"Flute" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... being vice-president of the grand junction march-of-intellect society. Mr. Frederick Snodgrass, their son (lately called to the chancery bar), who would bring his flute. ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... joyous love of comely girl and boy; His eyes were bright, and 'mid the dancing blades Of golden grass his feet did trip for joy. And in his hands he held an ivory lute, With strings of gold that were as maidens' hair, And sang with voice as tuneful as a flute, And round his neck three chains of roses were. But he that was his comrade walked aside; He was full sad and sweet, and his large eyes Were strange with wondrous brightness, staring wide With gazing; and he sighed with many sighs That moved me, and his cheeks were ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... your slow sweet name, As one breathes low notes on a flute, Have vext your peace with word of blame, The phrase is dead — the lips are mute. Yet when I turn towards the wall, In stormy nights, in times of rain, I often wish you could recall ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... told a boy of nine years old (S——) the following story, which she had just met with in "The Curiosities of Literature." An officer, who was confined in the Bastille, used to amuse himself by playing on the flute: one day he observed, that a number of spiders came down from their webs, and hung round him as if listening to his music; a number of mice also came from their holes, and retired as soon as he stopped. The officer had a great dislike to mice; he procured ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... A flute began to play in my heart. And I knew that like Ulysses's men I would have to close my ears to it. But it's easier to row past an island than to run away from your ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... moon shed a fairy light over the scene, the tender serenade would rise from among the bowers of the garden, in which the fine voice of Don Ambrosio might often be distinguished; or the amorous flute would be heard along the mountain, breathing in its pensive cadences the very soul ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... with the 'cellos' pleading, passionate strain The yearning theme, and let the flute reply In placid melody, while violins complain, And sob, and sigh, With muted string; Then let the oboe half-reluctant sing Of bliss that trembles on the verge of pain, While 'cellos plead and plead again, ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... As the Philosopher says (Polit. viii, 6), "Teaching should not be accompanied with a flute or any artificial instrument such as the harp or anything else of this kind: but only with such things as make good hearers." For such like musical instruments move the soul to pleasure rather than create a good disposition within it. In the Old Testament instruments of this description were ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... bow-knot with two ends. The lace must be bent and folded into the form, but not cut. Run the edges with embroidery cotton, and button-hole all round. Then, with sharp scissors, cut away the muslin underneath, leaving the bow-knot transparent on a thicker ground. Dry-flute the ruffle. This little affair is very dainty and odd, one of the prettiest things which we ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - No 1, Nov 1877 • Various
... copse arise, Of softest flute or reeds harmonic join'd, With rapture thrill'd each worldly passion dies, And pleased attention claims the ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... she was wilfully wrecked, [Footnote: This is said by Joutel and Le Clercq, and by La Salle himself, in his letter to Seignelay, 4 March, 1685, as well as in the account of the wreck drawn up officially.—Proces verbal du Sieur de la Salle sur le naufraqe de la flute l'Aimable a l'embouchure du Fleuve Colbert, MS. He charges it, as do also the others, upon Aigron, the pilot of the vessel, the same who had prevented him from exploring the mouth of the Mississippi on the sixth of January. The charges are supported by explicit ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... ennui. Moreover, every one in the house, except his mother, looked at him with unfriendly eyes. His father did not like his town manners, his swallow-tail coats, his frilled shirt-fronts, his books, his flute, his fastidious ways, in which he detected—not incorrectly—a disgust for his surroundings; he was for ever complaining and grumbling at his son. "Nothing here," he used to say, "is to his taste; at table he is all in a fret, and doesn't eat; he can't bear the heat and close smell ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... Superior that the mistake about the hour had been no fault of hers—and the Mother Superior, alas! would be sure to make inquiries as to the friends whom she had visited—the magic violin of M. Szmera played its first notes, accompanied by Madame Odinska on the piano, and by a delicious little flute. They played an overture, the dreamy sweetness of which extorted cries of admiration from all ...
— Jacqueline, v3 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... The mules are sent for again. Again they walked a quarter of a mile. And here in the little whitewashed cottage, with only a selection from the books below, with two guitars and a flute in place of the piano,—here they made ready for three weeks of June. Only three weeks; for on the 29th was the Commencement at Antioch, and Jane and Walter and Florence were to take their degrees. There would need five days from Vera Cruz to reach ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... thine, as thou runnest for thy life; thou shalt have enough of it in the next hour. For as the Etruscans (says Athenaeus) were so luxurious that they used to flog their slaves to the sound of the flute, so shall luxurious Chanter and Challenger, Sweet-lips and Melody, eat thee to the sound of rich organ-pipes, that ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... very sensible and kindly man, rather given to lonely wanderings and melancholy tunes upon his faithful flute. He asked for no recognition. He did not demand that any one should follow him or worship him. He reminds us of the ancient Greek philosophers, especially those of the Stoic School, men who believed in right living ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... field where he lay, his shoulders and naked chest pressed to the earth. A gentle wind stirred the grass, and the flute-like warble of a song bird was repeated close to his ear, over and over with ...
— The Man from Time • Frank Belknap Long
... looked at Lucia. "That's you, Lucy. You've been talking to him about that flute. I suppose you told him you would love to ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... his habit of an evening to play the flute; and he was playing it faithfully, with the score propped up against a pile of books on his table, when the noises from the street reached him, and interrupted his music. With the silver-dotted flute in his hand he moved to the window and put aside ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... warrior Tritonid hath alway in guard, Where on many a sacred shrine Young bulls' thigh-bones burn and shine As the god that is fire overtakes them, and fast The smoke of Arabia to heavenward is cast, Scattering wide its balm: and shrill Now with nimble notes that thrill The flute strikes up for the song, and the harp of gold Strikes up to the song sweet answer: and all behold, All, aswarm as bees, give ear, Who by birth hold ...
