"Falsetto" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... up on the stone, and stood there, her scanty and patched garments fluttering in the bitter breeze, as, with face sharpened with want, and eyes fierce with misery, she began, in a querulous, 'scornful falsetto: ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... so herself. She said," he went on, screwing up his nose and speaking in a falsetto to express the intensity of his scorn—"she said she was afraid ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... Sky always weeps at the loss of the Sun; and no wonder. I tell you again, believe it or not as you please, I am one of the tears it shed to-night. You need not, however, grieve for me. I shall be all right" (the tiny voice rising to a falsetto) "when the Sun appears again. Indeed, I venture to say, you will hardly know me then. That I am ...
— The Story of a Dewdrop • J. R. Macduff
... been looking at him eagerly, but my interest faded away now. It was going to be the old confusing of my identity with Nikola's. And yet I seemed to know the little beggar's falsetto; it was a voice one ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... appeal to the love of humor was more effective than the other could have been. A company of young men in masks with a piano in their boat, which one played while another led the singing in an amazing falsetto, were peculiarly successful in collecting their reward, and were all the more amusingly eager because they were, as our English friends ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... of falsetto growl from Jock's corner, where he was blushing in the firelight. "It's because you were once a fellow yourself, and know all ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... consisted in making a healthy man ride horseback constantly, until an irritable weakness of the reproductive organs ensued, and a paralytic impotence followed. The exhausted testes would then atrophy, and the voice ring falsetto, muscular tone and energy diminish, inclinations and habits become feminine. The Mujerado lost his position in society as a man, assumed female clothing, manners and customs, and to all intents and purposes was treated as ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... intensity of his thought and expression. Disdaining all forms of rhetoric, he poured forth a torrent of ideas, clothing them in the first words that came to his facile tongue, enforcing them by blows of the fist or the most violent gestures, and yet, again, modulating the roar of passion to the falsetto of satire or the whisper of emotion. His short, thick-set frame, vibrating with strength, doubled the force of all his utterances. Nor did they lack the glamour of poetry and romance that might be expected from his Italian ancestry. He came of a Genoese stock that ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... Here, in the strong thorough-draught, Her Majesty received us in a simple gown of print, and with no mark of royalty but the exquisite finish of her tattooed mittens, the elaboration of her manners, and the gentle falsetto in which all the highly refined among Marquesan ladies (and Vaekehu above all others) delight to sing their language. An adopted daughter interpreted, while we gave the news, and rehearsed by name our friends of Anaho. As we talked, we could see, through ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... may not Shakespeare's idea have been so to order things that the full strength of the man should not appear in the play, as it did not in fact, till after his fall? This view will both explain and justify the strange disguise—a sort of falsetto greatness—under which Caesar ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... sopranists, because the aim of this music was mere enjoyment of the senses, without any regard for genuine depth of feeling—as is also shown by the fact that the voice of young manhood, the tenor voice, was hardly used at all at this period, and later only in a sopranistic way, as falsetto. Now, the spirit of modern music, under the undisputed leadership of German genius, especially Beethoven, has succeeded in first rising to the true dignity of art, by bringing within the sphere of its incomparable expressiveness, not only what is agreeable ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... yesterday that the resolution meant initiation of money grants. When this announcement was made I heard a shout from the direction of my honourable friend, Mr. Partelow, in a tenor voice, and an honourable member in the rear [Mr. Barberie] joining in a sort of falsetto accompaniment. I think my honourable friend [Mr. Hazen] is much to blame for having accused his honourable colleague [Mr. Woodward] with writing an article in a city paper. What, suppose he did write it, do not some ...
— Wilmot and Tilley • James Hannay
... has a rigid throat, and the longer he sings the more rigid it becomes. By the time he decides to go to a teacher his voice is in such a condition that he must take his upper tones with a thick, throaty quality or with a light falsetto. Among female voices I have seen many that could sing nothing but a full tone in the upper register, and that only with ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger
... more like betting or training people, though." She put her hand on his arm warningly, as a high-pitched falsetto penetrated the drone of their half-whispered words, saying, "I tell you Dick knows all about ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... swordplay are highly interesting. The book was born, as all good books, because its mother could not help it. Behind every page and between the lines you see the fevered toss of human emotion and hot ambition—these women were rivals. There were digs and scratches, bandied epithets in falsetto, and sounds like a piccolo played by a man in distress, before all this; and these are not explained, so you have to fill them in with your imagination. But the Bernhardt is the bigger woman of the two. She goes her splendid pace alone, and all the other woman can do is to bombard ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... himself sing, but only starts each song. The women never sing at these gatherings, although on other occasions, when they get together by themselves, they sing very sweetly. It is quite common to hear a primitive kind of part singing, some piping in a curious falsetto, others droning a ...
— Navaho Houses, pages 469-518 • Cosmos Mindeleff
... which everybody knows, but almost everywhere, it is triumphant: and that English literature would be seriously impoverished without it. Certainly never was there a style which more fully justified the definition given by Buffon, in Sterne's own time, of style as "the very man." Falsetto, "faking," vamping, shoddy—all manner of evil terms may be heaped upon it without the possibility of completely clearing it from them. To some eyes it underlies them most when it is most ambitious, as in the Le Fevre story and the diatribe against critics. It leaves the ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... battle of the recoverers of our great seventeenth century writers against the devotees of "correctness," and that in the very same context he makes the unpardonable assertion that Gibbon's manner is "the worst of all," and that Tacitus "writes in falsetto as compared to Tully." This is to "fight a prize" in the old phrase, not to judge from the catholic and universal standpoint of impartial criticism; and in order to reduce Coleridge's assertions to that standard ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... falsetto voice) Yes ma'am! Dat's de way to answer swell folks like you. Furthermore, less we prove which one [Note: corrected missing space] of us love you de best right now. (To Jim) Jim, how much time owuld you do on de chain-gang ...
— De Turkey and De Law - A Comedy in Three Acts • Zora Neale Hurston
... were still beginners—but likewise treated everything so derisively and possessed a heart so full of tricks and surprises that there was no dependence to be placed upon him. The eternal smile hovering around his temples and thick lips, and the mocking falsetto voice, impaired the good impression that might otherwise have been made by his nobly cut face and a pair of large hands, from which New Year's presents, benefit performances, and gratuities were continually falling. Wherefore the birds of passage proclaimed the man, this human mountain-ash ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... all about Heaven, and Dante conducts us through Hell, but it was left for Whitman to show us Earth. His voice never goes so high that it breaks into an impotent falsetto, neither does it growl and snarl at things it does not understand and not understanding does not like. He was so great that he had no envy, and his insight was so sure that he had no prejudice. He never boasted ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... too!" cried a man, with a falsetto voice, moving into the circle; "Leonardo himself might have ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... hands with his sister's daughter, took her satchel, and asked how he could serve her. The girl replied in a thin falsetto voice, which she realized immediately didn't go with the scowl so well as a gruff tone would have done, that she had only twenty-five minutes to get the train for New York and must say good-by at once and take a cab for the ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... eyes, and, with characteristic pertinacity, took up the sentence just where she had left off. She had carefully kept her place throughout the period of unconsciousness. But now she spoke, not with a gasp, but in that shrill, unnatural falsetto so characteristic of hysteria; that voice—half yell—that makes every nerve of the listener jangle with the discord. "Think, oh-h-h Samuel! why won't you think what a wife I've been to you? Here I've drudged and scrubbed and scrubbed and ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... downwards by mistake, whereat it began to scream vociferously. This scream was accomplished by Davie Summers creeping below the stage and putting his mouth to a hole in the flooring close to which the baby's head lay. Davie's falsetto was uncommonly like to a child's voice, and the effect was quite startling. Of course Whackinta tried to soothe it, and failing in this she whipped it, which caused it to yell with tenfold violence. Thereafter losing all patience, she covered its face ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... laugh and wax merry at my expense! How they would draw pictures of me in the book covers with long curls and petticoats! How they would address me as "Jemima," and talk to one another about me in a high falsetto voice! How they would fall into hysterics when they met me, and weep copiously, and ask me to lend them hairpins and parasols! I knew what it would be like only too well, and I quaked as ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... spiced wines and other beverages peculiar to the season introduced, than Master Simon was called on for a good old Christmas song. He bethought himself for a moment, and then, with a sparkle of the eye, and a voice that was by no means bad, excepting that it ran occasionally into a falsetto, like the notes of a split reed, he quavered forth a quaint ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... heartily got up; and thoroughly congregational. In some places of worship it is considered somewhat vulgar for members of the congregation to give specimens of their vocalisation; and you can only find in out- of-the-way side and back pews odd persons warbling a mild falsetto, or piping an eccentric tenor, or doing a heavy bass on their own responsibility; but at Lune-street Chapel the general members of the congregation go into the work with a distinct determination to either sing or make a righteous noise worthy of the occasion. They are neither afraid nor ashamed ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... go. You will find in that way very soon that your voice will increase in compass and power, and you will do better than by a habit of straining the voice beyond its natural capacity. Be careful to avoid falsetto. Shun imitating the tricks of speech of other orators, even of famous and successful orators. These may do for them, but not for you. You will do no better in attempting to imitate the tricks of speech of other men in public ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... as she rebuked her father. Then Mrs. Jones had joined them, and the battle had raged still more furiously. The voice of the old man, too, was heard from time to time. When roused by suffering to anger he would forget to speak in his usual falsetto treble, and break out in a few natural words of rough impassioned wrath. At about ten, Mr. Brown came down into Robinson's room, and, seating himself on a low chair, remained there for awhile without moving, and almost without speaking. "Is she gone, George?" he asked ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... you, Mrs. Green?" he said in a high falsetto, meant to represent the feminine voice. "And how's the darling baby? Such a duck! I'm dying to see him again! Oh, Delia, darling! There you are! So glad you could come! What a perfect darling of ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... who is taking lessons from a comic actor in voice-production not to carry his precepts so far as to imitate the female falsetto, the senile tremolo, the obsequiousness of the slave, the stuttering accents of intoxication or the intonations ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... conceived that Mlle. Cadet was the most intelligent. She was a French country girl, very jovial, blond, with a turned-up nose, and on the whole insignificant looking. When she spoke, her voice had certain falsetto inflexions that were ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... F. J. Bowring, himself no friend of Borrow's for very obvious reasons, has described this artificial intonation as something between a beggar's whine and the high-pitched voice of a gypsy—in sort, a falsetto. He tells how, on one occasion, when in conversation with Borrow, he happened to mention to him something of particular interest concerning the gypsies, Borrow became immensely interested, immediately dropped the falsetto ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... basket containing beer and provisions; a tall man with a grayish beard threw branches on the fire, which was enveloped in thick, whitish smoke. The damp branches, falling on the fire, crackled and rustled plaintively, and the accordion teasingly played a lively tune, while the falsetto of the singer reinforced and completed its ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... shirt and low-necked shoes. This curled darling of the Bonegulch aristocrat-worshippers passed through Deadhorse yesterday, clean bust. Those who remember how the four-fingered editor of the Bonegulch "Palladium" pricked up his ears and lifted up his falsetto crow when this lovely specimen of the British snob first honored him by striking him for a $ will appreciate the point of ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... fortune in it for you, your reputation stands or falls on your decision! This is a public charge! The people rely upon you! If you won't, for some reason of your own, come to the rescue now, when you are publicly called upon, you'll be a ruined man!" The voice of the Boss ascended in a shrill falsetto ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... with kid gloves and a top-hat entered the shop. It was growing dark, and he had peered carefully about before entering. He hurried up to Jason Philip, and said in a cracked falsetto: "How about the new publications? Anything very fine?" He rubbed his hands, and stared stupidly from under his thin, reddish lids. It was Count Schlemm-Nottheim, a cousin of the Baron von Auffenberg, the ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... girl into the groping arms of her father and stood for a few moments reflecting on their desperate plight. He was not hopeful. In his heart he agreed with the convictions which his mates were expressing in childish falsetto. But being a young sailor who found his head above water, he resolved to keep on battling in that emergency; the adage of the coastwise mariner is: "Don't die till Davy Jones sets his final pinch on ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... indecision. It was not of him that Margery got her firm round chin, or her steadfast eyes that knew not how to quail, nor aught of anything she owed a father save only her paternity, you'd say. And when he spoke the thin falsetto voice matched the weak chin to ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... epiglottis attended with a species of double voice possess great interest. French described a man of thirty, by occupation a singer and contortionist, who became possessed of an extra voice when he was sixteen. In high and falsetto tones he could run the scale from A to F in an upper and lower range. The compass of the low voice was so small that he could not reach the high notes of any song with it, and in singing he only used it to break in on the falsetto and produce a ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... to the dancing-place proper. Now and then the dancers give vent to what is supposed to be an imitation of the hikuli's talk, which reminded me of the crowing of a cock. Beating their mouths quickly three times with the hollow of their hands, they shout in a shrill, falsetto voice, "Hikuli vava!" which ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... have clambered aboard and swung the long boat to its davits. Presently the attention of every man was drawn from his dreaming or his gossiping to the northern bank of the river. There, screaming at them in a cracked falsetto and with skinny arms outstretched, stood a strange apparition of ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... with halfpenny buttonholes of gelsomina, each neatly folded up in a vine-leaf to keep the scent in—three independent piano-organs and a brass band in the middle distance—an enthusiastic blind singer, a survival of Demodocus in the Odyssey, with a falsetto voice and no bridge to his nose keeping a group of listeners spellbound in the foreground with their favourite ballad, illustrated by a large sheet of oil paintings in eight tableaux, about the man who murdered his wife and mother with one bloody knife—there it is lying ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... A young soldier astride one of the leaders swore and fumed in his saddle, and furiously jerked at the bridle. An officer screamed out an order so violently that his voice broke and ended the sentence in a falsetto shriek. ...
— The Little Regiment - And Other Episodes of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... bridge, and there you are! Has the engine been oiled, Hans? Right away, then, off we go; hand me my best whip!" He imitated the peasants' manner of speech. "Be careful about the inns, Dad!" he added in a shrill falsetto. There were peals of laughter, that had an evil sound in ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... lady who did not dress to please, or one who seemed pleased with her dress. And not only young ladies, but old ladies, and old gentlemen, and everybody, ought to make their dress a concord and not a discord. But Saratoga is pitched on a perpetual falsetto, and stuns you. One becomes sated with an interminable piece de resistance of full dress. At the sea-side you bathe; at the mountains you put on stout boots and coarse frocks and go a-fishing; but Saratoga never "lets up,"—if ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... for reflection, Mrs. Barraclough removed her veiled motor bonnet and put it on the couch. Then she turned and descended upon Dirk with outstretched hands and a high pitched falsetto ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... steep slope was extremely strange from below. The whole scene was so remarkable, that it required some effort to realise the fact that I was not in a dream. Christian stood at the top invisible, jodeling in a most unearthly manner, and developing an astonishing falsetto power, only interrupting his performance to assure me that he was not coming down again; so I was obliged to measure the breadth of the fall by myself. I chose a part where the ice was not very steep, and where occasional points of rock would save some of the labour ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... your food is to your taste, Doctor David," he said, in a high falsetto which set the nurse giggling in the hall. "I may not be much of a ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... threats which Jethro had made she did not despise. He was a barbarian. He would kill what he loved; he would have his way with what he loved, whether or not it was the way of law or custom or right. Outside, the wedding song still made musical the night. Women's voices, shrill, and with falsetto notes, made the trees ring with it; low, bass voices gave it a kind of solemnity. The view which the encampment took of her captivity was clear. Where was the woman that brought her to the tent—whose tent it was? She seemed kind. Though her face had a hard look, surely she ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... and truly fatherly affection, and it is in writing to her and of her that we see him at his best; or rather one might say it is almost only then that we can distinguish the true notes of the heart through that habitual falsetto of sentimentalism which distinguishes most of Sterne's communications with the other sex. There was no subsequent issue of the marriage, and, from one of the letters most indiscreetly included in Madame de Medalle's collection, it is to be ascertained that ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... interruptions, to write a "Tribune" leader, he became aware that some one was standing behind his chair. Turning around suddenly, he saw a missionary well known in the city slums,—the Rev. Mr. Pease,—and asked in his highest, shrillest, most complaining falsetto, "Well, what do YOU want?" Mr. Pease, a kindly, gentle, apologetic man, said deprecatingly, "Well, Mr. Greeley, I have come for a little help. We are still trying to save souls in the Five Points." "Oh," said Mr. Greeley, "go ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... and went back to the house. Uncle Israel looked after her with dismay. "Do you suppose," he queried, in falsetto, "that ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... in the kitchen— Is love also her head turning? In falsetto she now screameth, That with ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... as we have said, with a very high voice, using freely the falsetto, after the manner of the tenor singers of his day. He chose one of his maritime songs, and got through the first verse very well, Barnes wagging his head at the chorus, with a "Bravo!" so offensive that Fred Bayham, ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of the clock and all serene, but if clouded the concluding word would be nu—bla—do, and so on, according to the weather. From all the streets, from all over the town, the long-drawn calls would float to my listening ears, with infinite variety in the voices—the high and shrill, the falsetto, the harsh, raucous note like the caw of the carrion crow, the solemn, booming bass, and then some fine, rich, pure voice that soared heavenwards above all the others and was like the pealing ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... the Sentimental Comedy the elements of mirth and romance which are the legitimate bases of comedy were largely subordinated to exaggerated pathos, and in the domestic melodrama the experiences of insignificant persons of the middle class were presented for sympathetic consideration in the same falsetto fashion. Both forms (indeed, they were one in spirit) were extreme products of the romantic return to sentiment and democratic feeling. Both were enormously popular and, crossing the Channel, like Thomson's poetic innovation, exerted a great ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... different seasons so that we can play both. But when you speak of 'brute' strength, Bert, you're giving 'aid and comfort' to the enemies of football. That's just the point they make. It's so 'awfully brutal'," he mimicked, in a high falsetto voice. ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... machine-gun popping. There is a troop train just behind us that they may be potting at, or some gunners in the village, or the R.E. camp. There have been two aeroplanes over us this afternoon. You hear the shell coming a long way off, rather like a falsetto motor-engine, and then it bursts (twice in the trees of this wood where we are standing). There is an endless line of French horse transport winding up the wood on the other side, and now some French cavalry. The R.T.O. is now having the train moved ...
— Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front, 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... which pretty certainly would never have been produced without it, to that of Mr. William Morris, which may not impossibly have been its last echo—transformed and refreshed, but still an echo—for some time to come. But there was a little of the falsetto in it, and the interludes, of which the introductions to Marmion and to the Bridal are the most considerable, show that it gave no outlets, or outlets only awkward, for much of what he wanted to say. ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... that old woman I remember," said Honey Smith. There were bruises, mottled blue and black, all over Honey's body. There was a falsetto whistling to Honey's voice. "That Irish granny! She didn't say a word. Her mouth just opened until her jaw fell. Then the wave struck!" He paused. He tried to control the falsetto whistling. But it got away from him. "God, I bet she was dead before ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... but I don't look up to you any more! You think you got a fine day of it now, riding up in your automobile to look at that sign—and then over here at my poor little works that you've ruined. But listen to me just this one last time!" The cracking voice broke into falsetto, and the gesticulating hands fluttered uncontrollably. "Just you listen!" he panted. "You think I did you a bad turn, and now you got me ruined for it, and you got my works ruined, and my family ruined; and if anybody'd 'a' told me this time last year I'd ever say such ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... gives as the result of original investigations with the laryngoscope five different actions of the vocal bands which she classifies as "first and second series of the chest-register," "first and second series of the falsetto register" and "head-register." Browne and Behnke, in "Voice, Song, and Speech," divide the male voice into three registers, and the female into five. They are termed "lower thick," "upper thick," "lower thin," "upper thin" and ...
— The Child-Voice in Singing • Francis E. Howard
... threats more overwhelming, and after a short strain by the choir, an alto repeated them in yet more detail. Then, so soon as the awful poem had exhausted the enumeration of chastisement and suffering, in shrill tones—the falsetto of a little boy—the name of Jesus went by, and a light broke in on the thunder-cloud, the panting universe cried for pardon, recalling, by all the voices of the choir, the infinite mercies of the Saviour, and His pardon, pleading with Him for ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... would run away?" But Smerdyakov did not deign to reply. After a moment's silence the guitar tinkled again, and he sang again in the same falsetto: ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... there is an abundance of fictitious emotion and spurious rhetoric. From beginning to end there is a painful strain that never relaxes, reminding us of singers who pitch their voices too high and have to render all the upper notes in falsetto. An attempt is made to employ poetical imagery, but it ludicrously fails. The heaven of the Book of Revelation, with its gold and silver and precious stones, is nothing but a magnified jeweller's shop, and a study of it has influenced the style of later writers. At present Christian gushers ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... a red flag at an already exasperated bull. The president got upon his feet, and his shrill falsetto cut the air ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... a high, nasal falsetto, and the dancing, or rather swaying on their tiny feet while waving overhead a dirty cloth in their beautifully-shaped hands, is feeble in the extreme. A band of musicians is usually engaged, after protracted haggling, to enliven the proceedings. Two or ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... of those sudden flights of thought so common in dreams I heard the hoarse falsetto of the bric-a-brac dealer, repeating like a monotonous refrain the phrase he had uttered in his shop ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... Corandeuil, in a falsetto voice full of terror; she rushed to one of the windows and all ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... quite remarkable flexibility of voice, excellent breath control, and a rather surprising quality of tone and accuracy of intonation. As a demonstration of flexibility, about the middle of the first movement, he takes the quarter note B-natural in falsetto and immediately drops into the waver a tenth below, at the same time assuming his natural voice. The falsetto tone is indicated in the transcription by a tiny circle above the note. All of the wavered tones, as well as the falsetto at the beginning and the turn at the end are sung with one breath ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... advance that some brave answer was forthcoming. The man on the table with his hands behind him surveyed the crowd again with the gaze of simple dignity, looked down on the commandant, and raised his voice. It was an unexpected, high, almost falsetto note, that in the silence ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... however, the connection was established; and Victor, hearing the falsetto of Chou Nu's second-uncle cheerily respond to the ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... reason I had become a mark for their amusement; more than once I caught them exchanging looks, or regarding me from the corners of their eyes in such fashion as set my ears a-tingling. The Captain was possessed of a peculiarly high-pitched, falsetto laugh, which, recurring at frequent intervals (and for no reason as I could see), annoyed me almost beyond bearing. But I paid no heed, staring straight before me and meditating upon a course of action which had been in my head for days past—a ...
— The Honourable Mr. Tawnish • Jeffery Farnol
... when there was a cry behind the scenes of "Mr. Denis!" Mr. Denis should have rushed on, but Mr. Denis did not rush on. The play stopped. Mr. Denis was not in the library, the improvised greenroom; Mr. Denis did not appear when his name was called in stentorian tones by Ralph, or in pathetic falsetto by Charles. In short, Mr. Denis was not forthcoming. A rush up-stairs on the part of most of the young men brought to light the awful fact that Mr. Denis had retired to his chamber, a prey to ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... was so little of her, the balance was made up for by the fact that there was so much of her husband. His large, rather flamboyant person, his big white face and curling brown beard, his loud voice and his falsetto laugh, his absolutely certain opinions, above all the fervency of his consciousness of being Lord Ashbridge and all which that implied, completely filled any place he happened to be in, so that a room empty except for him gave the impression of being almost uncomfortably crowded. This keen ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... of railroad securities brings the brokers to their feet, and the real business of the day begins. Offers and bids, shouted in deep bass, high treble, or shrill falsetto, resound through the hall, and in a few minutes the jovial-looking brokers seem to be on the verge of madness. How they yell and shout, and stamp, and gesticulate. The roar and confusion are bewildering to a stranger, but the keen, practised ears of the Vice-President at once recognize ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... lounge upon the grass, and the cigars, and the new fish stories, and the general invoice of the old ones, it was delectable to get back to the girls again, and in the old "best room" hear once more the lilt of the old songs and the stacattoed laughter of the piano mingling with the alto and falsetto voices of the Mills girls, and the gallant soprano ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... was no laughing. Kohn's hump pressed hard and heedlessly, like the edge of a table, against the delicate others. It seemed as though he had the constant desire to press his hump against a dancer. He never failed to say, in a falsetto voice, "pardon," with unashamed courtesy, when a crazy woman cried out or someone blissfully snarled "damn." Lisel Liblichlein held on to the poet with one hand holding the hump like a handle, and with the other had she pressed Kohn's square head gently to her breast. In this ...
— The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... is his stature, his limbs compose the least part of it. His hands and feet, forming some compensation by their ample proportions, with short, thick fins, vulgarly called a cobbler's thumb. His voice varying in cadence from a deep barytone, to a high falsetto, maintains throughout the distinctive characteristic of a Dublin accent and pronunciation, and he talks of the "Veel of Ovoca, and a beef-steek," with some price of intonation. What part of the Island he came originally from, or what may ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... which would have sounded like a silver bell, in the loud, coarse buzz which pervaded the rooms. All the women were talking shrill, and the men answering in falsetto. He was not among them, and I moved to and fro unnoticed, for the tide of entertainment had set in, and I could withdraw, if I chose. I took a chair near an open door, commanded a view into a small room, on the other side of the hall, ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... His pipe was still between his teeth, but he ceased to puff at it. It went out. The noise of the approaching horse was plainly audible in the room. Felix Matier suddenly laughed aloud, and then, half chanting the words in a cracked falsetto, quoted— ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... had also a knowledge of the solemn language and the gay, could be sublime with Johnson, or blackguard with the groom; could dispute, could rally, could quibble, in our language. Baretti has, besides, some skill in music, with a bass voice, very agreeable, besides a falsetto which he can manage so as to mimic any singer he hears. I would also trust his knowledge of painting a long way. These accomplishments, with his extensive power over every modern language, make him a most pleasing companion while he is in good humour; and his lofty consciousness of ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... nevertheless kept cunning eyes searching for the offender. I enjoyed myself best, for I lay and watched the daily parade of the troops before breakfast, and could inquire genially, 'Have you had a good stand-to?' Fowke asked the wastes in a soaring falsetto, 'Why do the heathen rage?' And he was returned question for question, with 'Why do you keep laughing at me with those big, blue eyes?' Then the camp would rock with song as we fell to shaving and, ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... partake of cookies and wine passed by the black dwarf, Selena. This small creature, after fulfilling her part in the social amenities, seated herself upon a small stool, joined in the conversation, and when amused (which was often) broke into a high falsetto laugh. In the last years of these two ladies she gained a most unholy influence over her charges and took cruel advantage ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... was about her an amplitude of curve which, joined to a certain luxuriance of moulding, betrayed her sex even to a careless observer. And when she spoke, it was often with a fetishistic utterance in a monotheistic falsetto which almost had the effect of startling her relations ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 102, May 7, 1892 • Various
... physical growth that in the early stages of this period difficult mental tasks cannot be well done. In a young man especially, this period is marked by awkward, uncouth movements that indicate uncertain adjustment. Frequently at this time the boy's voice varies unsteadily from a high falsetto to a low pitch, which is most mortifying to the youth, who is now bashful probably for the first time in his life. The girl is suddenly very particular about her appearance, and her clothes, and the youth for the first time delights in a starched shirt, patent ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall
... is not a religion of fight, stress and struggle. Isn't it better to relax and rest and allow Divinity to flow through us, than to sit on a sharp rail and call the passer-by names in falsetto? May Irwin's motto, "Don't Argufy," isn't so bad as a working maxim, ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... Miraudin, and then ran a few paces and did the same thing in front of the Marquis, imploring both men not to fight,—not to get killed, on account of the trouble it would cause to him, the coachman;—and with a high falsetto shriek a lady flung herself out of the recesses of the closed vehicle, and clung to the ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... and, with the late Mr. John Brown, the Horncastle Laureate, and others, he helped to amuse considerable audiences, in town and neighbourhood. In comedy he could take all the parts himself, rapidly changing his dress, and at one moment adopting the high falsetto tones of an old crone, and the next moment speaking in the deeper accents of a strong man. It is greatly to his credit that, only having for many years a small shop, famed chiefly for his two specialites, "bull eyes" and "Grantham ginger-bread," ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... and thoughtful, was always the same as he rolled through the streets and lanes, for he sat "as though carved in stone." His love of children was marked. "He would address them in his small, high-pitched falsetto voice, and if their answers pleased him he would reply; and occasionally, lifting them on to a chair or table, he would measure their heads with his broad hand, as though reading character, and mentally prognosticating their ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... of his English tongue seemed to take all the fight out of the remaining warriors. Tagg had closed valiantly with one, and the others made off. Von Kerber rose to his feet, so Royson went to Tagg's assistance. He heard the Baron shriek, in a falsetto ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... Chinese shop at the corner the strains of a Canton actor's falsetto, with the squeak of the Celestial fiddles issued from a phonograph, but so real I fancied I was again on Shameen, listening over the Canton River to the noises of the night, the music, and the singsong girls ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... the village, he lingered outside on the terrace with the boys. Marie could hear him talking and strumming on his guitar while Raoul Marcel sang falsetto. She was vexed with him for staying out there. It made her very nervous to hear him and not to see him; for, certainly, she told herself, she was not going out to look for him. When the supper bell rang and the boys came trooping in to get seats at the first table, she forgot ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... broke out in the falsetto notes of a puzzle solved in the mind. 'It was his father! Harry proclaiming his ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... front of the car at the precise moment that the other ran round behind it, and they both banged loudly on each other's knockers. These knocks were not so precisely simultaneous as the shouts had been, and this led to mutual discovery, hailed with peals of falsetto laughter on the part of Captain Puffin and the more manly guffaws of the Major.... After that the Royce lumbered down the grass-grown cobbles of the street, and after a great deal of reversing managed to turn ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... naturally divided into three registers—the chest, medium and head. In a man's voice of lower quality this last is known as "falsetto," but in the case of a tenor he may use a tone which in sound is almost falsetto, but is really a mezza voce, or half voice. This latter legitimately belongs to a man's compass; a falsetto does not. The most important register is the medium, particularly of tenors, for this includes the greater part ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini
... gosh sake!" grumbled Vic, stooping reluctantly to pick up the old hoe-handle he used for a staff. "What ridge?" He paused to thunder up at her, his voice unexpectedly changing to a shrill falsetto on the last word, as frequently happens to rob a mancub of his dignity just when he ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... takes place about the end of June—the young crows with their bob-tails, soft wings, and falsetto voices are brought by their parents, whom they nearly equal in size, and introduced to society at the old pine woods, a woods that is at once their fortress and college. Here they find security in numbers and in lofty yet sheltered perches, and here they begin ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... directed backwards, others, wearing scarlet aprons, carry brooms and with slow and mystic movements sweep widely on either side with the intent of gathering up the wandering soul. Meanwhile crackers are fired to the weird sound of a minor, falsetto lilting. After a considerable journey over the countryside they return to prove the success of their venture. For this the clothes of the sick man must be reweighed to see whether the weight of the spirit has been added to that of the patient's ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... loud, horse-laughing, and hungrily eyeing the girls and women that passed by, who tried hard to seem, as they went, not self-conscious and stiff-stepping because of our observation ... and sometimes we whistled after them or called out to them in falsetto voices. ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... cat-like upon the window sill and swept the room with his painted grin. In his hands he held a great bunch of variegated circus bills. Tossing a half-dozen of these at the feet of the all-absorbed spectators, he cried in high cracked falsetto: ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... sports, learned to know the Hunt barge well. He met her rounding his bends on grey December dawns to music wild and lamentable as the almost forgotten throb of Dervish drums, when, high above Royal's tenor bell, sharper even than lying Beagle-boy's falsetto break, Farag chanted deathless war against Abu Hussein and all his seed. At sunrise the river would shoulder her carefully into her place, and listen to the rush and scutter of the pack fleeing up the gang-plank, and the tramp of the Governor's Arab behind them. They would pass over the ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... Let me look at it,'" began Madame de Guiraud in a falsetto voice, as she rose with a silly ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... do you want?" she gave out in a shrill falsetto; but no one heard her till the questions were repeated about an octave and a ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... at the Moon!" he mimicked her in falsetto. "Only wanted to die like a little fool and make me that much more ashamed of you!" Then his voice went gruff and professional. ...
— The Moon is Green • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... came down out of the northwest, like a cloudburst. It hummed and sang, and then it whined, and then it screamed, screamed in a high falsetto that made you think poor old Mother Earth was in her last throes! The snow was fine and hard, really minute particles of ice, and not snow at all, as we know it in the East, little sharp-angled diamond-points that stung ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... yet—by God—the only man that day In all our drunken crew. 'Come along, Kit,' Cried Puff, 'we'll all be friends now, all take hands, And dance—ha! ha!—the shaking of the sheets!' Then Archer, shuffling a step, raised his cracked voice In Kit's own song to a falsetto tune, Snapping one hand, thus, over his ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... complete silence. ‘Poor Calvé,’ I heard an old friend of my mother’s murmur. ‘Her voice used to be so nice, and now it’s all gone!’ Taking in the situation at a glance, I threw my voice well up into my nose and started off on a well-known provincial song, in the shrill falsetto of our peasant women. The effect was instantaneous! Long before the end the performance was drowned in thunders of applause. Which proves that to be popular a singer must adapt herself ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... say it." His voice rose to an excited falsetto. "She is awfully pretty—extravagantly, preposterously pretty. And she'll ...
— The Immortal Moment - The Story of Kitty Tailleur • May Sinclair
... tall, old, white-headed man came, shading a candle, at the summons. He had been of great strength in his time, and of a handsome countenance; but now he was fallen away, his teeth were quite gone, and his voice when he spoke was broken and falsetto. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that? If Petka did not steal the watch, that is one thing; but if he did, then I'll give it to him with the stick, as they used to do in the regiment. What is that? 'What a pity!' The stick, that's all. Pshaw!" Trofimytsch uttered these incoherent exclamations in falsetto: he ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... phonation strained and the effects observed unnatural. In fact, as Mackenzie already has pointed out, although the laryngoscope is invaluable in the recognition and treatment of diseases which before only could be guessed at, "with the exception of certain points relating to the 'falsetto' register, it can scarcely be said to have thrown any new light on the mechanism of the voice." In other words, the instrument belongs in the hands of the physician, not in ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... great rate, past my door. "Somebody ill," was my next thought. "Very ill," was thought number three, as more feet—also in a hurry—went bounding by. "Perhaps a lunatic at large," was my fourth reflection, as various voices sounded in the distance, several of them in a high falsetto. I got out of bed, opened my door, and looked down the corridor towards the big wide staircase in the distance. There was smoke coming along the passage, a smell of burnt wood, and then a woman's voice giving out a bloodcurdling ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... answered boldly, "what's the use fussin' 'bout a dinky bird's egg? You make me sick, Manda. Cry about it now! Oh, the poor little birdie lost its egg," he whined in falsetto voice. ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... high falsetto, and slapped himself smartly on the wrist. "Has he been here? I thought it seemed kind of close. Give me a cigarette ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... turn to sing comes he, knowing only the old refrains of the mountain, intones in an Arabic falsetto voice the complaint of the linen weaver; and then Ramuntcho, who had sung it the day before in the autumn twilight, sees again the darkened sky of yesterday, the clouds full of rain, the cart drawn by oxen going down into a sad and closed valley, toward a solitary farm—and suddenly ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... with excitement, slammed and locked the door and pointed to a heavy sideboard. "Drag it here!" he shrieked in a high falsetto. "The street is crammed with men belonging to the Seventh Regiment, and they have a short way with Kings they don't like. The instant they see how they have been tricked they will be after you like a pack of wolves. I have ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... he. "No, I don't believe you, but I hold no honors and will turn up my cards." He quite forgot that he was in the public street, and was talking at the top of his shrill falsetto voice, and gesticulating violently. ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... Juliet to the Romeo of the tall young surgeon, singing falsetto like a fat German angel dressed in loose-fitting khaki, with his belt undone. There were charades in the tent. The boy from Barts' did remarkable imitations of a gamecock challenging a rival bird, of a cow coming through a gate, of a general addressing his troops (most comical ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... coward," cried Reddy, talking in a high falsetto voice, "to hit a man when his back is turned. I'll slap you for that," and he landed ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower
... down upon a chair, and opened some pages of scrawled manuscript, talking hurriedly in a thin falsetto. ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... something that could no longer come between him and his ends. He was completely and finally humiliating her. He was breaking her. He was converting her into something corrupt. . . . Then his pendulous throat choked with a falsetto gasp of wonder. He was ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... to Shelley's voice was equally taken from exceptional instances, and the account of it usually suggests the idea that he spoke in a falsetto which might almost be mistaken for the "shriek" of a harsh-toned woman. Nothing could be more unlike the reality. The voice was indeed quite peculiar, and I do not know where any parallel to it is likely to be found unless in Lancashire. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... ship!" now resounded through the ship as it was repeated in the variety of basses of the boatswain and his mates, at either hatchway—one of the youngsters of the watch running down at the same time to acquaint the officers, in his shrill falsetto, with that which had been roared out loud enough to startle even the deaf purser. The first-lieutenant, followed by the master, brushed by him, and was up the ladder before his ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... every day," he complained in a thin, undependable falsetto. "Who'd have thought I'd live to see the time when a man would be afraid of his life on the way to the Cliff House. When I was a boy, Edwin, men and women and little babies used to come out here from San Francisco by tens of thousands ...
— The Scarlet Plague • Jack London
... song, which the crowd compelled her to repeat, touched lightly the uncertainties of love, expressed in the falsetto ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... nearly simultaneous the movement was like a leap—and he had the wrist of the other's armed hand in his grip. Words can convey no idea of the outburst attending the assault—it was the hoarse inarticulate falsetto of a dumb man signalizing a triumph. If the reader can think of a tiger standing over him, its breath on his cheek, its roar in his ears, something approximate to the effect ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... beauty, eh, my beauty!' said Marshall, in a queer high falsetto voice, that caused the other man to have convulsions ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... are all alike in this respect. I don't suppose Mrs. Smiley realizes that 'Maudie' would be called by a doubter a falsetto disguise of her own voice, and 'Wilbur' a shrewd and humorous personification of her subconscious self; or, if she does, she probably ascribes it to the process of materialization which 'takes from' the medium. Never but once have I had the sensation of being in the presence of a real spirit ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... features once or twice to utter the word, but as many times broke down. At last in high falsetto he ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... stocking,—and with a far-off, plaintive stare, achieved a colorable imitation of her elder sister's probable attitude.) "Then you jest go up softly, like as you was a bear, and clap your hands on her eyes, and say in a disguised voice like this" (here Del turned on a high falsetto beyond any masculine compass), "'Who's who?' jest like ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... pine logs and their red glow on our gear, ourselves, and Ring's truthful face. One of the young men sang a Latin student's song and two Negro melodies; the other "Sweet Spirit, hear my Prayer." "Jim" sang one of Moore's melodies in a singular falsetto, and all together sang, "The Star-spangled Banner" and "The Red, White, and Blue." Then "Jim" recited a very clever poem of his own composition, and told some fearful Indian stories. A group of small silver spruces away from the fire was my sleeping place. The ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... him the nickname of Cejas (Eyebrows), by which he was known to his intimates. He spent most of his time strumming on a wretched old cracked guitar, and singing amorous ballads in a lugubrious, whining falsetto, which reminded me not a little of that hungry, complaining gull I had met at the estancia in Durazno. For, though poor Epifanio had an absorbing passion for music, Nature had unkindly withheld from him the power to ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... in a considerable number in the United States, it is customary to have boys with unchanged voices sing the soprano part, men with trained falsetto voices (called male altos) taking the alto,[32] while the tenor and bass parts are, of course, sung by men as always. Since the child voice is only useful when the tones are produced with relaxed muscles, ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... shovel into our mouths, we should have had no dinner. Tea was passed by the servants continually, as were little bowls of "samshu"—a liquor distilled from rice. During the dinner, the sing-song girls played on the native two-stringed fiddles, and sang in falsetto voices a selection of music, which was undoubtedly very fine if judged by the Chinese standard, but which ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... the other fellow who was in the ascendant when I entered the farm sitting-room in answer to the summons of a falsetto bell. I was shy. I felt like an intruder. I was afraid that Farmer Banks would treat me as a distinguished visitor, and that my efforts to attain the happy freedom of an equal might—in the eyes of Anne—appear ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... rigid. The air seemed to quiver. The lines of every man's limbs, except the King's, were drawn in tension. Then from the prostrate body of the witch-doctor, whose legs and arms were twisted as in agony, whose dribbling mouth was closed like a vise, came a ventriloquous falsetto: ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... view of the shortage of feed, should occupy the oven in place of the usual sizzling turkey, the big brothers and the little girl voted for the heads of Sassy and of a certain mysterious young rooster who, though disturbing, had never been definitely singled out, since, on hearing his falsetto crow and looking about for him, the family invariably came upon the ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... huts came the tinkle-tinkle of serenading guitars and yearning notes of violins wailing despairing love. And Isidro, seated on the bamboo ladder of his house, went through an independent performance. He sang "Good-night, Ladies," the last song given to the school, sang it in soft falsetto, with languorous drawls, and never-ending organ points, over and over again, till it changed character gradually, dropping into a wailing minor, an endless croon full of obscure melancholy of ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... and the figure dipped into the hollow, till, with a crash of rending grass, the lost one strode up to the light of the fire, and disappeared to the waist in a wave of joyous dogs! Then Learoyd and Ortheris gave greeting, bass and falsetto together, both swallowing a ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... he said to her, and repeated it with outstretched finger, "Tip, tip, Pete!" He spoke in a falsetto voice. Did he mean Peter? Did he take her for a man? Behind him on a pillow lay something hairy; it was a toupet; she now saw that he was bald on the crown. "Tip, tip, Pete!" she ...
— The Bridal March; One Day • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... highly prized in that dry, almost verdureless country. Just now he swayed along with a pair of heavy baskets slung on a bamboo all the way from Wu Shu, as the pilgrim under his load of sin, and as he swayed he sang in a weak falsetto ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... criminologist in the best falsetto tone he could muster. Then he disconnected with a smile. This was turning the tables with a vengeance. But he knew that he must be getting away from the den before the possible investigation by ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... I knew that high falsetto tone. It was the voice of Mr. Tubbs, but pitched in a key of quite insane excitement. I sprang up and ran, Crusoe and the Honorable Cuthbert at my heels. There in the midst of the camp Mr. Tubbs stood, the center of a group who were regarding ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... a mysterious falsetto voice, which seemed to come from behind the copper basins, repeated, in an ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... learn all that Gladys and Shiel wanted to know. Accordingly, in the manner of most other two-guinea clairvoyants, she composed herself in a graceful and recumbent attitude, made a lot of queer grimaces and still queerer noises, and spoke in a falsetto voice, which purposed to be that of Tillie Toot, once a barmaid in Edinburgh, now one of Madame's familiar spirits. And the gist of what "Tillie" told them was that Hamar & Co. derived their powers from Black Magic; and that ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... these are the kind of people an artist must work with!" He lifted his arms to heaven, calling upon the high gods for pity; then, with a sudden turn of fury, ran to the back of the stage and came mincing forward evidently intending saturnine mimicry, repeating the ingenue's speech in a mocking falsetto: "Now what are you two good people conspiring about?" After that he whirled upon her, demanding with ferocity: "You've got something you can think with in your head, haven't you, Missmiss? Then what do you think ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... two lines over again, in a high falsetto this time. Great surprise on the part of the audience. Nervous old lady begins to cry, and has to be ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... others I had to decline to see Franz Lachner, who had been specially engaged for the festival, and did not return his call. Tausig certainly delighted us by carolling Lachner's 'Old German Battle Song' in the upper octave, which, thanks to his boyish falsetto, was within his reach; however, even his pranks were no longer able to cheer us. Everything, which under other circumstances would have made this summer month one of the most stimulating in my life, ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... Stridor — N. creak &c v.; creaking &c v.; discord, &c 414; stridor; roughness, sharpness, &c adj.; cacophony; cacoepy^. acute note, high note; soprano, treble, tenor, alto, falsetto, penny trumpet, voce di testa [It]. V. creak, grate, jar, burr, pipe, twang, jangle, clank, clink; scream &c (cry) 411; yelp &c (animal sound) 412; buzz &c (hiss) 409. set the teeth on edge, corcher les oreilles [Fr.]; pierce the ears, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... make sure that the constable and his wife were in the bedroom the other side of the flimsy wall, complied, and in a voice that rose gradually to a piercing falsetto told Mr. Grummit things that had been rankling in her mind for some months. She raked up misdemeanours that he had long since forgotten, and, not content with that, had a fling at the entire Grummit family, beginning with her mother-in-law and ending with Mr. Grummit's ...
— Captains All and Others • W.W. Jacobs
... impression upon its brilliant coloring. When, at about noontime, I received it from them I was in the vestibule of my uncle's house, a place always kept tightly closed during the hours of intense heat. From the wing of the house I heard my cousin singing in the thin and plaintive falsetto of a mountaineer; he often sang in that manner, and when he did so his voice always gave me a feeling of unusual melancholy as it broke the stillness of the late September noons. He sang over and over the same old refrain: "Ah! Ah! The good, ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... it is reported that there were even extras, as in the benefits for actors. It was indeed a delight: loads of incense were burned, there were plenty of Latin chants, large quantities of holy water were expended, and Padre Irene, out of regard for his old friend, sang the Dies Irae in a falsetto voice from the choir, while the neighbors suffered real headaches ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... got a wrist watch!" gasped Will Ford in falsetto tones. "The saucy little humming ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Ocean View - Or, The Box That Was Found in the Sand • Laura Lee Hope
... If that's all you want—he can have her." He was shaking now in every limb. Escape was almost his. He knew he could not be done away with. "I'll give her to him!" He staggered toward Lopez, "I will! I swear I will!" he screamed, his words reaching a high falsetto. ...
— The Bad Man • Charles Hanson Towne |
