"For a song" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for beauty follow long Flying traces; some there be Seek thee only for a song: I to lose ...
— The Nuts of Knowledge - Lyrical Poems New and Old • George William Russell
... saw this, and determining with his usual tact to repress it, called on the adjutant for a song. Now, whether he had but one in the world, or whether he took this mode of retaliating for the annoyances he had suffered, I know not; but true it is, he finished his tumbler at a draught, and with a voice of no very peculiar sweetness, ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... hearse-plumes, which he nodded to and fro with a jaunty and knowing air; and, in his right hand, he held a huge human thigh-bone, with which he appeared to have been just knocking down some member of the company for a song. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... state knows that the trustees of the Waukeegan Christian University are your dummies. It would be insanity for the party to turn over a hundred thousand acres of valuable public land gratis to them, so that they can presently sell it to you for a song." ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... cedars. Here I soon ran upon several robins, feeding upon the savin berries, and in a moment more was surprised by a tseep so loud and emphatic that I thought at once of a fox sparrow. Then I looked for a song sparrow,—badly startled, perhaps,—but found to my delight a white-throat. He was on the ground, but at my approach flew into a cedar. Here he drew in his head and sat perfectly still, the picture of discouragement. I could not blame him, but was glad, an hour later, to find him again on the ground, ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... cared to put good money into what was officially and authoritatively announced as a bad title. At the sheriff's sale there were no bona fide bidders except the secret agents of Malcolm Neil. The sheriff's titles—such as they were— went for a song. Immediately the ostensible purchasers were personally warned by the ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... of Norway! To think but of thee Makes so small all the small things I felt. To thy coming I hallow me, wholly to thee, And I humbly look up to thy face, unto thee, And I pray for a song With thy tongue's stirring sound, That I true may and strong In the crisis be found, To rouse heroes for ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... be clerk, head-clerk, and small partner, and fagged along very comfortably until the Civil War broke out, and made his fortune. His firm secured a government contract, for which they paid dearly, and for which they made the Government pay dearer. Their pork was bought for a song, and sold for its weight in greenbacks. Their profits averaged 300 per cent. They were more fatal to the soldiers than the bullets of the enemy. One consignment of their provisions bred a cholera at Fortress Monroe, and robbed the Union of 15,000 brave men. Their enemies declared that the ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... not stay and long, Here where our souls are wasting for a song; Where no bird sings; and, dim beneath the stars, No silvery water strikes melodious bars; And in the rocks and forest-covered hills No quick-tongued echo from her grotto fills With eery syllables the solitude— ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... before his line A little space along, His beardless face broke into mirth, And he cried: "What broken bits of earth Are here? For what their clothes are worth I would sell them for a song." ...
— The Ballad of the White Horse • G.K. Chesterton
... In pursuance of this clever scheme, the adventurer sets out on his travels, visits provincial towns, and the estates of landed gentry of every shade of character, honesty, and financial standing; and from them he buys for a song (or cajoles from them for nothing, as a gift, when they are a trifle scrupulous over the tempting prospect of illegal gain) huge numbers of "dead souls." Pushkin himself could not have used with such tremendous effect the ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... pretensions, had that of being able to relate a story in an impressive manner. These words were as pleasing to his ears as the request for a song is to a lady who requires urging, although ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... pocket of my coat," said Walter Bruce, "you will find a document. It is the deed of five lots in the town of Tacoma, in Washington Territory. I was out there last year, and having a little money, bought the lots for a song. They are worth very little now, but some time they ...
— Chester Rand - or The New Path to Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr
... rows of lights one above the other shining kindly to them across the water, and "Thank God!" was murmured in heartfelt tones round the boat. The boat swung round and the crew began their long row to the steamer; the captain called for a song and led off with "Pull for the shore, boys." The crew took it up quaveringly and the passengers joined in, but I think one verse was all they sang. It was too early yet, gratitude was too deep and sudden in its overwhelming intensity, for us to sing very steadily. Presently, finding the ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley
... dear; you don't want to die in here, do you? (explanatorily) "die in"—dine—you'll excuse me, but the ocean always makes me feel so facetious. Captain, dear, if you'll pardon a common sailor like myself for making the suggestion, I beg to call upon you for a song. (The Captain obligingly bellows "The Stormy Nore—The Jolly old Nore," to the general satisfaction). Ah, they didn't know what a canary-bird you were, Captain! Here's a lady asking you ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 13, 1892 • Various
... printing machine." He was asked, "In fact, the mechanic and the peasant, in the most remote parts of the country, have now an opportunity of seeing tolerably correct outlines of form which they never could behold before?" To which he answered, "Exactly; and literally at the price they used to give for a song." "Is there not, therefore, a greater chance of calling genius into activity?" "Yes," he said, "not merely by books creating an artist here and there, but by the general elevation of the taste ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... her theme! She has altered the bar To Kathleen Mavourneen and Erin-go-bragh! Spell-bound stand the rustics; she's won the whole throng! To the lady they've given their votes "for a song." "'Twill be ours, will the seat—'tis the plot I have planned! Oh, Music ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 25, 1891 • Various
... system of local honors for songs which could be sung by the Winnebagos. Any girl writing the words of a song which was adopted for use would receive a leather W cut in the form of wings to represent "winged words" or poetry; the honor for composing the music for a song would be a winged note cut from leather, and the honor for writing both words and music would be a combination of the two. These were to be known as the "Olowan" honors, because "Olowan" was the Winnebago word for song, and were quite independent of the National song honors, because a great ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... and ran would slip his rope about the neck of a calf and lead it back to the ranch. The calf would side up to the pony and follow it along as if under the delusion that it was following its mother. The man traded in cattle by picking up estrays and buying, for a song, those that were footsore and sick, keeping them till in condition and then selling them to passing trains that were ...
— A Gold Hunter's Experience • Chalkley J. Hambleton
... Dundee and here and there a one in the City of London were able to procure. In its flavour, said he, lurked the mystery of strange and barbaric names. He showed me a Bonington water colour which he had picked up for a song. On enquiry as to the signification of a song as a unit of value, I learned that since eminent tenors and divas had sung into gramophones, the standard ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... If his country is fighting by a levy en masse for her very existence, he aids her by depreciating her paper, so that he may accumulate fabulous amounts with little outlay. If his neighbor is distressed, he buys his property for a song. If he administers upon an estate, it turns out insolvent, and the orphans are paupers. If his bank explodes, he is found to have taken care of himself in time. Society worships its paper-and-credit kings, as the old Hindus and Egyptians worshipped their worthless idols, and often ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... are," he commented sarcastically. "Only thing missing from the scenario, as stated, is the farm. Where are you going to pick up an oil farm for a song? Old maids are sure to have a nephew or something hanging round ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... nothing! Why they told me that fifteen years ago I could have had all sorts of things,—trunk line railways, sugar refineries, silver mines,—any of them for a song. When I heard it I was half glad I hadn't sung for the land. They told me that there was a time when I could have bought out the Federal Steel Co. for twenty million dollars! And I let ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock
... Rocambeau, could possibly tell. But it was the only name that Andrew had, and as good as any other. It was part of his inheritance, the remainder being ninety-five francs in cash, some cheap trinkets, a couple of boxes of fripperies which were sold for a song, a tattered copy of Longfellow's Poems, and a brand new gilt-edged Bible, carefully covered in brown paper, with "For Fanny from Jim" inscribed on the flyleaf. From which Andrew Lackaday, as soon as his mind could grasp such things, deduced that his mother's name was Fanny, and his father's James. ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... meaning all that lot. I instantly cabled back 'Thanks, don't tell her of this.' ["So that's what mother was hinting at," thought Eileen, with a smile.] It was all I could do not to cable to you: 'Will you marry me? Reply paid.' ["What a good idea for a song!" murmured Nelly.] Put me out of my agony as soon as you can, won't you, dearest Eileen? Your face is floating before me as I write, with its black Irish eyes ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... large house, for of course you will give a ball. Lady K. says we might have Lord Porlock's house—poor Lady Porlock and her baby died a few weeks ago, and he has gone to Sweden quite broken-hearted. It is one of the new houses, exquisitely furnished, and Lady K. thinks you might have it for a song. Will you get Steadman to write to his lordship's steward, and see ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... would Solomon have given for a song like this, instead of his mournful, groan "for death is the end of all men"! Alas, as he goes on, he finds that even this is not the case, except as regards the scene "under the sun." He finds it impossible to escape a conclusion, as startling ...
— Old Groans and New Songs - Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes • F. C. Jennings
... judge me, Mr Walpole. Be witness yourself if my presence there this day has proved me one. Refused and cast away by this nobleman, I had nothing to do but to dispose for a trifle of a few articles of linen which were still in my possession. I sold them for a song, and believing failure to be impossible, still struggled on. In that room I dwelt, living for days upon nothing richer than bread and water, and regarding my little money with the agony of a miser, as every demand diminished the small store. From morn till night I laboured. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... not until several ginger-beer bottles had rolled off the table, and the rickety form had once more gone down with every soul on board, that a sufficient amount of order was restored to enable the president to call on somebody for a song. ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... shook his head. "Bought it on her own, after the husband's time, for a song—a song! I know, because I ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... and a book-collector of means and cultivation, whose fancy for them went so far as to induce him to become a member of the unique little family in the dingy wooden shanty which they had succeeded in renting for a song. To this old gentleman, who had the reputation of being something of a crank, The Dreamer's conversation and Virginia's beauty and exquisite singing were never-failing wells of delight, while the generous sum that he ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... worry about 'Bony.' He's right handy around the mill, an' he does odd jobs for a many people; but if you want him, I 'low you can have him 'for a song.'" ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... breaking of him as a petty officer, receiving four dollars a month beyond his pay as an able seaman. He attempts to bribe the other to secrecy, by promising half the profits of the enterprise; but the sheet-anchor-man's integrity is like a rock; he is no mercenary, to be bought up for a song. The cockswain, therefore, is forced to swear that neither himself, nor any of his crew, shall enter the barge before morning. This done, the sheet-anchor-man goes to his confidants, and arranges his plans. In a word, he succeeds ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... dowries for the sisters was always in Ruth's mind. Of course, she knew that the Stower estate was rapidly increasing in value. In a few years property that Peter Stower had purchased for a song would be worth a fortune. The Kenways were likely to be ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... in the Chausee des Minimes, a short, broad street leading to the Place Royale. He had bought the house, an old-fashioned mansion, for a song, as the saying is, in 1831. Yet there were sumptuous apartments within it, decorated in the time of Louis XV.; for it had once been the Hotel Maulaincourt, built by the great President of the Cour des Aides, and its remote position had ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... bankrupt, but in 1811 he was setting free his Negro slave, Nancy, aged about forty. During these years he tended the sick (a bill for sixty-five dollars was tendered to John Harper's widow in 1804), fought the plague and fever, epidemics, and prescribed for his friends with time out for a song or a sketch. His copy of James Sharples' George Washington, now in the Mount Vernon collection, is a competent, artistic portrait. He was fond of good food, good talk, people and music. His genial spirit and charming wit graced many a festive board, and that he ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... it up at an auction where people were being sold out, and he got it for a song," he said. "But we've outgrown it. I'd like a real pony. I wish ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... in the night time precisely he is filling his pocket, in the night when, as I think, we receive gifts from the unseen. I placed him in the house of a miser, an old man who had saved a store of gold. I called the old man Damer, from a folk-story of a chandler who had bought for a song the kegs of gold the Danes had covered with tallow as a disguise when they were driven out of Ireland, and who had been rich and a miser ever after. I did not mean this old man, Damer, to appear at all. He ...
— New Irish Comedies • Lady Augusta Gregory
... feet above sea-level, the climate of Heddle's Farm is said to be wholly different from that of the lower town. The property was bought by Government for a song, and now it occasionally lodges a sick governor or a convalescent officer. During my last visit the Sa Leonites spoke of building a sanatorium at Wilberforce village, alias Signal Hill, where a flag announces the approach of vessels. The tenement rose to nearly the first story, when it stopped ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... Pierce did what he could for him by giving him the Portuguese mission (after first offering it to my father), and O'Sullivan did excellent work there. But he became interested—abstractly—in some copper-mines in Spain, which, as he clearly demonstrated, could be bought for a song, and would pay a thousand per cent, from the start. Partly to gratify him, and partly with the hope of at least getting his money back, my father finally, in 1858 or 1859, advanced him ten thousand dollars ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... my father took possession of the apothecary's shop in Neu-Ruppin, which he had acquired at a most favorable price, for a song, so to speak; at Easter, 1826, after three of my four brothers and sisters had been born there, he disposed of the property. Whenever this early sale of the business became a topic of conversation, it was ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... goin' to lose all his leases inside of a month if he doesn't sell 'em; and with cotton at six cents, they ain't shovin' each other off of Reedy's stairway tryin' to get to him first. It's my idea that a fellow could buy out the Red Butte for a song, and hire a parrot to ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... prodigious favourite. I see by your look, however, that enough has been said; but after having done so much to amuse this good company, to-night, I shall feel authorised to call on every lady present, at least for a song, as soon as the proper moment arrives. Perhaps I have a right to add, a sentiment, and ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... applications. "Turpsichor" had then been sold cheap to a man who had started a tea-garden, in the vain hope of reviving the glories of those forgotten institutions; when he had drifted into bankruptcy, she had been knocked down for a song to a second-hand shop, where she had been bought for next to nothing by Mr Poulter as "the very thing." Now she stood in the entrance hall of the academy, where, it can truthfully be said, that no heathen goddess received so much adoration ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... the kitchen, which was in the taste of an old New England kitchen, with hard-seated high-backed chairs, and a kitchen table with curiously turned legs, which he had picked up in the hen-house of a neighbouring farmer for a song. There was an authentic crane in the dining-room fireplace, which he had found in a heap of scrap-iron at a blacksmith's shop, and had got for next to nothing. The sideboard he had got at an old second-hand shop in the North End; and he believed it was ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... Lumber can't go any higher. Think of the situation; the lumber men in the north and west are overstocked, and there is a strike ready to go into effect. When that comes the stock will go for a song. The slump is liable to ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... indeed, surpassed herself! April blenched, but she took the blow standing. After all, she had been as great a fool as the girl sitting there, for she, too, had handed over her good name into the careless hands of another; had sold her reputation for a song—a song that had lasted seventeen days, but seemed now in the act ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... Harry (according to us; Jim, Charlie, and Frank according to their sponsors in baptism) simply couldn't bear it. They went out; and four hours later came back with a car (Lord made it, so let it pass for a car!) which they had bought somewhere, second or third hand, for a song. Even a song of sixpence would be dear for the great-grandmother of the whole progeny of Lords! The thing must be eight years old if it's a day, but the boys are as pleased as Punch with their bargain. The oldest of them (Tom) thinks ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... I am paying fifteen dollars for a fiddle which it is a genu-ine Amati," he said, "and that brother of mine which he ain't got no more sense as a lunatic lets it go for a song already." ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass
... fellow that owned her ran down a rowboat and drowned a boy. Then he put her on top of a ledge, but got her off without doing her much damage. He sold her for a song." ...
— Frank Merriwell's Cruise • Burt L. Standish
... By purchasing for a song the McDermott rights at Kyak he had placed himself in position to share in the benefits of the Heidlemann breakwater, and by rapidly pushing his tracks ahead he made his rivalry seem formidable. As a means of attack upon O'Neil he adopted a procedure ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... frightened to ask him who he was, and what he wanted. But the man immediately uttered a guttural, grumbling sound, which was probably intended for a song; and Jussuf heard ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... so tickled their ears during their advance in the wood. The Don complied, malgre, bongre; and at the conclusion of this feat, the French colonel, resolved not to be outdone in any thing, called on one of his subalterns for a song. The subaltern hopelessly searched his memory for its lyrical stores; but after half a dozen snatches of "chansons," and breaking down in them all, he volunteered, in despair, what he pronounced, "the most popular love-song in all Italy." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... and made preparations for a long drought. Being rich, with land in other counties, he was able to move his stock to green pastures. We knew that he was storing up the money sucked by the sun out of us. He was foreclosing mortgages, buying half-starved horses and steers for a song, selling hay and straw at fabulous prices. And we were reeling upon the ragged edge of bankruptcy! He, the beast of prey, the vulture, was gorging ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... ostentation, their picturesque surroundings. Their cottages were simple; but each had its charming outlook to sea and a sufficient number of more or less wooded acres to command privacy and breathing space. In the early days the land had sold for a song, but it had risen steadily with the times, as more and more people coveted a foothold. The last ten years had introduced many changes; the older houses had been pulled down and replaced by lordly structures with all the modern conveniences, including spacious stables and farm buildings. ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... repay thee for a song so rare? For not the whispering south-wind on its way So much delights me, nor wave-smitten beach, Nor streams that race adown their ...
— The Bucolics and Eclogues • Virgil
... an hour before the brake was to start back, and it was then the concertinas came in useful. They sat down on the grass, and the concert was begun by Harry, who played a solo; then there was a call for a song, and Jim stood up and sang that ancient ditty, 'O dem Golden Kippers, O'. There was no shyness in the company, and Liza, almost without being asked, gave another popular comic song. Then there was more concertina playing, and another demand for ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham
... daintiest morsels for the last. Her silent glee communicated itself to the other two, who watched impatiently for the happy news that was about to gladden their hearts. Some of the company now asked Undine for a song. She seemed to be prepared with one, and sent for her lute, to which she ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... moderate prices. Thousands sold their happiness for a whim. Gilded chains were in great demand, and purchased with almost any sacrifice. In truth, those who desired, according to the old adage, to sell anything valuable for a song, might find customers all over the Fair; and there were innumerable messes of pottage, piping hot, for such as chose to buy them with their birthrights. A few articles, however, could not be found genuine at Vanity Fair. If a customer wished to renew his stock of youth ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... when he saddest sits in holy cell, He'll teach his swains this carol for a song: Blest be the hearts that wish my sovereign well! Cursed be the souls that think her any wrong! Goddess! allow this aged man his right To be your beadsman ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... in love with you myself, little Allison, in love with your lost youth, in love with the shadow of a shadow. And that is a subject for a song—" ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... was even more beautiful than her face, and that meant a great deal. There was a general rustle of expectation over the audience as she rose. Mr. Maxwell settled himself contentedly behind the pulpit. Rachel Winslow's singing always helped him. He generally arranged for a song before the sermon. It made possible a certain inspiration of feeling that made his delivery ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... spectator's attention by telling "how it all ends." To quote Mr. Harry Cowell, writing in The Magazine Maker: "A title is a means to an end. The end of a story should justify the title. If the title gives the story away, the writer may have to give it away, too, or sell it for a song, which is bad business." Let the title suggest the theme of the story, by all means; but keep your climax, your "big" scene, safely under cover until the moment comes to "spring it" upon the spectators and leave them gasping, ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... was far-reaching. Napoleon gave up his dream of American empire and sold Louisiana for a song. "Thus, all of Indian Territory, all of Kansas and Nebraska and Iowa and Wyoming and Montana and the Dakotas, and most of Colorado and Minnesota, and all of Washington and Oregon states, came to us as the indirect work of a despised Negro. Praise, if you will, the work of ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... writings of any other American poet.' Willis also tells us, as proof of the General's popularity with those shrewd dollar-loving men, the publishers, that 'he can, at any time, obtain fifty dollars for a song unread, when the whole remainder of the American Parnassus could not sell one to the same buyer for a single shilling!' He is the best-known poet of the country by ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... such men as Iberville, were as cheerful in the still iron winter as any city under any more cordial sky then or now: men loved, hated, made and broke bargains, lied to women, kept a foolish honour with each other, and did deeds of valour for a song, as ever they did from the beginning of the world. Through the stern soul of Nature ran the temperament of men who had hearts of summer; and if, on a certain notable day in Iberville's life, one could ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... mammole, the sweet-scented Parma violet, are offered you by little girls and boys; and at the corner of the Condotti and Corso is a splendid show of camelias, set into beds of double violets, and sold for a song. Now and then one meets huge baskets filled with these delicious violets, on their way to the confectioners and caffes, where they will be made into syrup; for the Italians are very fond of this bibite, and prize it not only for its flavor, but for its medicinal qualities. Violets ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... the Jesuits, who make a pretty Penny by it. The taxes very high, and laid on Wine, Meat, Oil, and other Necessaries of Life; indeed on every thing eatable except Fruit and Fowls, which you may buy for a Song. All Foreigners who have here purchased Estates are loaded with Extraordinary Taxes and Impositions. The City is remarkable for its Silk Stockings, Waistcoats, Breeches, and Caps; Soap, Perfume, and Snuff-boxes. They cool their Wine with Snow, which they get out of pits ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... Books that they have yearn'd for long Have done their Literary Taste much wrong: Reprints of Burton will not sell to-day (I mean the stupid Burton) for a Song! ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Cayenne • Gelett Burgess
... cool on the porch and the company were invited into the large double parlors to play some games. After enjoying a variety of games for an hour, it was proposed to have some music. The Hernes had a fine-toned piano, and it was always kept in tune. Several young gentlemen asked Miss Grace Nettleton for a song, and all the other members of the company joined in the request. Miss Nettleton said she would like some one to play the accompaniment, and Prof. French said: ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... to her father. Gold had been discovered on the Tantrum land, and the stranger, Edgar Edison, was trying to buy the land for a song. He was considering what ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... song, and Doyle remembered that Satherwaite had been in the Glee Club. There was an instant clamor for a song, and Satherwaite, consenting, looked ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... Phelps, bitterly, "he couldn't seem to wreck the company fast enough. Why? Do you realize that there isn't room both for this older company and the new Fortune Features? Can you see that if Manton Pictures fails the Fortune company will be able to pick up the studio and all the equipment for a song? I'm the fall guy! ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... everybody an assay showing values, where there are no values—this for the purpose of keeping up work in the district—and to those who have found values, he gives them an assay showing nothing. At the same time he gives Rayder, the Denver capitalist, a tip and he buys up the property for a song, giving Amos a fat commission for his part in the deal. The chances are that we have no more gold in our rock than there is in that ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... that a distant relative (a long-lost uncle) had conveniently left me his vast property. I cared only because it enabled me to withdraw from the profession. I disposed of my exhibition, or rather I let it go for a song. I simply handed over the Tattooed Man, the Artillery Twins, and the Double-headed Serpent to the first-comer, who happened to be a rural dean. Far in the deeps of the country, near the little town of Roding, on a lonely highway, where no man ...
— Much Darker Days • Andrew Lang (AKA A. Huge Longway)
... Dog-faced Man held up his hand—but swiftly replaced it between the child's warm, sympathetic palms. "No rings. Understand? 'Pawned the Family Jewells.' Git me? 'Reduced to Poverty.' Where's my frock coat? Where's my silk hat? 'Wardrobe of a Celebrity Sold For A Song.' Where's them two pair of trousers? 'A Tragic Disappearance.' All up the spout. Everything gone. 'Not a Stitch to His Name.' Really, Richard, it wouldn't be proper to get well. A natural phenomenon of my standing couldn't—simply couldn't, ...
— The Mother • Norman Duncan
... me. Don Jose, when sober, was a trader with the natives, and a year before had acquired from them two good buck wagons. Probably they were stolen from some wandering Boers or found derelict after their murder or death by fever. These wagons he was only too glad to sell for a song. I think I gave him twenty pounds English for the two, and thirty more for twelve oxen that he had bought at the same time as the wagons. They were fine beasts of the Afrikander breed, that after a long rest had grown ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... had had a small buzzer, such as is sold for a song at every electrical store, to say nothing of a pocket voltmeter, we would have discovered in a moment that the reserve battery contained one dead cell, the resistance of which made the other cells useless. At Batavia we tested them out with an ordinary electric ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... an opportunity for Adolphe to seize. A house is to be sold at Ville d'Avray, for a song, of course. Now, the country house is a weakness peculiar to the inhabitant of Paris. This weakness, or disease, has its course and its cure. Adolphe is a husband, but not a doctor. He buys the house ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... our General, Absent Friends and so on—several comrades from other corps dropped in and every one was called upon for a song. It is curious to find the extraordinary popularity amongst soldiers of lugubrious and doleful songs. The majority of our songs at that Christmas dinner dealt with graves and the flowers that grew upon them, on the death of soldiers and the grief of parents. One song, I remember, was almost ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett
... saw the two boys standing there, a rapt look of admiration and envy on their faces, as they stared at the little case of common local butterflies which possibly some boy had gathered together, and then disposed of for a song. ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... determine. She did not see him again. It is quite another thing, hazardous to venture, to state that he did not see her. At all events, it is certain that many people who bad never beheld her were talking of her; that Rouen was full of contention concerning her beauty and her gift of music, for a song can be heard through an open window. And how did it happen that Crailey Gray knew that it was Miss Carewe's habit to stroll in her garden for half an hour or so, each evening before retiring, and that she ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... Lyttleton observed profoundly, "if one isn't in too great a hurry—there's no telling—one may run across the lost things in odd corners and buy them back for a song or so. Anne Warridge did, when they looted her Southampton place, some time ago. Remember the year 'motor-car pirates' terrorized Long Island? Well, long after everything was settled and the insurance ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... do for a song, but it ain't no p'ints of a good hos. Trotters nowadays go in all shapes, big heads and little heads, big eyes and little eyes, short ears or long ears, thick tail and no tail; so as they have sound legs, good ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... incomprehensible rubbish by heart out of books and reciting it by rote, like parrots; so that a finished education consisted simply of a permanent headache and the ability to read without stopping to spell the words or take breath. Hawkins bought out the village store for a song and proceeded to reap the profits, which amounted to but little more than ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... seemed best. But when the cicalas had hushed their chirping, all were mustered again for supper; and having blithely feasted, they all addressed them to song and dance. And the queen, while Emilia led a dance, called for a song from Dioneo, who at once came out with:—'Monna Aldruda, come perk up thy mood, a piece of glad tidings I bring thee.' Whereat all the ladies fell a laughing, and most of all the queen, who bade him give them no more of that, but ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... cascade of ecstasy from the throats of bobolinks nesting among the daisies, timothy, and clover; when the blue sky arches over the fairest scenes the year can show, and all the world is full of sunshine and happy promises of fruition, must we Americans always go to English literature for a song to ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... of music, Sir Dennis," said the fair musician, as she leisurely turned over the music with him in search for a song from "Traviata." ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... come out of the West, Thro' all the wide border his horse has no equal, Having cost him forty-five dollars at the market, Where good nags, fresh from the country, With burrs still in their tails are selling For a song; and save his good broad sword He weapon had none, except a seven-shooter Or two, a pair of brass knuckles, ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... baker, who had once tried his hand at an original Christmas carol. He even called upon the ladies—and we were all of us rather shocked at the time—to bring their music; and as a piano had actually been hired from somewhere, and stood on the platform, he called upon his sister for a song there and then, and she actually—we were surprised—sang one of those old English ballads to hear which we had regarded as the sole privilege of the select few who were invited to take tea at the vicarage, at the sewing ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... I have loved so long Have done my Credit in Men's Eye much wrong: Have drown'd my Honour in a shallow Cup, And sold my Reputation for a Song. ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam • Omar Khayyam
... long cheer and a whopper!" And, when it had been given lustily: "And now one for the second team!" he cried. "Everyone into it! One—two—three!" The enthusiasm was mounting high now, and, after the cheer had died away, there were demands for a song. "We want to sing!" proclaimed the ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... to the amount these elaborate furnishings would fetch if sold. She recalled the fact, forgotten till now, that when the Berringtons' belongings, purchased with reckless extravagance, passed under the hammer, they had gone for a song. She made the same forecast regarding the contents of Tory Hill. Much money had been spent on them, but, with the exception perhaps of some of the old portraits, there was little of real intrinsic value. She made the reflection coldly, drearily, as bearing on things that ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... natures tried in the crucible of poverty. Once admitted as an equal among such elect souls, Lucien represented beauty and poetry. They admired the sonnets which he read to them; they would ask him for a sonnet as he would ask Michel Chrestien for a song. And, in the desert of Paris, Lucien found an oasis in the Rue ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... distance: But I was concerned I had not the key; for I would not have lost a moment in that case, had I been he, and he I. When I was at my devotion, Mrs. Jewkes came up, and wanted me sadly to sing her a psalm, as she had often on common days importuned me for a song upon the spinnet: but I declined it, because my spirits were so low I could hardly speak, nor cared to be spoken to; but when she was gone, I remembering the cxxxviith psalm to be a little touching, turned to it, and took ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... artist inferior to himself, to whose work he has frequently imparted a vitality of which it would have been destitute but for the interposition of his hand. He was ready, moreover, to execute woodcuts for a song-book or the political skits of any scribbler of his time, whether on the ministerial or the popular side mattered little to him. It was therefore not unnatural that doing "just what was suggested or thrown in his way," Lockhart should come ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... dream, I dreamed that we had met here together to render thanks unto our Father in heaven for a plentiful harvest, such that for the first time in this, our adopted land, we had our own food for the year; and so each of us holding in our hands a tumbler of Victorian wine, you called on me for a song. My harp was tuned and in ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... Colorow society," laughed Serviss. Then, to clear the shadow which had gathered on the girl's face, he said: "I see a fine piano, and shelves of music books. This argues that you love music. Won't you sing for me? I am hungry for a song." ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... mandatory in every other large center of population, increased by the necessary rerouting around the affected area, threatened disruption of the entire organism and the further disintegration of the city's already weakened coordination. The values of realestate dropped, houses were sold for a song, officebuildings for an aria, hotels ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... "I am looking for a song for you, George," she said. "I want Mr. Wingfold to hear you sing, lest he should take you for a ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... patched up a peace with the man, after this fashion: On the second day Barboux had called upon le Chameau for a song; and, the little hunchback having given "En roulant ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the priceless family portrait in the Oxford oak frame got into the parcel by mistake. I am expecting to acquire that for a song, as it cannot be of interest except to one of the family, and I should be glad to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 26, 1917 • Various
... grammar of music and become acquainted with clefs, keys, and notes at the rehearsals of church music, which were in his day a practical part of the education of the Scottish peasantry, did he ever arrive at composition, except in the case of one melody which he composed for a song of his own at the age of about twenty-three, and this melody displeased him so much that he destroyed it and never attempted another. In the same way, although he practised the violin, he did not attain to excellence in execution, his playing being confined to strathspeys and other slow airs ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... few wild creatures of any sort, for since there are no woods there are few hiding places. Neither do we see any birds, and we listen in vain for a song ...
— Conservation Reader • Harold W. Fairbanks
... to millions of acres. The long-standing practice of stealing these lands was checked and put a stop to as rapidly as possible. Individuals and private companies had bought for a song great tracts of national property, getting thereby, it might be, the title to mineral deposits worth fabulous sums; and these persons were naturally angry at being deprived of the immense fortunes which they had counted on for themselves. A company would buy up an entire watershed, and control, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... story) were gathered round another lady, who was telling them an amusing temperance tale, trying to speak so that the Bible readers should not hear her and yet that the Leinsters should was a difficulty, but when the Irishmen begged for a song—difficulty became impossibility, and their friend had to say, 'No.' Yet this is just the double work required in Soldiers' Homes, and above all at Lydd, where there is so little safe amusement to be had in camp, and none in the village." These poor youngsters go from this "safe amusement" ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... we had fish for supper! I got them for a song—or, rather, for a whistle. I was fed with more than fish. And I went to sleep that night with a glorious thought for a pillow: Truth expressed as Art is the universal language. One immortal strain from Verdi, poorly ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... fires were lighted on the ice, and then began the bargaining. Carp and pike, conger and bass, are good enough for poor people. Only the fogasch and schille are sent to Vienna and Pesth, where they fetch high prices; all the rest go for a song—and even so there is room for a large profit, for in one haul they had caught three hundredweight of fish. This Timar is indeed a favorite of fortune! The unsold fish are packed in baskets and put in the ice-house, whence they will be sent to the ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... at last,' he sneered. 'I have the missing portions of the papyrus here with me. You can have them for a song. I was afraid to leave the roll too complete, lest I should invite detection. It would be a pity to let them go to some other museum. Berlin is longing ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... the Wreck Island House oncet upon a time. I calculate it's that now, only it ain't run as a hotel any more. It's been years since there was any summer folks come here—place didn't pay, they said; guess that's why they shet it up and how your pa come to buy it for a song." ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... Mr. Beeton was quite sure that Dick had gone mad, otherwise he would have never parted with his excellent furniture for a song. The canvas things took up storage room and were much better out of ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... Transcontinental Railroad. More than anyone else Ryder had been aroused by the present legal action, not so much for the money interest at stake as that any one should dare to thwart his will. It had been a pet scheme of his, this purchase for a song, when the land was cheap, of some thousand acres along the line, and it is true that at the time of the purchase there had been some idea of laying the land out as a park. But real estate values had increased in astonishing fashion, the road could ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... have taken it? Yesterday we would have given it away for a song. To-day, with hopes of deliverance at hand, it is indispensable. Who could the ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... away. If you approach his grate in his familiar intervals, "Sir," says he, "give me a penny and I'll sing you a song; but give me the penny first" (hence comes the common saying and commoner practice of parting with money for a song). What a complete system of court- skill is here described in every branch of it, and all utterly lost with wrong application! Accost the hole of another kennel, first stopping your nose, you will behold a surly, gloomy, nasty, slovenly mortal, raking in his own dung and dabbling ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... law already, do you?" said the newcomer. "Well. Eat some bread and cheese, and I will give you sixpence for a song." ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... with silver eyes—so that altogether I have made a pretty good night's work of it. Kitey Graves wasn't in great force, so after I had sung Bid me Discourse, and I'd be a Butterfly, I cut my stick and went to the hopposition shop, where they used me much more genteelly; giving me three tickets for a song, and introducing me in more flattering terms to the company—don't like being considered one of the nasty 'reglars,' and they should make a point of explaining that one isn't. Besides, what business had Kitey to ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... of June, 1863, he wrote, "I am much pleased with your 'Knickerbocker Magazine,' and cannot too much admire your energy and versatility. Take notice, I recommended you Miss Braddon's works while they were to be had for a song. 'Lost and Saved,' by Mrs. Norton, will make you a good deal of money if you venture boldly on it and publish it. It is out-and-out the best new thing, and rather American. If you hear of any scrap-books containing copious extracts from American papers, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... when pipes were lit, confidences of the most touching nature were interchanged. Anecdotes and stories naturally followed the confidences, broke up the separate parties, and drew the company more together. The union was finally and effectually concentrated by one of the whalers' crew making a demand for a song. ...
— Philosopher Jack • R.M. Ballantyne
... about "vandals" and "minions" and "Northern scum," the cheap insults of the Southern newspaper press. To furnish the John Brown chorus with words worthy of the music, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe wrote her Battle-Hymn of the Republic, a noble poem, but rather too fine and literary for a song, and so never fully accepted by the soldiers. Among the many verses which voiced the anguish and the patriotism of that stern time, which told of partings and home-comings, of women waiting by desolate hearths, in country homes, for tidings of husbands ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... little to say, and that little they said ill; and I noticed that many of those who were perfect bores would cry loudest to be heard, though none of us wanted to hear them. We used to quench such fellows by calling loudly for a song with ...
— Fighting the Whales • R. M. Ballantyne
... felt a thrill of mystery upon reading the titles of many of the volumes. The majority were old books, many of them in languages that he was not able to decipher, picked up for a song at second-hand shops or on the book stands installed upon the parapets of the Seine. Only a man holding the key of tongues could get together such volumes. An atmosphere of mysticism, of superhuman insight, of secrets intact for many centuries appeared to emanate from these heaps of ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... over Mr. Tutt's desk. "There was a man!" he exclaimed inconsequently; then stopped and ran his transparent, heavily veined old hand over his forehead. "Where was I? Let me see. Oh, yes—gold. All those great properties could be bought at one time or another for a song. It needed a pioneer! That's what I was—a pioneer to find the gold where other people couldn't find it. That's not any crime; it's a service to humanity! If only they'd have a little faith—instead of locking you ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... for a song—or to meditate upon the charms of the fair Geraldine, eh, my lord?" rejoined Bouchier. "But I will not question you too shrewdly. Only let me caution you against going near Herne's Oak. It is said that the ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the bids went up by leaps, by bounds! And then a silence; then the auctioneer: "It's going! Going! Gone! Three thousand pounds!" Three thousand pounds! A frenzy leapt in me. "That picture's mine," I cried; "I'm David Strong. I painted it, this famished wretch you see; I did it, I, and sold it for a song. And in a garret three small hours ago My daughter died for want of Christian care. Look, look at me! . . . Is it to mock my woe You pay three thousand for my ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... playing a waiting game," he said, sagely. "This man Munn has bought the land from O'Hara's daughter for a song, and he means to bleed us. I'll write to Sprowl; he'll ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... got him for a song—of course the beggar is stolen. Give him back, if they claim him. But as for any sheik's daughter—keep the crowd out, Thatcher, I won't have them ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... one sachem by the modern name of his castle or strong-hold, viz.: Sing-Sing. This, I would observe for the sake of historical exactness, is a corruption of the old Indian name, O-sin-sing, or rather O-sin-song; that is to say, a place where any thing may be had for a song—a great recommendation for a market town. The modern and melodious alteration of the name to Sing-Sing is said to have been made in compliment to an eminent Methodist singing-master, who first introduced ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... Steen, Esq.? He is a glorious composer. His humor is as frank as Fielding's. Look at his own figure sitting in the window-sill yonder, and roaring with laughter! What a twinkle in the eyes! what a mouth it is for a song, or a joke, or a noggin! I think the composition in some of Jan's pictures amounts to the sublime, and look at them with the same delight and admiration which I have felt before works of the very highest style. This gallery is admirable—and the city in which the gallery is, is perhaps even more ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... should come in again, you just question him carefully a little. There's a new affair bein' started. Got a political side to it. Immense piece o' business. 'Course I got my finger in that pie, as I has in all the others now. We'd like to get Rauchhaupt's land ... He bought it for a song in the old days. If we c'n get it—the whole of it an' not parcelled—there'd be a cool million ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... stall was loaded with the spoils of a sunken ship or the loot from a city fire, and you could buy for a song the rare fabrics and costly dainties of the rich, a stain on the cloth, a discoloured label on the tin, alone giving a hint of their adventures. Then the people hovered round like wreckers on a hostile shore, carrying off ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... pianoforte solo, in this case gratuitously meretricious into the bargain, albeit the arbitrary choice of no less a judge than Mrs. Clarkson. It was received with perfunctory applause, through which a dissipated stockman thundered thickly for a song. Miss Bouverie averted her eyes from Sir Julian (ensconced like Royalty in the centre of the first row) as she descended from the platform. She had not the hardihood to glance toward the great man until the indistinct stockman had had his wish, and Mrs. Clarkson, in ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... investigate. He spent a night there, and actually captured the ghost, who turned out to be just an ordinary man, living on a place adjoining the haunted estate. He owned up to being the pallid specter that had been giving the house such a bad name; and said he wanted to buy the property in for a song, as it would find no other purchaser if it had such an evil reputation. Now, maybe somebody wants this quarry for thirty cents, and this is his way of scaring other would-be purchasers away. We don't want to butt in on any such game, ...
— The Chums of Scranton High on the Cinder Path • Donald Ferguson
... and you can be punished for such lies, since you are an official.' For though the police are the same in all countries, and will swear black is white, and destroy men for a song, yet where there is a droit administratif- that is, where the Revolution has made things tolerable—you are much surer of punishing your policeman, and he is much less able to do you a damage than in England or America; for he counts as an official and is under a more public discipline ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... curtain. Those silks, now, came from the steamer; trunks, you know. But I have never told Silver; she might ask where were the people to whom they belonged. You do not like the idea? Neither do I. But how could we help the drowning when we were not there, and these things were going for a song down at Beaver. The child loves pretty things; what could a poor man do? Have a glass of punch; I'll get it ready in no time.' He bustled about, and then came back with the full glasses. 'You won't tell her? I may have done wrong in the matter, but it would ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... the English servant. In England, the servant educates the master. Wilton Sargent strove to learn all they taught as ardently as his father had striven to wreck, before capture, the railways of his native land; and it must have been some touch of the old bandit railway blood that bade him buy, for a song, Holt Hangars, whose forty-acre lawn, as every one knows, sweeps down in velvet to the quadruple tracks of the Great Buchonian Railway. Their trains flew by almost continuously, with a bee-like drone in the day and a flutter of strong wings at night. The son of Merton Sargent had ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... deafened,' said Rose, laughing, as she escaped from him a moment, to arrange for a song from a tall formidable maiden, built after the fashion of Mr. Gilbert's contralto heroines, with a voice which bore out the ample ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a poor lyric to success, and a great lyric may carry a poor melody; but for a song to become widely popular you must have both a great melody and ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... to some Tuscan town And rent a palace for a song, And all the walls I'll whitewash down Some day when I am feeling strong; And there I'll pass my days among My books, and, when my reading palls And Summer days are overlong, I'll daub up ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various
... all these treasures for a song. And still the Nightingale sang on. He sang of the quiet churchyard, where the white roses grow, where the elder flowers bloom, and where the grass is kept moist by the tears of those left behind, and there came to Death such a longing to see his garden, that he floated out of the ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... Prince asked you, you did well to send for a song to Douglass's; but, in general, you will do right ...
— The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, Vol II. - With A Supplement Of Interesting Letters By Distinguished Characters • Horatio Nelson
... planned out, ye can bank on that. I didn't get this gold here without knowing what I was at, or how I was going to draw through. That isn't my way, as ye know. I have in mind a sloop-rigged yacht, lying in Shanghai, waiting for a buyer. Pretty little white thing she is, and I can get her for a song, and take enough of this with me to ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... each of these treasures for a song. And the Nightingale sang on and on; and it sang of the quiet churchyard where the white roses grow, where the elder blossoms smell sweet, and where the fresh grass is moistened by the tears of survivors. Then Death felt a longing to see his garden, and floated out at the window ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... selling the old horses in the field outside could be heard saying, "Now this is the last lot—now who'll take the last lot for a song? Shall I say forty shillings? 'Tis a very promising broodmare, a trifle over five years old, and nothing the matter with the hoss at all, except that she's a little holler in the back and had her left eye knocked out by the kick of another, her own ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... will looke vppon his boote, and sing: mend the Ruffe and sing, aske questions and sing, picke his teeth, and sing: I know a man that had this tricke of melancholy hold a goodly Mannor for a song ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... day. As I resided constantly in Moscow, I heard nothing about my young relative. Some one who came to town from his government did, it is true, inform me that Misha had sold his ancestral estate for a song; but this bit of news seemed to me altogether too incredible!—And lo! suddenly, one autumn morning, into the courtyard of my house dashes a calash drawn by a pair of splendid trotters, with a monstrous ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... the city's "plots," upon which deserted houses stood, were sold for default in payment of taxes, old Wardelow bought them himself—they always went for a song, and the old man preferred to own them, lest some one else might destroy the ruins, and thus make the place unfamiliar to ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... her arm through his. "Don't cry, pa, please! We'll wait until Don Mike loses all his sheep and cow money and then we'll buy Panchito for a song." ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... thoughts when called upon by Sir Thomas Tilden. "Here is Lieutenant Trevelyan, the Adonis of our Regiment, whom we cannot accuse of a breach of impropriety to-night, except it be that of reserve." "Come now, Trevelyan, you are in for a song," exclaimed a dozen voices, pressing around the young Lieutenant, in noisy appeals. Contrary to their expectations, Trevelyan did favor the company with a patriotic song, which drew forth stirring applause and ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... of these treasures for a song; and the nightingale continued her singing. She sung of the quiet churchyard, where the white roses grow, where the elder-tree wafts its perfume on the breeze, and the fresh, sweet grass is moistened by the mourners' tears. Then Death longed to go and ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... Union, in the form of lockouts, strikes, and criminal proceedings against the leaders of the union, which had proved fatal to both. The union was still in existence, but it was a mere shadow of the formidable body that it had been three years before. And, as work was scarce, labor could be had for a song, as the phrase goes. This enabled me to make a ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... weekly paper and tilted his chair back against the wall, with his eyes half closed to listen, and his wife had settled down comfortably on the carpet sofa, with her hands nicely folded in her lap, as if she were at church. The minister, after silently surveying the situation for a song or two, attempted to join his voice to the chorus. He had a voice like a cross-cut saw, but he didn't do much harm in the background that way, though Cap did growl now and then, as if it put his nerves ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... million dollars. The old custom of sailing on shares or "lays" instead of wages was never changed. It was win or lose for all hands—now a handsome fortune or again an empty hold and pockets likewise. There was Captain W.T. Walker of New Bedford who, in 1847, bought for a song a ship so old that she was about to be broken up for junk and no insurance broker would look at her. In this rotten relic he shipped a crew and went sailing in the Pacific. Miraculously keeping afloat, this Envoy of his was filled to the hatches ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... green-room, with whose habits he had been so long familiar and whose operations he had himself directed. Some one of the troop, who, however fit for stratagems and spoils, had yet music in his soul, called aloud for a song. The idea was hailed with acclamations. Not satisfied with the capitalized results of his voice to which they had helped themselves, they were unwilling to let their prey go until they had also ravished from him some specimens of the airy mintage whence they had issued. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... believe that I have literally given it for a song? A man sent me this morning a copy of verses to the heiress of Bannow. The verses struck my fancy—I suppose because they flattered me; and with the verses came a petition setting forth claims, and a tenant's right, and fair promises, and a proposal for the new inn; and at ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... one man out—a Pole named Launski—from the far end. He pulled stakes an' hit the breeze runnin' sellin' out for a song to a guy named Haydon. I seen Launski when he clumb on the Lamo stage, headin' this way, an' he sure was a heap relieved to get out with ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... by a little blaze of blue or crimson colour. It was not his dream! Mentally he had hung this space with those gold-framed masterpieces of still and stiller life which he had bought in days when quantity was precious. And now where were they? Sold for a song! That something which made him, alone among Forsytes, move with the times had warned him against the struggle to retain them. But in his study he still had 'Dutch ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... satisfaction, even though murder had been the outcome of my art. "The lady and her husband dead and gone (honesty would have made me say 'or gone'), the letters fell into the possession of my friend, who in a way deals in such curios. I bought them from him for a song (some songs are worth one thousand dollars), although he was not over-anxious to ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... little piece for me?" "Certainly," was the answer. After a moment's consultation the two young men in all seriousness recited together "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers," etc. No wonder that the prelate was astonished at the peculiar sound of English. Then he asked them for a song. "Oh of course," was the answer, and they sang in unison "The Carrion Crow," ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... afterwards rescued by a tramp steamer, and right away they become general favorites again. Or the kaiser and the crown prince might try it, Mawruss. There must be plenty of airyoplanes laying around Germany nowadays which could be picked up for a song, and when word come that it had fallen into the Atlantic Ocean with them two birds aboard somewhere around one thousand five hundred miles from sixty degrees forty-three minutes, y'understand, it might make the Hohenzollerns so popular that there ...
— Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things • Montague Glass
... but required as a condition that the opposite party should sing a song. As soon as the song was begun, however, the besieged replied with the second line; and so long as they were able to do this, they were safe. The two antagonists were the best hands in the country for a song, and their stock seemed inexhaustible. Once or twice the flaxdresser made a wry face, frowned, and turned to the women with a disappointed look. The grave-digger sang something so old that his adversary had ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various |