— A Channel Passage and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... easy of readjustment until finally were procured the services of one of the charwomen from the Bronx Theater, who prepared the meals and could flute Zoe's ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... crossing a lonely sheep-field she saw the god Pan: he was sitting at the foot of a tall rock, making music on a shepherd's flute. He too had horns on his brow, and hairy ears, and goat's feet. He knew Mother Ceres and answered her questions kindly, and he gave her some milk and honey to drink out of a wooden bowl. But he ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... to learn the tongue of the new country in which he found himself and to take part in the conversation. Kobold was very fond of music, and himself sang little songs with a very strong English accent. The A would be struck on the piano, and he caught the note exactly and modulated with a flute-like sound phrases that were really musical and that had no connection whatever with barking or yelping. When we wanted to make him go on, all we had to do was to say, "Sing a little more," and he would repeat the cadence. Although ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... down from the sanctuary one afternoon I heard the landlord's comic song, of which I have spoken above. It was about the musical instruments in a band: the trumpet did this, the clarinet did that, the flute went tootle, tootle, tootle, and there was an appropriate motion of the hand for every instrument. I was a little disappointed with it, but the landlord said I was too serious and the only thing that would cure me was to learn the song myself. He said the butcher ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... streets with his weekly earnings in his pockets and spent them. He spent every penny he had. First he went to a florist's and bought daffodils, in great golden sheaves. Then he went to a toyshop and got a splendid family of fluffy beasts, and a musical box, and a Noah's Ark, and a flute. He had spent all his money by then, so he pawned his watch and signet ring and bought Thomas some pretty cambric clothes and a rocking cradle. He had nothing else much to pawn. But he badly wanted some Japanese paintings to put in the place of the pictures ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... that the MELODIC effect of a series of sounds does not depend in the least on their loudness or softness, or on their ABSOLUTE pitch. A tune is always the same tune, whether it is sung loudly or softly, by a child or a man; whether it is played on a flute or on a trombone. The purely musical effect of any sound depends on its place in what is technically called a 'scale;' the same sound producing absolutely different effects on the ear, according as it is heard in connection with one ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... the material; it gives the latter only just enough form to make it real and perceptible. Very rich and beautiful materials therefore do well to assume this form. You will spoil the beauty you have by superimposing another; as if you make a statue of gold, or flute a jasper column, or bedeck a velvet cloak. The beauty of stuffs appears when they are plain. Even stone gives its specific quality best in great unbroken spaces of wall; the simplicity of the form emphasizes the substance. ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... child, for thee— Sweet as the silver-breaking sea (When Indian summer broods upon it) Doth flute and ...
— Song-waves • Theodore H. Rand
... boy with his jew's-harp charms the kine, And plays upon the flute so fine, And I sing this song ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... passionate devotion. He is informed that Pamina has been stolen by Sarastro, the high-priest of Isis, and imprisoned by him in his palace. He vows to rescue her, and for that purpose is presented by the ladies with a magic flute, which will keep him safe in every danger, while Papageno, a bird-catcher, who has been assigned to him as companion, receives a glockenspiel. Three genii are summoned to guide them, and the two champions thereupon proceed to Sarastro's ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... in matters of their own improvement, and established schools for the reading and writing of Spanish among the boys. They taught them to serve in the church, to sing the plain-song, and to the accompaniment of the organ; to play the flute, to dance, and to sing; and to play the harp, guitar, and other instruments. In this they show very great adaptability, especially about Manila; where there are many fine choirs of chanters and musicians composed of natives, who are skilful ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... from extravagant banquets, it is still capable of enjoying modest festivities. As a boy I often used to see Gaius Duilius the son of Marcus, then an old mali, returning from a dinner-party. He thoroughly enjoyed the frequent use of torch and flute-player, distinctions which he had assumed though unprecedented in the case of a private person. It was the privilege of his glory. But why mention others? I will come back to my own case. To begin with, I have always remained a member of a "club"—clubs, ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... had been staked against him, and one whom I had obtained with such trouble, and for my own purposes? Can it be that he pretended his intoxication the more easily to outwit me? I had no fear, but believed that he would be sure to select some slim youth who could be taught to play the flute before him or act as cupbearer. What demon put it into his head so suddenly to look for bone and muscle ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... pearls—also, a shawl embroidered with threads of fine gold—the effect of all which she softened with a scarf of Indian lace skillfully folded about her throat and shoulders. And so arrayed, she plied Ben-Hur with countless coquetries of speech and manner; showering him with smiles; laughing in flute-like tremolo—and all the while following him with glances, now melting-tender, now sparkling-bright. By such play Antony was weaned from his glory; yet she who wrought his ruin was really not half so beautiful as ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... hasty son[5], In eyeless vault of stone Immured by Dionysus' hest, All for a wrathful jest. Fierce madness issueth in such fatal flower. He found 'twas mad to taunt the Heavenly Power, Chilling the Maenad breast Kindled with Bacchic fire, and with annoy Angering the Muse that in the flute hath joy. ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... obedience; or in those Small, sorrowful colloquies Of bronze and russet and gold, Colour with colour, dying things with dead, That break along this visual orchestra: As in that other one, the audible, Horn answers horn, hautboy and violin Talk, and the 'cello calls the clarionet And flute, and the poor heart is glad. There is no hope in ...
— Hawthorn and Lavender - with Other Verses • William Ernest Henley
... days was deeply worn—the long tenth notches half effaced, as alphabets of the blind. Ten thousand times the longing widow had traced her finger over the bamboo—dull flute, which played, on, gave no sound—as if counting birds flown by in air would hasten tortoises ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... that Waitstill's heart, if it moved at all, would rush out like a great river to lose itself in the ocean, and losing itself forget the narrow banks through which it had flowed before. Patty knew that her own love was at the moment nothing more than the note of a child's penny flute, and that Waitstill was perhaps vibrating secretly with a deeper, richer music than could ever come to her. Still, music of some sort she meant to feel. "Even if they make me decide one way or another before I am ready," she said to herself, "I'll never say 'yes' till I'm ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... always as much as he was loved by her, and in virtue of the permission formally given by the Pope, he went every week to pass an hour or two with her in the parlour. He regularly took there his singing and flute lessons; these were two amiable talents in which ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... unto them, Is it true, O Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego? do not ye serve my gods, nor worship the golden image which I have set up? Now if ye be ready that at what time ye hear the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and dulcimer, and all kinds of music, ye fall down and worship the image which I have made; well: but if ye worship not, ye shall be cast the same hour into the midst of a burning fiery furnace; and who is that God that shall ...
— The Dore Gallery of Bible Illustrations, Complete • Anonymous
... poplars tune your flute: Let them pierce, keenly, subtly shrill, The slow blue rumour of the hill; Let the grass cry with an anguish of evening gold, And the great ...
— The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems • Aldous Huxley
... furtively about its business. Once they startled a cow moose and her calf knee-deep in a shallow. The crash of their hurried retreat rose like a blare of brass horns cutting discordantly into the piping of a flute. But it died as quickly as it had risen. Even the beasts bowed before the invisible altars ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... his thoughts, Mrs. Austen played the flute. "Won't you sit down?" In speaking, she sank on a sofa which she ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... things by Mendelssohn on the piano, and Leah sang very nicely in a fine, bold, frank, deep voice, like a choir-boy's, and Mrs. Gibson danced a Spanish fandango, and displayed feet and ankles of which she was very proud, and had every right to be; and then Mr. Gibson played a solo on the flute, and sang "My Pretty Jane"—both badly enough to be very funny without any conscious effort or straining on his part. Then we supped, and the food was good, and we were all very jolly indeed; and after supper Mr. Gibson said ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... was dark, there was a dance on the lawn by torchlight, the torches being held by the servants; the music consisted of a flute, cornet, and violin, but the cornet proved of no use, as some urchin had bunged it up with a cork before the dance commenced. No particular dances were called for; the musicians played just what they chose, the dancers danced whatever they knew best. Some, and these were the majority, ...
— Leslie Ross: - or, Fond of a Lark • Charles Bruce
... clarinet, and other wood-wind instruments are built in a certain fixed pitch, and since the length of the tube cannot be altered, they must either play in the pitch intended or else not at all. In the case of the clarinet and flute, the pitch can be altered a very little by pulling out one of the joints slightly (the tube is made in several sections) thus making the total length slightly greater and the pitch correspondingly lower; but when this is done the higher tones are very apt to be out of tune, and in general, ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... curiosity. On my imitating their chirp one fluttered down, and attempted to alight on my horse's ears. On my whistling to them, one whistled some beautifully varied notes, as soft as those of an octave flute, although their common chirp was harsh and dissonant. The male and female seemed to have very different plumage, especially about the head; that on the one having the varying tint of the Rifle bird, the head of the other more resembling in colour, that of the DACELO GIGANTEUS. They were ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... good enough to ask, with "gold for bronze," but tit for tat. Oh, but here is another little note, which I will not leave unanswered. Lucceius, on my word, could get a good price for his Tusculan property, unless, perchance, his flute-player is a fixture (for that's his way), and I should like to know in what condition it is. Our friend Lentulus, I hear, has advertised everything for sale except his Tusculan property. I should like to see these men cleared of their ...
— Letters of Cicero • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... from his sore-backed government steed, would produce his portable lamp, and proceed to melt on his needle the wax-like contents of a small, black box. When of the proper consistency, the paste was rolled on a metal plate to point it for the aperture in the flute-shaped pipe. Half the night would be given to this process, and a considerable portion of the remaining half would be devoted to smoking small pinches of tobacco in the peculiar Chinese water-pipe. According ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... The Monastery, they seemed utterly unable to change their tune. "Cherry ripe!" "Cherry ripe!" was the universal cry of all the idle in the town. Every unmelodious voice gave utterance to it; every crazy fiddle, every cracked flute, every wheezy pipe, every street-organ was heard in the same strain, until studious and quiet men stopped their ears in desperation, or fled miles away into the fields or woodlands to be at peace. This plague lasted for a twelvemonth, until the very name of cherries ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... were played at all religious ceremonies. At the great yearly festival of Tezcatlepoca, who was always represented as a handsome youth, a young man was sacrificed to the god, and a chief condition of the selection was that the selected person should be a really fine flute-player, presumably so that he might amuse Tezcatlepoca in another world. As the victim ascended the high mound on which the sacrificial altar stood, facing the rising sun, it was his duty to break a flute ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... thus represented in the various handicrafts—the arts of peace and war. The cobbler, the flute player, the soldier, have undergone the discipline of experience to acquire the skill they have. This means that the bodily organs, particularly the senses, have had repeated contact with things and that the result of these contacts has been preserved and consolidated ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... the world; as it is said (Isa. v. 11-15), "Woe unto those that get up early in the morning, that they may run after strong drink; and continue until late at night, till flushed with wine. And the harp and psaltery, tambourine and flute, and wine are at ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... are perhaps Apollo and Artemis. In Fig. 125 three youths advance with measured step, carrying jars filled with wine, while a fourth youth stoops to lift his jar; at the extreme right may be seen part of a flute-player, whose figure was completed on the next slab. The attitudes and draperies of the three advancing youths, though similar, are subtly varied. So everywhere monotony is absent from the frieze. Fig. 126 is taken from the most animated and crowded part of the design. Here Athenian youths, ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... Pallas figure-heads are being regilded, crowds are surging under the market porticos, encumbered with wheat that is being measured, wine-skins, oar-leathers, garlic, olives, onions in nets; everywhere are chaplets, sprats, flute-girls, black eyes; in the arsenal bolts are being noisily driven home, sweeps are being made and fitted with leathers; we hear nothing but the sound of whistles, of flutes and fifes to encourage the work-folk. That is what you assuredly would have done, and would not ...
— The Acharnians • Aristophanes
... Chaeris sees you, he will come without bidding, he and his flute; and when you see him puffing and panting and out of breath, you will have to give ...
— Peace • Aristophanes
... stalls of the huge empty opera house. The members of the orchestra were all in their places. Pandemonium reigned! Each man was playing little snatches of the score before him, all in the same key, but with no attempt at time, tune or order. The piping of the flute, the sighing of the fiddle, the grunt of the double bass, the clear call of the cornet, the bray of the trombones, all went on together. The confused hubbub of sound was indescribable. Suddenly a slim, alert ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... stillness a bird's note fell through the jungle and there was a gleam of whiteness. That instant Silence was lifted, dawn began to sing through the jungle and you could hear its flute-like call fading away in the distance, followed by a momentary hush. Then the birds began to sing, and soon the sun came leaping over the forest like a horse of flame. This must have taken at least an hour and a half, but ...
— Kari the Elephant • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... perceptions. The idea of time is not derived from a particular impression mixed up with others, and plainly distinguishable from them; but arises altogether from the manner, in which impressions appear to the mind, without making one of the number. Five notes played on a flute give us the impression and idea of time; though time be not a sixth impression, which presents itself to the hearing or any other of the senses. Nor is it a sixth impression, which the mind by reflection finds in itself. These five sounds making their appearance in this particular ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... equally necessary, and a defect in a cog on a wheel would be as fatal as a flaw in the cylinder or a crack in the mighty shaft. What would become of a ship if the pintle that the rudder works on were away? The effect of a whole orchestra may depend on the coming in of the flute ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... left the Temple pro tempore. By the way, this conduct has caused strange surmises in a good lady of our acquaintance. She lately sent for a young gentleman of the India House, who lives opposite her, at Monroe's, the flute shop in Skinner Street, Snow Hill,—I mention no name, you shall never get out of me what lady I mean,—on purpose to ask all he knew about us. I had previously introduced him to her whist-table. Her inquiries embraced every possible thing that could ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... different tones," said the Doctor. "The Thrasher's song is like some one talking cheerfully; the Meadowlark's is flute-like; the Oriole's is more like clarion notes; the Bobolink bubbles over like a babbling brook; while the dear little brown striped Song Sparrow, who is with us in hedge and garden all the year, sings pleasant ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... herds, and pardon for any offences committed against the nymphs of the streams, the dryads of the woods, and the other deities of the Italian Olympus. This over, bonfires of hay and straw were lighted, music was made with cymbal and flute, and shepherds and sheep were purified by passing through the flames. A feast followed, the simple folk lying on benches of turf, and indulging in generous draughts of their homely wines, such, probably, as the visitor to-day may regale himself ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... way with unerring instinct through the forest. We had gone some distance, when we heard a deep, loud, and long-sustained flute-like note. It was that of a bird. The young Indian stopped, and pointing ahead, uttered the word nira-mimbeu, which I afterwards ascertained meant fife-bird, evidently from the peculiar note we had just heard. The whole party stopped in the attitude of listening, and looking among the branches, ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... the north of Bahia de Los Angeles, in the 18th century, shamans used whistles in ceremonies performed several days after a death (Sales, 1794, I:79), just as the modern Kiliwa use a reed flute at the niwey ceremony (Meigs, 1939, p. 45). In neighboring southern California, the use of flutes was nearly universal, while whistles were used infrequently ...
— A Burial Cave in Baja California - The Palmer Collection, 1887 • William C. Massey
... Ere heaving billows learned to blow, While organs yet were mute; Timotheus to his breathing flute And sounding lyre Could swell the soul to ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... with climbing plants and festooned by natural garlands of convolvulus and orchids. Here silence reigned, disturbed only by the murmuring hum of glittering insects, or the shrill clamour of the plum-headed parroquet and the flute-like calls of ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... brown man, 'and fill quills with it; and then they empty 'em into red jars till they are full; and then they pack it in buckskin sacks of one arroba each—an arroba is twenty-five pounds—and store it in a stone house, with an engraving of a idol with marcelled hair, playing a flute, over the door.' ...
— Options • O. Henry
... managed to secure some good musical talent, for the performance was of excellent quality. Perhaps summer air and moonbeams helped the effect. At any rate, the first performance, a duet between a flute and a violin, was undoubtedly listened to; and that is saying much. The performers were out of sight. Then a fine soprano voice followed, in a favourite ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... given to poetic recitation, often accompanied by music, and accomplished poets received liberal rewards. The chief musical instrument was the harp (hearpe), which is often mentioned. Less frequently we hear of the flute (pipe) and later also of the fiddle (fiethele). Trumpets (horn, swegelhorn, byme) appear to have been used ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... shepherds and peasants. This conclusion is supported by allusions in Aristophanes and in Plato's Crito, which undoubtedly refer to the drone: "This, dear Crito, is the voice which I seem to hear murmuring in my ears like the sound of the flute (aulos) in the ears of the mystic; that voice, I say, is humming in my ears."[27] Aristophanes, in his play The Acharnians, indulges in a flight of satire at the expense of the musical Boeotians, by making a band of Theban pipers ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... fashionable world, but a favorite rendezvous for the principal vocalists and pianists of the city, for Mrs. Gilman is perhaps the only amateur in New York society whose voice equals Carlotta Patti's in extent, and the ease with which her flute-like tones reach G in alt. Her voice has been carefully trained by many of the great New York masters, and has also had the advantage of Paris instruction. Therefore we may congratulate ourselves that we possess in private life, one who would make so ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... came home. His wife asked him where he had been for the past three weeks. "Three weeks! Is it three weeks you call three hours?" said he. Pressed to say where he had been, he told her he had been playing on his flute (which he usually took with him on the mountain) at the Llorfa, a spot near the Van Pool, when he was surrounded at a distance by little beings like men, who closed nearer and nearer to him until they became a very small circle. They sang and danced, and so affected him that he quite lost himself. ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... mere vulgar angling for a husband. Even in these enlightened days, many a curate who, considered abstractedly, is nothing more than a sleek bimanous animal in a white neck-cloth, with views more or less Anglican, and furtively addicted to the flute, is adored by a girl who has coarse brothers, or by a solitary woman who would like to be a helpmate in good works beyond her own means, simply because he seems to them the model of refinement and of public ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... Blue Grass Region of Kentucky Flute and Violin, and Other Kentucky Tales The Bride of the Mistletoe A Kentucky Cardinal. Aftermath. A Sequel ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... in the desert I heard the sound of a flute, pure sound in the pure air, delicate, sometimes almost comic with the comicality of a child who bends women to kisses and to nonsense-words. We had passed through the sandstorm, Safti and I, over the wastes of ...
— Smain; and Safti's Summer Day - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... out of practice and all that," explained Lanse, distributing scores, and helping to prop up Celia so that she might try to play, "but since you insist we'll give you all you'll want in a very few minutes. Here's your flute, Uncle Ray. If you'll play along with ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... of young men and women in vehicles and on horseback, and in expectation of great fun, were wending their way to Yabtree—nearly every trap containing a fiddle, concertina, flute, or accordion ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... for keeping back wild beasts, but Livingstone, armed only with eye beams, drove a snarling beast into the thicket, and Luther, lifting his great eyes upon an assassin, made the murderer flee. What flute or harp is comparable for sweetness to the voice? It carries warning and alarm. It will speak for you, plead for you, pray for you. Truly it is an architect, fulfilling Dante's dictum, "piling up mountains of melody." Serving the soul well, the body becomes sacred by service. ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... i.e. a married woman, who acts as a kind of priestess. Then after another sacrifice and a wedding feast, the bride is conducted from her old home to that of her husband, accompanied by three boys, sons of living parents, one carrying a torch while the other two lead her by either hand; flute-players go before, and nuts are thrown to the boys. This deductio, charmingly described in the beautiful sixty-fifth poem of Catullus, is full of interesting detail which must be omitted here. When the bridegroom's ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... besides my own, and have a bowing acquaintance with two dead ones. I have read widely enough in history, political economy, literature, science, and music to be superficial. I can write verses, play on the piano and flute, fence, flirt, and lead the cotillon. All this the public seem to recognize and give me credit for; but when I ask them to take me seriously, as they would the veriest beggar in the street, the frivolous ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... in hunting, and commonly came home with meat in the early part of the day, at least before night. I then dressed myself as handsomely as I could, and walked about the village, sometimes blowing the Pe-be-gwun, or flute. For some time Mis-kwa-bun-o-kwa pretended she was not willing to marry me, and it was not, perhaps, until she perceived some abatement of ardour on my part that she laid this affected coyness entirely aside. For my own part, I found that my anxiety ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... head resting against the wall, his trembling legs crossed one over the other, the thin hands in his lap—Richard's skill was a never-ending delight to Nathan, and he had not lost a note that his bow had called out. The flute-player had kept so quiet since the music had begun, and had become so much a part of the decorations —like one of the old chairs with its arms held out, or a white-faced bust staring from out a dark corner, or some portrait ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... currency, in marble and plaster and in bronze, in photographs of original portraits, paintings, and stereoscopic views. We have seen him on horseback and on foot, on the war-path and on skates, playing the flute, cussing his troops for their shiftlessness, and then, in the solitude of the forest, with his snorting war-horse tied to a tree, engaged ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... Girls no longer sing old ballads in the twilight to weary fathers and allure restless brothers to pass the evening at home in innocent participation in an impromptu concert, the boys bearing their part with voice and banjo or flute. We did not make perfect music when these domestic entertainments were in vogue, but we helped make happy homes ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... remarkable among them were the Fighting Gladiator; Silenus and a Faun; Seneca, in black marble, or rather a slave at the baths; Camillus; the Hermaphrodite; the Centaur and Cupid; two Fauns, playing on the flute; Ceres; an Egyptian; a statue of the younger Nero; the busts of Lucius Verus, Alexander, Faustina and Verus; various relievos, among which was one representing Curtius; an urn, on which was represented the festival of Bacchus; another ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... | [7] Musicians often 'dot' a note for the sake of emphasizing | | the accent, especially in orchestral music and with such | | instruments as the flute, where variations of stress are | | difficult to ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... wild than gay— The story of a magic flute; And as I sing, the waves shall play An ordered tune, the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... children only that were thus remembered. A little box bore my mother's name. When she opened it, we saw a real gold watch and chain, and seals and dangles of every sort, of useful and useless kind; and my mother's initials were on the back of the watch. My father had a silver flute, and to the music of it we had such a dance! the strange figure, now considerable lighter, joining in it without uttering a word. During the dance one of my sisters, a very sharp-eyed little puss, espied about half way up the ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... educate herself anew. Erasmus assures his readers that "though verging on old age, and not of a yielding temper," she was prevailed upon "to take lessons on the lute, the cithara, the viol, the monochord, and the flute, which she daily ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... of la Vestale was then new, and very much the fashion; it represented a quadrille of priests and vestals who entered to the sound of delicious music on the flute and harp, and in addition to this there were magicians, a Swiss marriage, Tyrolian betrothals, etc. All the costumes were wonderfully handsome and true to nature; and there had been arranged in the apartments at the palace a ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... certain characteristics which reappear constantly in the poet's work. One was his rare purity of soul; another was his brave spirit; a third was his delight in nature; a fourth was his passion for music. At seven he made his first flute from a reed, and ever afterwards, though he learned to play many instruments, the flute was to him as a companion and a voice. With it he cheered many a weary march or hungry bivouac; through it he told all his heart to the woman he loved; by it he won a place when he had no other means ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... hurt I am, I won't have any beer now! What a selfish brute I am! (Relenting.) You may bring me just a little drop. (He bursts into tears.) I will play you a plaintive Bohemian dance on my flute. (He does.) No beer at such a sacred moment as this! (He drinks.) Ha, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 23, 1891 • Various
... brought up together love one another. Look at our birds reared up in the same nests; they love like us; they are always together like us. Hark? how they call and answer from one tree to another. So when the echoes bring to my ears the air which you play upon your flute at the top of the mountain, I repeat the words at the bottom of the valley. Above all, you are dear to me since the day when you wanted to fight the master of the slave for me. Since that time how often have I said to myself, 'Ah, my brother ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... feathers stuck (in the latter); With the drums, large and small, suspended from them; And the hand-drums and sounding-stones, the instrument to give the signal for commencing, and the stopper. These being all complete, the music is struck up. The pan-pipe and the double flute begin at the ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... possible form? The everlasting hum and seething of myriad life satisfies and soothes me. I feel as if something were going on in the world, else why all this shouting, and bedecking of every weed in its best, this endless strain from every tiny weed or great oaken flute? All that cannot sing, dances; the gnats in the air and the long-legged spiders on the water. Even the ants and beetles, the workers that are quoted for examples by hoarding men, run about doing nothing, putting their busy antennae ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... half-pint of wine at the Club, entertaining themselves, and the rest of the company in the Club-room, with Circuit jokes and points of wit and law. Nobody is in chambers at all, except poor Mr. Cockle, who is ill, and whose laundress is making him gruel; or Mr. Toodle, who is an amateur of the flute, and whom you may hear piping solitary from his chambers in the second floor; or young Tiger, the student, from whose open windows comes a great gush of cigar smoke, and at whose door are a quantity of dishes and covers, ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... arms, art thou an archer, art thou a pikeman?"—"I am none of all this; but I know how to command all these." And Antisthenes took it for an argument of little value in Ismenias that he was commended for playing excellently well upon a flute. ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... clear its closes were— As if the hand of Music through The sombre robe of Silence drew A thread of golden gossamer; So pure a flute the fairy blew. Like beggared princes of the wood, In silver rags the birches stood; The hemlocks, lordly counselors, Were dumb; the sturdy servitors, In beechen jackets patched and gray, Seemed waiting spellbound all the day That low, entrancing ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... Zebah and Zalmunna come, Unheralded by trump or drum; Harp and timbrel now are mute, Cymbal loud and softer flute. And where are they, the bands that rent At morn with shouts the firmament? Like clods, far stretched o'er plain and hill, Their limbs are stiff, their lips are still! Broken is the arm of war; Quenched in night is ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... flute was heard behind the trees in the island, playing several airs in a minor key. Another flute answered. This interchange of musical phrases lasted for two or three ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... understood; for the young ones stood, by the ladies' permission, beside their chairs, to laugh at the same time as they did. Then the Abbot of Turpenay gracefully delivered himself of the following tale, the risky passages of which he gave in a low, soft, flute-like voice:— ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... apartment; then she unfolded large Babylonian hangings, and stretched them on cords all around the room, for Salammbo did not wish to be seen even by the walls. The kinnor-player squatted behind the door and the young boy standing upright applied a reed flute to his lips. In the distance the roar of the streets was growing feebler, violet shadows were lengthening before the peristyles of the temples, and on the other side of the gulf the mountain bases, the fields of olive-trees, and the vague yellow lands undulated indefinitely, and ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... Popes and Princesses, and Sodoma's languishing boys or half-ripe Catherines dying of love. Have I not said this was once a city of pleasure? And whether the pleasure was a blood-feast or an Agape, or a Platonic banquet where the flute-players and wine-cups and crowns crushed out the high disquisition and philosophic undercurrent—it was all one to soft Siena drowsing the days out on her hills. Her pleasures were fierce, and beautiful as fierce. But the burden of Tyre ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... like all instruments, Now like a lonely flute; And now it is an angel's song That makes the ...
— Lyrical Ballads 1798 • Wordsworth and Coleridge
... hangings are sewn with silver pomegranates and the steps that are of silver are strewn with saffron and with myrrh. My lovers hang garlands round the pillars of my house. At night time they come with the flute players and the players of the harp. They woo me with apples and on the pavement of my courtyard they ...
— A Florentine Tragedy—A Fragment • Oscar Wilde
... was heard in the shadow of a neighboring wood, or some other inscrutable hiding-place, singing softly in a flute-like note, as if blown through an instrument of wood,—"Cuckoo! Cuckoo!"—only twice, and ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... mechanist, M. Vaucanson; it is reported to have uttered its natural voice, moved its wings, drank water, and ate corn. In 1738, he delighted the Parisians by a figure of a shepherd which played on a pipe and beat a tabor; and a flute-player who performed ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... bed he pulled a box from which he drew a handsome flute. 'Ye'll forgive me, Mr Brand, but I aye like a tune before I go to my bed. Macnab says his prayers, and I have a tune on the flute, and the ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... barbarically coloured flowers, the plants with barbaric names, the carnivorous plants of the Antilles—morbid horrors of vegetation, chosen, not for their beauty, but for their strangeness. And his imagination plays harmonies on the sense of taste, like combinations of music, from the flute-like sweetness of anisette, the trumpet-note of kirsch, the eager yet velvety sharpness of curacao, the clarionet. He combines scents, weaving them into odorous melodies, with effects like those of the refrains ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... go with them, next day, to continue the observations. They shall be paid for their trouble, of course. These latter day Corydons have not the manners of antiquity: they reck little of the seven holed flute cemented with wax, or of the beechen bowl, preferring the coppers that will take them to the village inn on Sunday. A reward in ready money is promised for each nest that fulfils the desired conditions; and the bargain is ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... other. If you must know, it was only last night that the ghost of Jezebel and I danced a fandango together in the graveyard up yonder, while the Devil himself sat cross-legged on old Daniel Root's tombstone and blew on a dry, dusty shank-bone by way of a flute. And now" (here he swore a terrific oath) "you know the worst that is to be known, with only this to say: if ever a man sets foot upon Pig and Sow Point again after nightfall to interfere with the Devil's ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... sciences, mineralogy, anatomy, mathematics, and history; later, he included logic, physiology, and ethnography. He had always been passionately devoted to music and found relaxation in learning to play the flute and guitar. His studies at this time did not preoccupy him to the extent of isolation; he mixed freely with his fellows, and reckoned amongst his friends or acquaintances, F.W. Kreise, Bunsen, and Ernst Schulze. During one vacation he went on an expedition to Cassel and to ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... preference under the great sycamore trees. Through open doorways she would catch glimpses of picturesque groups of eager card-players, crowded round a flickering candle. From the darkness there would steal the sound of flute or zither, of voices singing. Occasionally it would be some strident ditty of the Paris music-halls, but more often it was sad and plaintive. But early in October the rains commenced and the stream became a roaring torrent, ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... out on the prairie. The other did not graduate before the cholera came. He was a native of Vermont, and he played the clarionet in our church choir. The instrumental music came from the clarionet, from a violin, and a flute. The choir came from France and Germany, Old England and New England, Ireland, Alsace, and Belgium. It was divided into two hostile camps, and the party which first took possession of the gallery took ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... ever known. Of 22,000 men who formed the army of the emigrants, 16,000 were gentlemen,-men of family and fortune: all of whom were now, with their families, destitute. He mentioned two of these who had engaged themselves lately in some orchestra, where they played first and second flute. The princes, he said, had been twice arrested for debt in different places—that they were now so reduced that they dined, themselves, the Comte d'Artois, children, tutors, etc.—eight or nine persons in all—upon one ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... in 1842. After graduation from a small college in his native state and then serving as tutor for a short time, he entered the Confederate army. During his war experiences, whether in the field or in prison, he studied poetry and played the flute. These two arts were his passions for life. While yet in his college days he had acquired a fine reputation as a flute-player. At eighteen he was said to be the best flute-player in Georgia. One of his college friends at the time made record ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... miles distant. No spare bed, a wretched smoky fire; and hard beer, and poor cheese, called Isle of Wight rock, were all the accommodation our host could provide. His parlour was just painted; but half-a-dozen sectarian books and an ill-toned flute amused us for an hour; then we again started, in harder rain than ever, for Newport. Compelled to halt twice, we saw some deplorable scenes of cottage misery, almost enough to put us out of conceit of rusticity, till after crossing a bleak, dreary heath, we espied the distant light of Newport. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 332, September 20, 1828 • Various
... is worth twenty dinners to have you hear the opera. I have longed so every night to have you there, and to have you on the stage! my highest wishes are granted. Oh! Marie, when you make a great point, I shall have to take my flute from my mouth and ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... ear the story of the burning wrong to which each had subjected the other, and the end of the whole affair was that Mr. Mell—having discovered that Mr. Creakle's veneration for money, and fear of offending his head-pupil, far outweighed any consideration for the teacher's feelings,—taking his flute and a few books from his desk, and leaving the key in it for his successor, went out of the school, with ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... nor did he again send his soldiers to seek for him of whom it was prophesied that he should be Pharaoh. For the head of the child, my foster-brother, was brought to him by the eunuch as he sat in his palace of marble at Alexandria, flushed with Cyprian wine, and played upon the flute before his women. And at his bidding the eunuch lifted up the head by the hair for him to look on. Then he laughed and smote it on the cheek with his sandal, bidding one of the girls crown Pharaoh with flowers. And he bowed the knee, and mocked the head of the innocent ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... performer on the flute; Mr. Lanman played the violin, and his wife the piano; and they discoursed some excellent music. Then, still better, there was singing. The deep-chested Forrest had a superb bass voice; Lanman a fine tenor; Annie's voice was ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... brief, true, and of a vividness as of fire in dark night; taken on the wider scale, it is everyway noble, and the outcome of a great soul. Francesca and her Lover, what qualities in that! A thing woven as out of rainbows, on a ground of eternal black. A small flute-voice of infinite wail speaks there, into our very heart of hearts. A touch of womanhood in it too: della bella persona, che mi fu tolta; and how, even in the Pit of woe, it is a solace that he will never part from her! Saddest tragedy in these alti guai. And the racking winds, in that ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... was Camilla. Her father Monsieur Salvatore Urso played the flute in the orchestra at the theatre, or opera house, and on Sundays played the organ at the Church of the Holy Cross that stood facing a little square ...
— Camilla: A Tale of a Violin - Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso • Charles Barnard
... (autumn), when the red glow of the forests was half veiled in the bluish mist that came with the return of soft languid days after frost had painted the trees and ripened the bristly chinquapins and luscious persimmons, Claw-of-the-Eagle took his flute and set ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... still. The moonlight touched to silver the snow upon the mountains; the sound of the leaping river was like a distant flute; the wind was rising with long, wavelike sounds. Honora lingered in the doorway, looking and listening. Her heart was big with pity—pity for that disheartened man whose buoyancy and self-love had been so deeply wounded, pity for those wandering, angry, aimless men and women who might have rested ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... Linnet sings like a magic flute, The Lark and Bluebird touch the lute, The Starling pipes to the shining morn With the vibrant note of the joyous horn, The splendid Jay Is the trumpeter gay, The Kingfisher, sounding his rattle,—he May the player on the cymbals be, The Cock, saluting the sun's first ray, Is the bugler ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... against it in the attitude of butting rams and scanned the coast-line to the sou'-west. Ruby Tresidder, on gaining the porch, saw Young Zeb tumble out of the stairway leading from the gallery and run by, stowing the pieces of his flute in his pocket as he went, without a glance at her. Like all the rest, he had ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... was younger; to tell me how dangers are most portentous on a distant sight; and how the good in a man's spirit will not suffer itself to be overlaid, and rarely or never deserts him in the hour of need. But we are all for tootling on the sentimental flute in literature; and not a man among us will go to the head of the march to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... son who made a pair of Jacks-of-all-trades. It was the son who sang the 'Death of Nelson' under such contrarious circumstances. He was by trade a shearer of ship plates; but he could touch the organ, and led two choirs, and played the flute and piccolo in a professional string band. His repertory of songs was, besides, inexhaustible, and ranged impartially from the very best to the very worst within his reach. Nor did he seem to make the least distinction between these extremes, but ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... before poets were either known or received among us; though we find in Cato de Originibus that the guests used, at their entertainments, to sing the praises of famous men to the sound of the flute; but a speech of Cato's shows this kind of poetry to have been in no great esteem, as he censures Marcus Nobilior for carrying poets with him into his province; for that consul, as we know, carried ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... hour, and then a big bell rings, and the working men and women tramp gaily by, chatting noisily and in excellent spirits. Now comes the milkman's turn. He, like the chimney-sweep, has his own howl, softer, more flute-like in quality than that of the sweep, but still capable of waking any one who is not a domestic servant in hard training. The milkman also cries "woa" to his horse at every house, and accompanies himself on his great tin cans, making a noise most tolerable, and not to be endured. ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... Francesca and Fidelio, Laura embroidering, Fidelio strumming his flute, Francesca ...
— The Lamp and the Bell • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... successful in interesting King Frederick of Prussia in his new instrument to the extent of persuading him to purchase outright all he had finished. There were some fifteen of these, which were placed in the rooms at the palace. This demonstrates the King's love for music. He was a flute player of considerable ability. One of the court musicians was Carl Philip Emanuel Bach, son of the great master, and King Frederick had expressed a desire to hear the elder Bach play upon the new invention. For some time old Sebastian was obstinate ...
— How the Piano Came to Be • Ellye Howell Glover
... to climb With measured swiftness, from the hard-bent bow To send resistless arrows to their mark, Or for the fame of prowess to contend, 470 Now wrestling, now with fists and staves opposed, Now with the biting falchion, and the fence Of brazen shields; while still the warbling flute Presided o'er the combat, breathing strains Grave, solemn, soft; and changing headlong spite To thoughtful resolution cool and clear. Such I beheld those islanders renown'd, So tutor'd from their birth to ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... hundred years of prosperity, these mighty kings showed signs of growing tired. Rather than ride a camel at the head of their army, the rulers of the great Egyptian Empire stayed within the gates of their palace and listened to the music of the harp or the flute. ...
— Ancient Man - The Beginning of Civilizations • Hendrik Willem Van Loon
... lady at the table was a little mamsell from Holstebro, who sat beside him, dressed like a girl for Confirmation, in a black silk dress and long red shawl. She was in grand array, for she was on a visit. This young lady understood dress-making, and could play upon the flute; which, however, she never did without a certain bashfulness: besides this, she spoke well, especially upon melancholy events. The bottle of wine only circulated at the upper end of the table; the shopman and aunt ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... left her; ere she fell And foam'd among her maidens on the ground, The air was ringing with a merry swell Of flute, and pipe, and every sweetest sound, In Aphrodite's fane, and all around Were roses toss'd beneath the glimmering green Of that high roof, and Helen there was crown'd The Goddess of the ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... musicians slowly, with shuffling steps. The quiet is broken by a note on a gong, struck softly, and there is an almost inaudible flute melody on reeds, and liquid notes struck on empty bamboos. These dusky figures are Kachin men, with red turbans, and short, white, very loose kilts and bolero jackets. Some of the reflected light from the sand shows their curious, serious, boyish faces. ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... sense of deep solitude is at once heightened and softened by the flute-like notes of the solitaire. I shall never forget the impression produced by first hearing this. It was on the top of St. Catherine's Peak, fifty-two hundred feet above the sea, in the early morning, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... commanded to look at everything. He looked. A troop of dancers poured into the open space before the Emir's tent. Different Tartar instruments, the "doutare," a long-handled guitar, the "kobize," a kind of violoncello, the "tschibyzga," a long reed flute; wind instruments, tom-toms, tambourines, united with the deep voices of the singers, formed a strange harmony. Added to this were the strains of an aerial orchestra, composed of a dozen kites, which, fastened ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... "Chipping-Sparrow,"—a name which I will never consent to apply to him,—his voice is no mean accompaniment to the general chorus which may be heard every still morning before sunrise, during May and June. His continued trilling note is to this warbling band what the octave flute is to a grand concert of artificial instruments. The voices of numbers of these birds, which are the very first to be heard and the last to become silent in the morning, serve to fill up the pauses in this sylvan anthem, like a running appoggiatural accompaniment in certain admired musical compositions. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... grace, and which he continued to fill in the same manner, though he had no one to wait on him but his mother, and her faithful servant Jane Beckett. Years passed on, and they seemed perfectly satisfied with their division of labour,—Mrs. Frost kept school, and Henry played the flute, or shot ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the American Indians. Perhaps the character of these several nations may be connected with it. The steady honour, and firm valour of the Spaniard, very like that of the ancient Doric nation, who followed the flute not the trumpet to the field; and met the enemy, not with shouts and fury, but with a determined virtue: it is the temper of the Hypochondriac to be slow, but unmoveably resolved: the Jew has shewn this ...
— Hypochondriasis - A Practical Treatise (1766) • John Hill
... or stand round the room in a circle. The leader assigns to each some musical instrument, as harp, flute, violincello, trombone, etc., and also selects one for himself. Some well-known tune is then given out, say "Yankee Doodle," and the players all begin to play accordingly, each doing his best to imitate, both in sound and action, the instrument ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... The soft complaining flute In dying notes discovers The woes of hopeless lovers, Whose dirge is whisper'd by ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... of gestures until the head of each row had reached the limit in that direction, and then, turning outward to right and left, countermarched in the same manner to the point of starting, and so continued to do. They kept step and timed their gestures and movements to the music of the bamboo nose-flute, the ohe. ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... I've a Peruvian nose-flute, made of bone, A war-conch brought me from the South Pacific, Which, by a leather-lunged performer blown, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 29, 1916 • Various
... festival of puja, the neighbours' children come and play about the house, I shall melt into the music of the flute and throb ...
— The Crescent Moon • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... to debauch the mind, is partially fermented. Murwa grain (Eleusine Coracana). Spirits are rather too strong to be relished raw, and when a glass of wine is given to one of a party, he sips it, and hands it round to all the rest. A long bamboo flute, with four or six burnt holes far below the month-hole, is the only musical instrument I have seen in use among them. When travelling, and the fatigues of the day are over, the Lepchas will sit for hours chatting, telling stories, singing in a monotonous tone, or blowing this flute. ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... Then he had all sorts of drawing-materials—papers, and pencils, and sketch-books, and a colour-box, and mathematical instruments, and even a chronometer. He had a writing-case, and a tool-box, and a flute and violin, and some music-books. I asked him if he could use ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... flushed cheeks, took down from the wall a little mandolin of Spanish workmanship, and, striking a few chords, began the carol, in which Cicely, after sacrificing some moments to ill-temper, concluded presently to join, her clear flute-notes rising high above her ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... right-hand corner; and, moving in a semi-circle, would pass slowly on and disappear in the left. Moreover I beheld the shapes of castles and houses, of horses and riders, of plants, trees, musical instruments, theatres, dresses of men of all sorts, and flute-players who seemed to be playing upon their instruments, but neither voice nor sound was heard therefrom. And besides these things I beheld soldiers, and crowds of men, and fields, and certain bodily forms, which seem hateful to me ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... came and went, The hunter's gun in the marshes rang; At nightfall from a neighboring tent A flute-voiced woman sweetly sang. Loose-haired, barefooted, hand-in-hand, Young girls went tripping down the sand; And youths and maidens, sitting in the moon, Dreamed o'er the old fond dream from which we wake ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... of these things continually brought up visions of the loving and beautiful child, who for so many years had slept nestling in her arms, and made the days tuneful with her songs. Then there was Gerald's silent flute, and the silken cushion she had embroidered for him, on which she had so often seen him reposing, and thought him handsome as a sleeping Adonis. A letter from him made her cheerful for days; but they did not come often, and were generally brief. Tom came with the ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... clear, flute-like voice, resonant in its firmness, rang out from behind him as he spoke, and he wheeled abruptly, to find Anita standing with her slender form outlined against the dark, rich velvet of the curtains. Her head ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... a magnificent brass band, while Kershaw had only a fife corps headed by that prince of players, Sam Simmonds, who could get more real music out of a fife or flute than some musicians could out of a whole band. The music of the fife and drum, while it may not be so accomplished, gives out more inspiring strains for the marching soldier than any brass band. The cornet, ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... the men, in their blue blouses, were sauntering slowly homeward. The children were playing all down the village street, and not far away a few girls and young men were beginning to dance to the piping of a flute. Over the whole was creeping the golden ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton |
