement, no less than four hundred and eighty-five feet. Tradition says, that a piper and twelve men once advanced into this cave, nobody can tell how far; and never returned. At the distance to which we proceeded the air was quite pure; for the candle burned freely, without the least appearance of the flame growing globular; but as we had ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... replied Saunderson, coming to the defense of the absent. "You were caught dancing; he simply made you pay the piper." ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... "Pether, go over, abouchal, to Andy Bradagh's for Larry Cassidy the piper—fly like a swallow, Pether, an' don't come without him. Mave, achora, all's right. Susy, you darlin', dhry your eyes, avourneen, all's right. Nabors, friends—fill, fill—I say all's right still. My son's not disgraced, nor he won't be disgraced whilst I have a house over my head, or a beast ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... and curious, The mirth and fun grew fast and furious: The piper loud and louder blew, The dancers quick and quicker flew; They reeled, they set, they crossed, they cleekit, Till ilka carlin swat and reekit, And coost her duddies to the wark, And linket at it in ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... more courage than I, To accost a young maid with a drop in her eye; I'd as soon catch a snake or a viper: She, while wiping her tears, gives Apollo some wipes; And when a young lady has set up her pipes, Her lover will soon pay the piper. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 375, June 13, 1829 • Various
... "By the piper, but it's true, though," put in Paddy O'Grady, who had also been deprived of the larger portion ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... know little about it. Of the Phoenicians, their neighbours, we have some illustrations of their dance, which was apparently of a serious nature, judging by the examples which we possess, such as that (fig. 5) from Cyprus representing three figures in hooded cowls dancing around a piper. It is a dance around a centre, as is also (fig. 6) that from Idalium in Cyprus. The latter is engraved around a bronze bowl and is evidently a planet and sun dance before a goddess, in a temple; the sun being the central object around which they dance, accompanied ...
— The Dance (by An Antiquary) - Historic Illustrations of Dancing from 3300 B.C. to 1911 A.D. • Anonymous
... vicar was strong as to the hang-the-cost doctrine, and this he said knowing that cousin would see his ten-pound note no more for ever. Perhaps the reader will comprehend why cousin was passing sore; he paid the piper, and the vicar evidently meant to dance to the tune. In plain phrase, he undertook, if cousin would drill them sufficiently into the mysteries of fly fishing, to lead them into action in earnest during the approaching Mayfly time. Wherefore cousin fitted them ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... securities she has simply transferred that much tangible wealth to this state for us to tax. If the paper evidence that this property is located here be taxed in Massachusetts, Texas must pay the piper. Let it never be forgotten that a tax is but a toll and can only be taken of something tangible. You cannot get blood out of a ghost or wealth out of a paper evidence of property. The blood must come from real veins and the tax must ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... telling a piper lad that he was a fit successor of the MacCruimins, the hereditary pipers of the Macleods—the young stripling blushed hot; but he did not forget his professional dignity for all that. And he was so proud of his good English that ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... paper in the Survey for November 20, 1909, entitled "Making the Deserter Pay the Piper," Mr. William H. Baldwin discusses in detail how this plan was made to work successfully in the ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord
... water. The little maid trots barefoot and the urchin goes a-swimming in the elm-hole by the corner of the meadow. Still the tender grass grows at the roots of the dead crop, and the little purple flowers dimple naked in the brown pasture. Still that Pied Piper of Hamelin, the everlasting Pan, flutes in the deep hollows, squatted down in the broom-sedge. And still the world is a land of unending summer, of unfading flowers, of undying youthfulness. Only for an hour or ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... had called Meg and Peg, and Clotilda she called Kilmanskeg, and Augustus she called Gustibus, and Charles Edward Stuart was nothing but Peter Piper. So that was the end ...
— Racketty-Packetty House • Frances H. Burnett
... by the translator. No facts or comments have been left out that bear directly on the main subject of the book, the omissions are wholly of matters which might be regarded as superfluous for the understanding of the case of Mrs Piper. Occasionally paragraphs have been condensed, a tendency to vague theorising has been checked throughout, and certain irrelevant matter has been altogether omitted. Such omissions are confined, indeed, to single ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage
... transferred his services without afterthought on the occasion of the marriage. There was some tale of an unlucky creature, a sea-kelpie, that dwelt and did business in some fearful manner of his own among the boiling breakers of the Roost. A mermaid had once met a piper on Sandag beach, and there sang to him a long, bright midsummer's night, so that in the morning he was found stricken crazy, and from thenceforward, till the day he died, said only one form of words; what they were in the original Gaelic I cannot tell, but they were thus translated: 'Ah, ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and tranquil life, what is the use of it? But it does secure this, the man replies, and for this reason I am vexed that I am deprived of it.—And what is this tranquil and happy life, which any man can impede, I do not say Caesar or Caesar's friend, but a crow, a piper, a fever, and thirty thousand other things? But a tranquil and happy life contains nothing so sure as continuity and freedom from obstacle. Now I am called to do something: I will go then with the ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus
... this fashion, he would have to admit that he had read 'The Pied Piper of Hamelin', and not a syllable more, and Miss Beezley would look at him for a moment and sigh softly. The Babe's subsequent share in the conversation, provided the Dragon made no further onslaught, was ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... which I gathered from women and from the few men whom I saw in Kings Port. This town seemed to me almost as empty of men as if the Pied Piper had passed through here and lured them magically away to some distant country. It was on the happy day that saw Miss Eliza La Heu again providing me with sandwiches and chocolate that my knowledge of the wedding and the bride and groom began really ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... place to an archaistic imperialism, the first-fruits of which were the repair and building of temples in the great Pharaonic style. On these we see the Ptolemies masquerading as Pharaohs, and the climax of absurdity is reached when Ptolemy Auletes (the Piper) is seen striking down Asiatic enemies in the manner of Amen-hetep or Ramses! This scene is directly copied from a Ramesside temple, and we find imitations of reliefs of Ramses II so slavish that the name of the earlier king is actually copied, as well as the relief, and appears ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... after revisiting Australia, Tasma was married to M. Auguste Couvreur, a distinguished Belgian politician and journalist (he has since died), and four years later began her career as a novelist by the publication at London of Uncle Piper of Piper's Hill, which proved to be one of the most notable books ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... streaming in air, Proud lord and retainer, the wealthy and poor, Thronged forth in their plaids to the fair; Steeds, pricked by their riders, loud clattering made, And, cheered by his clansmen, the bag-piper played. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... the country. The music and the tale repaid their lodging, and they were usually gratified with a donation of seed corn[63]. This order of minstrels is alluded to in the comic song of Maggy Lauder, who thus addresses a piper— ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... that happened to suit his fancy, and my lady was never the wiser; and if I felt like going to church, I went, and if I didn't, I didn't. But when the family went to their seat in Scotland, they did not take their butler with them, and the piper was sent round on Sunday morning to find out about the servants going to church. And when he came to me, I said the same thing I had always said, and do you know that pink-headed Scotchman put it down in the book and carried it to my lady. ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... one day and saw spread below it the immense sea of Irish common speech, with its colour, its laughter, and its music. It is a sort of second birth which many Irish men and women of the last generation or so have experienced. The beggar on the road, the piper at the door, the old people in the workhouse, are henceforth accepted as a sort of ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... leaving everything to the landlords and the lawyers. Men of our sort have got to make ourselves felt. We want a business government. Of course—one pays. So long as I get a voice in calling the tune I don't mind paying the piper a bit. There's going to be a lot of interference with trade. All this social legislation. And there's what you were saying the other ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... hold on! Don't get mad. Keep yer shirt on," interposed McGowan, as a peacemaker. "Myles, you and Dinny Dempsey, the blind piper, used to be good friends. Now, suppose we get Dinny. How ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... same cautious key, "by the piper, this bangs Banagher fairly! It's either the Frinch army that's in it, come to take the town iv Chapelizod by surprise, an' makin' no noise for feard iv wakenin' the inhabitants; or else it's—it's—what it's—somethin' else. ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... instant. Some people would have to be tricked in a complicated way. Thought transfer—audible to the person affected alone, or even inaudible but perceptible like a thought—accounts for the whole of Mrs. Piper's operations; she might have accomplices who would never be seen speaking to her, and who would dictate actions, say, to one of the Pelham or Howard family. These dictated actions, or inchoate plans, would then be reported by Mrs. Piper writing as George Pelham. What Mrs. Piper ...
— Inferences from Haunted Houses and Haunted Men • John Harris
... well as buried history in Chipewyan. A stroll from one end of its lacustrine street to the other is lush with interest. We call upon Colin Fraser, whose father was piper to Sir George Simpson. Colin treats us to a skirl of the very pipes which announced the approach of Simpson whenever that little Northern autocrat, during his triumphal progress through a bailiwick as big as Europe, made his way into a ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... sad and faint-hearted, Piper the gold of the world cannot pay, Up from the limbo of things long departed Memories you ...
— The Miracle and Other Poems • Virna Sheard
... Whittingen, poured into the room. With the aid of a little cold water, Mary speedily recovered, and, in reply to the anxious inquiries of her sympathetic rescuers as to what had happened, indignantly demanded why such a horrible looking creature as "that" piper had been allowed not merely to enter the house but to come up to her room, and half frighten her to death. "I had just got my album," she added, "when, feeling some one was in the room, I turned round—and there (she indicated a spot on the carpet) was the piper, ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... now in her mind but that Larkin was paying the piper for some unsavory fling of which she had heard nothing. She did not for a moment believe that the affair could be as serious as Stelton wished her to imagine; but she was sorely troubled, nevertheless, for she had always cared for Larkin in a happy, ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... to have a peep at them himself. And when he saw the milken pond, and all the animals and birds and fishes gathered round, while Little Anklebone played ever so sweetly on his shepherd's pipe, he said, 'I must have the tiny piper, if ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... the spirits about heaven and angels. I was not interested in their religious notions. I kept to this one line—I wanted to see a particle of matter move from A to B without a known push or pull. I paid very little attention to 'trance-mediums' like Mrs. Piper; and although I saw a great deal of what is called 'mind-reading' and 'thought-transference,' I did not permit the cart to get before the horse. 'Independent slate-writing' interested me, for the reason that I could put the clamps on ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... said Alan, still addressing Robin, from whom indeed he had not so much as shifted his eyes, nor yet Robin from him, "why, sir," says Alan, "I think I will have heard some sough* of the sort. Have ye music, as folk say? Are ye a bit of a piper?" ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... bequeathed both Egypt and Cyprus to Rome; but the Senate had delayed to enter on their bequest, preferring to share the fines which Ptolemy's natural heirs were required to pay for being spared. One of these heirs, Ptolemy Auletes, or "the Piper," father of the famous Cleopatra, was now reigning in Egypt, and was on the point of being expelled by his subjects. He had been driven to extortion to raise a subsidy for the senators, and he had made himself universally abhorred. Ptolemy ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... a run, head downwards, while poor Isabella Lomax was sweeping her kitchen. During the next few days he was heard of, rumour said, now here, now there, but one might as well have attempted to catch and hold the Pied Piper. ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "Mis' Fernald, Peter Piper's got back in this part o' the house, somehow, and I can't lay hands on him. Beats all how cute that cat is. Seem's if he knows when I'm goin' to put him out in the wood-shed. I don't think likely he'll do no harm, but I thought I'd tell you, so 'f ...
— On Christmas Day in the Morning • Grace S. Richmond
... guests, or players, assemble. A few feats may be suggested, such as the rabbit hop, leap frog, picking up a stick with the teeth while in a kneeling position, etc., or the player may be required to repeat "Peter Piper," or any ridiculous verses quickly. If he does not succeed in doing what is required of him, he must—if he is a boy—turn a somersault. If the player is a girl, she pays a forfeit or stands with her face ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger |
