"Musical instrument" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was especially an adept at splitting trees. No sooner was one felled than he would set to work to scrape off the bark at the upper part, and to run deep and straight lines down it; he then fixed the wedges in a long row, and went from one to another, driving them in as if playing on a musical instrument. When they were all firmly fixed, he would call the rest of the party with their hammers, and at a signal make them all strike at once, seldom failing to separate ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston
... harpe eolienne; Ger. Aolsharfe, Windharfe; Ital. arpa d'Eolo), a stringed musical instrument, whose name is derived from Aeolus, god of the wind. The aeolian harp consists of a sound-box about 3 ft long, 5 in. wide, and 3 in. deep, made of thin deal, or preferably of pine, and having beech ends to hold the tuning-pins and hitch-pins. A dozen or less catgut strings of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... calmly. The exception, who was supposed to be wanting in his wits (he played on the barrel-organ), determined to do his best to rescue his Royal Master; and an idea occurred to him. He had noticed that when he performed on his musical instrument those who, perforce, were obliged to listen to him acted strangely. Some of his audiences had frowned, others had shaken their fists at him, and all had gone quickly away. Only once had a loiterer stayed behind, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various
... we can only conceive of the best of the spiritual by the best we know of the material; we can imagine no musical instrument in the bands of the angels superior to a harp; no weapon better than a sword for the grasp ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... be recalled in waking hours; so that what it was I can never tell—as if it belonged to other regions than the life of this world: I retain only the vaguest memory of its power, and marvel, and preciousness.—Sometimes it is a little poem or a song I dream of, or some strange musical instrument, perhaps like one of those I have seen angels with in a photograph from an old picture. And somehow with the instrument always comes the knowledge of how to play upon it. So you see, sir, as it has pleased God to send me into the world as crooked as a crab, and nearly as lame as a seal, it has ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... no advance in solving the riddle when, one morning, a stranger appeared on the down above him, looking as if he had lost his way. The man had a good deal of black hair below his felt hat, and carried under his arm a case containing a musical instrument. Descending to where Jim stood, he asked if there were not a short cut across that way to Tivworthy, where a fete was to ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... father had spared no pains in her education; the best tutors had trained her fine ear and sweet voice, and taught her to give form and coloring to the pictures her glowing imagination created; and, whether her fingers ran over the keys of a musical instrument, or wielded the brush, there was a delicacy and yet spirit in her touch which were the wonder and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... assembles his family and dependants, the men of the station, and perhaps a few neighbours. Everyone is glad of the opportunity. The dining-room or woolshed is made to look as devotional as possible. The old prayer books brought out from England are produced. There may be no musical instrument available, but some well-known hymn is raised by the lady of the house. The priest, in his long surplice, preaches a practical sermon, for he understands his people and knows their lives. The service revives old memories in the worshippers, and carries them back in thought to ancient churches ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... said to be full of music, for it is composed of nine different kinds of verses, which by their several lengths resemble the nine stops of the old musical instrument, that is likewise the ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... call this the music-room?" asked Patty; "there's no piano in it, nor any musical instrument ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... subject follows the same general rules for becoming proficient in any other endeavor. It depends upon your motivation, persistence and willingness to devote time and study to the subject. Let us agree that most individuals can learn to play a musical instrument to some degree. This degree is usually sufficient for their own needs. To become a virtuoso, however, it is necessary to study the instrument and devote a great deal of energy and time to practice. The same example could be given for most undertakings. Anyone can learn to hit a golf ball, but being ...
— A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis • Melvin Powers
... now; tsilkè, young man; tcikè, young woman; bakà gi, on the summit, on top of it. 3, 8. Dsil, mountain; ¢ilhyÃl, dark, black; çolÃji, blue. 4, 9. Tsintsoï, great stick, a notched stick used as a musical instrument in the dance. 5, 10. Tsâa bialìli, truly his dance implement; bÃja ye¢igÃngo, his holy treasure, his talisman, his ...
— The Mountain Chant, A Navajo Ceremony • Washington Matthews
... applied to that quality of the human voice by which feeling is expressed; as, he spoke in a cheery tone; the word is similarly applied to the voices of birds and other animals, and sometimes to inanimate objects. As used of a musical instrument, tone denotes the general quality of its sounds ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... nothing more than I have told you," she replied. "I am directed to furnish you with every means of comfort—with books, flowers, clothing, musical instrument, even, if you desire it; but, for the present, you will not leave these walls, and you will see no society. The doctor has decided that this ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... cart-horses, the delicate blue shadows coming and going upon the cream- white surfaces as the ship rolled with the regularity of a swinging pendulum. Every inch of our running gear was as taut as a harp-string, and through it the wind piped and sang as though the whole ship had been one gigantic musical instrument; while over all arched the blue dome of an absolutely cloudless sky, in the very zenith of which blazed the sun with a fierceness that made all of us eager to seek out such small patches of fugitive shadow ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... is a leap from one key to another during silence. Inflection, as we have seen, is a gradual change in the key while the voice is speaking. The pitch or key depends upon the muscular tension of the vocal chords, which act like the strings of a musical instrument: the greater the tension, the higher the key. Muscular tension implies nervous tension and this is dependent upon the mental state. If the mind is calm, the nervous and muscular tension is normal, and the speaker uses the key habitual ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... he rush her defenses, bury her protests in kisses? Or should he talk her out of this harsh mood? Last night she had been his. There were moments during the day when she had responded to him as a musical instrument does to skilled fingers. But for the moment his power over her was gone. And he was impatient ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... ask a question, suggested by the musical instrument I see standing in the library. Do you sing? Do ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... text-book on mythology was the first that ever came into my empty hands. She taught me my scales and exercises on the little parlour organ which her husband had bought her after fifteen years during which she had not so much as seen a musical instrument. She would sit beside me by the hour, darning and counting, while I struggled with the "Joyous Farmer." She seldom talked to me about music, and I understood why. Once when I had been doggedly beating out some easy passages from an old score of Euryanthe I had found among ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... similarly theatrical skirt of flowered satin and China silk braid. On her wrists were bracelets and on her ungloved hands many rings, with stones rather too large to be taken for genuine on a woman promenading alone at such an hour. Conjoined with the musical instrument, the attire confirmed the student in his first impression after the tragic one, that this was a performer in one of the numerous dance-houses of the popular region, bordering the ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... using shell-lac varnish which is sometimes denominated the German, but more commonly the French mode. It merits to be generally known, as the process is easy and economical, and the effect beautiful. It has been much employed by cabinet and musical instrument makers, but is not yet so extensively practised as it merits to be. The varnish is applied by means of what is called a rubber, made by rolling up a piece of thick woollen cloth, which has been torn off so as to have a soft, elastic edge. The varnish, put into a narrow-mouthed bottle, ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young
... voices of nature. There was, it is said, at Athens a great number of beautiful girls; Praxiteles designed them all, one after another; then from all these diverse types of beauty, each one of which had its defects, he formed a single faultless beauty and created Venus. The first man who created a musical instrument and who gave to that art its rules and its laws, had for a long time listened to the murmuring of reeds and the singing of birds. Thus the poets who understand life, after having known much of love, more or less transitory, after ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... afford to reward a man for believing anything reasonable. Why, even the scribes and Pharisees would believe a reasonable thing. Do you suppose God is to crown you with eternal joy and give you a musical instrument for believing something where the evidence is clear? No, sir. The larger the miracle the more grace. And let me advise the ministers of Chicago and of this country, never to explain a miracle; it cannot be explained. If you succeed in explaining it, the miracle ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... is a Word borrowed from the Greek; which, in Latin, is rendered Accentus, and in English Accent. "Q. What do you mean by Accent? A. Accent originally signified a Modulation of the Voice, or chanting to a musical Instrument; but is now generally used to signify Due Pronunciatian, i.e. the pronouncing [of] a syllable according to its Quantity, (whether it be long or short,) with a stronger Force or Stress of Voice ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... the assassin found their prey. All men and women who might entertain, ever so coarsely, ever so poorly, were here at market. Mummers and players, musicians, dancers, jugglers, gipsies, and fortune-tellers floated thick as May-flies. Voices, voices, and every musical instrument—but all set in a certain range, and that not the deep nor the sweet. So it seemed, and yet, doubtless, by searching might have been found the deep and the sweet. Certainly the air of heaven was sweet, and it went in ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... minute muscles acting upon the vocal cords, it is intelligence which alters and changes the form of the resonator by means of movement of the lips, tongue, and jaw in the production of articulate speech. The simple musical instrument in the production of phonation is bilaterally represented in the brain, but as a speaking instrument it is unilaterally represented in right-handed individuals in the left hemisphere and in left-handed individuals in the right hemisphere. The reason for this we shall consider later; ...
— The Brain and the Voice in Speech and Song • F. W. Mott
... frequented the place more and more. Dr. Tilton noticed the change, and was alarmed. Still he did not change that habit of taking "only a glass." Will Somers was unhappy. He saw his mistake, and knew that the community frowned upon him. He rarely whistled now. As for the musical instrument he once loved to perform upon, it was a silent piece of furniture. He had some fine qualities of character, and his vulnerable side was his susceptibility to outside influence. The enemy had found a weak wall on that side of his ...
— The Knights of the White Shield - Up-the-Ladder Club Series, Round One Play • Edward A. Rand
... is accomplished. In the Casino garden a dozen bearded musicians are playing Slavonian airs, and, by request of the assistant editor, they play and sing the Slavonian national anthem and a popular air or two besides. The national musical instrument of Slavonia is the "tamborica"-a small steel-stringed instrument that is twanged with a chip-like piece of wood. Their singing is excellent in its way, but to the writer's taste there is no comparison between their tamboricas and the gypsy ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... which they arranged for New Year's Eve (1840). Lehrs arrived at dusk, rang the bell, and brought a leg of veal; Kietz brought some rum, sugar, and a lemon; Pecht supplied a goose; and Anders two bottles of the champagne with which he had been presented by a musical instrument-maker in return for a flattering article he had written about his pianos. Bottles from that stock were produced only on very great occasions. I soon threw the confounded Favorita aside, therefore, and ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... for me and think the more about me, and not grow weary of my words and the want of change there is in me. For, of course, I knew what a churl I was compared to her birth and appearance; but meanwhile I might improve myself and learn a musical instrument. "The wind hath a draw after flying straw" is a saying we have in Devonshire, made, peradventure, by somebody who had seen ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... one hundred and fifty-seven years after its invention, in spite of its great cost, has become the leading musical instrument of Christendom. England produces thirty thousand every year; the United States, twenty-five thousand; France, fifteen thousand; Germany, perhaps ten thousand; and all other countries, ten thousand; making ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... procession of conscious states filing off on the stage of the cerebrum "in a dead march of mere effects," that it is not, as old Aristoxenus dreamed, merely a harmony resulting from the form and nature of the body in the same way that a tune springs from the consenting motions of a musical instrument, seems to be shown by facts of which we have direct knowledge in consciousness. We think that the mind is an independent force, dealing with intellectual products, weighing opposing motives, estimating moral qualities, resisting some tendencies, strengthening others, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... in costume from Mexico and Italy; a few begrimed vellum-bound books in foreign languages (which he could not always read); and now and then a friend who was "breaking up" would give him a bit of Capo di Monte or an absurd enigmatic musical instrument from the East Indies. And he had a small department of Americana, dating from the ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... be noted is that the carrying power and quality of a voice depend far more upon the use made of the resonance cavities than upon the violence with which the vocal cords vibrate. Every musical instrument involves, in its production of tone, a combination ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... some oysters from the green-grocer's shop; and the effect of both was so extremely exhilarating, that Mr. Tuckle, dressed out with the cocked hat and stick, danced the frog hornpipe among the shells on the table, while the gentleman in blue played an accompaniment upon an ingenious musical instrument formed of a hair-comb upon a curl-paper. At last, when the punch was all gone, and the night nearly so, they sallied forth to see each other home. Mr. Tuckle no sooner got into the open air, than he was seized with a sudden desire to lie on the curbstone; Sam thought it would be a pity ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... harmony or even contrast of emotion cannot be superficial or worthless; indeed the Stimmung of a picture can deepen and purify that of the spectator. Such works of art at least preserve the soul from coarseness; they "key it up," so to speak, to a certain height, as a tuning-key the strings of a musical instrument. But purification, and extension in duration and size of this sympathy of soul, remain one-sided, and the possibilities of the influence of art are not ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky
... appeared to feel with equal force the pangs of separation. During my absence from the palace, the only method which she pursued to divert her attention was to play upon a musical instrument, or to sing in concert with ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... 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 which has been assigned to him, the ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... think, especially in connection with an opera-house, the "organ" is not a musical instrument. At that time, electricity was employed only for a very few scenic effects and for the bells. The immense building and the stage itself were still lit by gas; hydrogen was used to regulate and modify the ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... church, and the boys had therefore to give up their darling project of devoting half an hour of the evening to amateur negro minstrelsy, for one of the deacons said that while he sometimes doubted that even an organ was a proper musical instrument for use in sacred buildings, he certainly was not going to tolerate banjos and bones. This decision was a great disappointment to Benny Mallow, who had been selected by the managers to perform upon the tambourine, but in the revision ...
— Harper's Young People, October 19, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... after the slender dividend of eighteen pence in the pound. The man who can use his feet, is envied by him who cannot; and he, in turn, envies him who will not. Our health and our feet, in a double sense, go together. The human body has been justly compared to a musical instrument; I add, this instrument was never perfectly in tune, without a due ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... out for her lover's coming. But Bartja did not come, and Sappho began to be so anxious that Kallias called old Melitta, whose longing looks in the direction of Naukratis were, if possible, more anxious even than those of her mistress, and told her to fetch a musical instrument which ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... is much more in a musical sound than its mere timbre, and Wagner has noticed how every musical instrument has not only its vowel sound, or timbre, but also its peculiar consonant. We need not go so far as to connect the flute with an "f," the trumpet with a "t," etc., since the instrumental consonants need not ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... has few recreations. His highest artistic achievement is in song. His principal musical instrument is a simple harp made from a length of thick bamboo (Fig. 86); from the surface of this six longitudinal strips are detached throughout the length of a section of twenty inches or more, but retain at both ends their ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... be disheartening work learning a musical instrument. You would think that Society, for its own sake, would do all it could to assist a man to acquire the art of playing a musical ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... would not have found it so incumbent on him to obey it. It is astonishing how easy a virtue becomes when it runs alongside a man's interest and choice. Featherstone had never learned self-denial; and that is a virtue nearly as hard to exercise without practice as it would be to play a tune on a musical instrument which the player had never handled before. In that wonderful allegory, the Holy War—which is less read than its companion, the Pilgrim's Progress, but deserves it quite as much— Bunyan represents Self-Denial as a plain citizen ...
— The Gold that Glitters - The Mistakes of Jenny Lavender • Emily Sarah Holt
... his pencil, while his parents are averse to their son practising his young art! See HANDEL, intended for a doctor of the civil laws, and whom no parental discouragement could deprive of his enthusiasm, for ever touching harpsichords, and having secretly conveyed a musical instrument to a retired apartment, listen to him when, sitting through the night, he awakens his harmonious spirit! Observe FERGUSON, the child of a peasant, acquiring the art of reading without any one suspecting it, by listening to his father teaching his brother; observe him making ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... old Baronet roar with laughter, as usual. He narrated the circumstance a dozen times to Horrocks in the course of the evening, and greatly to the discomfiture of Miss Horrocks. He thrummed on the table as if it had been a musical instrument, and squalled in imitation of her manner of singing. He vowed that such a beautiful voice ought to be cultivated and declared she ought to have singing-masters, in which proposals she saw nothing ridiculous. He was in great spirits that night, and drank with his friend and butler an extraordinary ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... better part," he said. "Yet Borrowdean is one of those men who know very well how to play upon the heartstrings. A human being is like a musical instrument to him. He knows how to find out the harmonies or ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... is it, Constance?" I said. "You will drive me mad;" and while I spoke the murmur seemed to resolve itself into the vibration, felt almost rather than heard, of some distant musical instrument. I stepped past her into the passage. All was deadly still, but I could perceive that music was being played somewhere far away; and almost at the same minute my ears recognised faintly but unmistakably ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... owned, in the interests of truth, that Julius cultivated his intelligence. This degenerate Briton could digest books—and couldn't digest beer. Could learn languages—and couldn't learn to row. Practiced the foreign vice of perfecting himself in the art of playing on a musical instrument and couldn't learn the English virtue of knowing a good horse when he saw him. Got through life. (Heaven only knows how!) without either a biceps or a betting-book. Had openly acknowledged, in English society, that he didn't think ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... centre of the town, with an avenue of trees, and a clear space before it for tribal dances or meetings. Ackbau also lived in a large house. On the reserve around the queen's palace, the older men spent most of the day in gossiping, or playing upon reed pipes, which furnished their sole musical instrument. The younger men made nets, mended weapons, or shaped stones for their slings. The natives in this island did not appear to understand the use of the bow and arrow, their only weapons being clubs, slings, and spears. The spears were made of hard wood, polished and ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... MUSICAL INSTRUMENT.—George W. Van Dusen, Williamsburgh, N.Y.—This invention consists in a novel connection and arrangement of levers and valves between the plane of movement of the perforated surface or surfaces, and an airchest or chests, and the ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... which it speaks. It is only such a mind as this that possesses the magic word to stir and call forth the spirits that lie hidden in great work. To the ordinary mind a masterpiece is a sealed cabinet of mystery,—an unfamiliar musical instrument from which the player, however much he may flatter himself, can draw none but confused tones. How different a painting looks when seen in a good light, as compared with some dark corner! Just in the same ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... bought with the instruments. As with all mechanical procedures, facility can be obtained only by educating the eye and the fingers in repeated exercise of a particular series of maneuvers. As with learning to play a musical instrument, a fundamental knowledge of technic, positions, and landmarks is necessary, after which only continued manual practice makes for proficiency. For instance, efficient use of forceps requires that they be so familiar to the grasp that their use is automatic. Endoscopy is a purely manual procedure, ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... strictly true; but that something about the young man—that hyperborean crispness, stringency, and charm, as of a well-braced musical instrument, which had awakened the interest of Henchard, and of Elizabeth-Jane and of the Three Mariners' jovial crew, at sight, made his unexpected presence here attractive to Lucetta. He hesitated, looked at the chair, ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... Divine charity penetrated his whole interior, as fire penetrates a burning coal. Only by hearing the term of the love of God pronounced, he was moved and inflamed, and this movement made the affections of his soul thrill, as the strings of a musical instrument sound on being touched. ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... must be able to play a musical instrument correctly other than triangle, and to read simple music. Or to play properly any kind of musical toy, such as a penny whistle, mouth-organ, etc., and sing ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... complicated musical instrument, consisting of twelve pipes or trumpets, made of bamboos fastened together, with trumpet-shaped mouthpieces of bark, is used by one tribe of Indians. The sounds are not disagreeable, resembling somewhat ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... an inherited genius for painting, and born blind—the ancestral life would be within them as a dim longing for unknown objects and sensations, and the spell-bound habit of their inherited frames would be like a cunningly wrought musical instrument never played on, but quivering throughout in uneasy, mysterious moanings of its intricate structure that, under the right touch, gives music. Something like that, I think, has been my experience. Since I began to read and know, I have always longed ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... on a musical instrument approaches perfection, the larger is that part of his execution which is unconscious. Consciousness arises with defect, or sense of something to be overcome. How conscious we are when striving to think and ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... notes, from which he scrambled back to the first position with sounds not of unmixed purity of tone. At seven the shrill "tweedledee" of this youngster had begun, accompanied by a booming ground bass from Elijah New, the parish clerk, who had thoughtfully brought with him his favourite musical instrument, the serpent. Dancing was instantaneous, Mrs. Fennel privately enjoining the players on no account to let the dance exceed the length of a quarter of ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... Valerie's face. "She's like everything nice, I know; nice things to look at, to hear, to taste, to smell, to touch. Let us do her portrait, Eddy, you know the analogy game. What flower does she remind you of? and what food? Acacia; raspberries and cream. What musical instrument? What animal? Help ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... talking in a throng would be extremely bad for the sensitive musical instrument that the vocalist carries in his throat, and the various beverages offered at one of your afternoon teas it would be too difficult to refuse. So I confine myself to an occasional quiet dinner with a few friends on an off night at the opera ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini
... touch; it has a throbbing, monotonous music, which breaks deliciously, which pauses suspended, and then resolves itself in a perfect chord. Her voice is like a thing detachable from herself, a thing which she takes in her hands like a musical instrument, playing on the stops cunningly with her fingers. Prose, when she speaks it, becomes a kind of verse, with all the rhythms, the vocal harmonies, of a kind of human poetry. Her whisper is heard across the whole theatre, every syllable distinct, and yet it is ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... to be contented to take up with little things. Women have a great advantage that they may take up with little things, without disgracing themselves: a man cannot, except with fiddling. Had I learnt to fiddle, I should have done nothing else.' BOSWELL. 'Pray, Sir, did you ever play on any musical instrument?' JOHNSON. 'No, Sir. I once bought me a flagelet; but I never made out a tune.' BOSWELL. 'A flagelet, Sir!—so small an instrument? I should have liked to hear you play on the violoncello. THAT should have been YOUR instrument.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, I might as well have played on the ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... yesterday thought the world dark and stormy because of the tempest in his soul, so now he thought it still and peaceful, because of his inward calm. The very intensity of his recent struggles had rendered his soul acutely sensitive, like a delicate musical instrument which responded freely to the innumerable fingers wherewith Nature struck its keys. Her manifold forms, her gorgeous colors, her gigantic forces thrilled and ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... having in those days a falcon eye, To follow the hunt through the open country, From where the bushes thinlier crested The hillocks, to a plain where's not one tree. 510 When, in a moment, my ear was arrested By—was it singing, or was it saying, Or a strange musical instrument playing In the chamber?—and to be certain I pushed the lattice, pulled the curtain, 515 And there lay Jacynth asleep, Yet as if a watch she tried to keep, In a rosy sleep along the floor With her head ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... of the boy's applause was electric. The two men started. The half-breed snatched up a gun that was leaning against a tree near by; one hand of the bearded man deposited the musical instrument upon the ground as his right picked up a handy rifle; while Bannock, the dog, crouched down with bristling ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... were cast down and disheartened. Thus, as Plato says, he was able to prove that oratory is the art of influencing men's minds, and to use it in its highest application, when it deals with men's passions and characters, which, like certain strings of a musical instrument, require a skilful and delicate touch. The secret of his power is to be found, however, as Thucydides says, not so much in his mere oratory, as in his pure and blameless life, because he was so well known to be incorruptible, and indifferent to money; for though he made the city, which was a ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... board the liner, and had thought his voice the most wonderful I had ever met with. But now in that great resonant hall the magic of it was doubled. He played upon the souls of his hearers as on a musical instrument. At will he struck the chords of pride, fury, hate, and mad joy. Now they would be hushed in breathless quiet, and now the place would echo with savage assent. I remember noticing that the face of my neighbour, 'Mwanga, ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... to go and be looking at the lake every day, but she never got a sight of him. And at last, someone told her those water-witches were very fond of music, and to get a musical instrument. So she brought a musical instrument to the side of the lake, and she was playing it; and the witch put up her hand out of the water. "What will you take for that?" she said. "I will give it to you," the girl said, ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
... should assist each other, mingle in jarring confusion. Indeed, when the parlor is large and high, a genuine pipe-organ built in a recess and harmonizing in finish with the woodwork of the room is not only the finest decoration possible, but the most appropriate musical instrument. Those families who possess an old-fashioned piano, such as thin and tinkly "square," are advised to have it overhauled and refinished by a competent piano-repairer, and preserved, if only for practice by the children. In case such an instrument has "overstrung" ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... standing between two of the stems. It had no colour, but was like the translucent trembling of the hot air that rises, in a radiant summer noon, from the sun-baked ground, vibrant like the smitten chords of a musical instrument. What it was grew no plainer as I went nearer, and when I came close up, I ceased to see it, only the form and colour of the trees beyond seemed strangely uncertain. I would have passed between the stems, but received a slight shock, stumbled, and fell. ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... very delicately tuned musical instrument. If you know the scales and the common chords, you can improvise nice little airs and charming variations. She's a sort of—well, a penny whistle, and the music you get depends not on her at all, but on ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... quietly raised his head and shoulders out of the water ten yards off, with a fish kicking in his mouth, and the water running off his nose, to take a deliberate stare at us, after the fashion of seals, whose ruling passion is curiosity. The sound of a musical instrument, the sight of a man bathing—anything, in short, which their small wits cannot explain at first sight, is enough to make them forget all their cunning, and thrust their heads suicidally into any danger; ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... can only refer to them. There is, for example, the legend of the invention of music, when the hero Wainamoinen (supposed to represent the Spirit of the Wind, and the sound of the name indicates the wailing of the wind) invents the first musical instrument. In no other literature is there anything quite like this except in the Greek story of Orpheus. Even as the trees bent down their heads to listen to the song of Orpheus, and as the wild beasts became tamed at the sound, and as the ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... was also a good singer, was willing, and at once ran off into the school to get the musical instrument mentioned. When he came out he tuned up hastily and then played while Si Crews sang one or two old-time songs. Then Ned gave the crowd one or two funny songs and a dozen or more of the cadets joined in ...
— The Rover Boys at Big Horn Ranch - The Cowboys' Double Round-Up • Edward Stratemeyer
... conceptions,—go out. For however otherwise a man may be distinguished—unless there be in him a spirit of love, devotion, and self-sacrifice, we feel he lacks the very pith and beauty of manhood; and though he may be a great performer with his pen as one plays well on a musical instrument, a Great ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... bare head and she carried in her hand a cane valise covered with grey canvas. The old man was burdened with two ancient shabby cases, one evidently containing a violin and the other some queerly shaped musical instrument. Both the new comers were wayworn and dirty, and my master seeing suffering on the old man's face rose and courteously offered him ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... relates of Apollonius how he objected to the musical instrument of Linus the Rhodian that it could not enrich or beautify. The history of music in our day would satisfy the philosopher on one point ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... by a bed large enough to hold three or four Filomenas without crowding, and upon it lay a mandoline and a guitar. The corporal called for music; Filomena cheerfully complied, left her broidery-frame, and took up the mandoline, whose only title to be considered a musical instrument is that Mozart uses it for the pizzicato accompaniment which Don Giovanni plays while he sings "Deh Vieni." Filomena, knowing nothing about Mozart, used her mandoline for the delivery of a melody which she performed with great skill, though it was but a silly tune and sounded sillier than it ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... the yielding chords of a full heart, to call forth the melodious strains of an impromptu chant of praise from the creature to his Creator. The soul of our youth of to-day, resembles in many cases a musical instrument, which stands in its grandeur and magnificence, unopened and untouched, the cobwebs of neglect grow over the elegant framework, the dust of ages cloud its wonderful beauty, because there are no hands to touch its magic strings, and call forth the hidden melody it contains, ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... but tone-deaf, rallied the leaderless troupe of musicians. During the period of his directorship they were known to fame as "The Musical Coons." Musical in that each one wielded a musical instrument with which he made bold to claim acquaintance, Coons because they blacked their faces with burnt cork and had "corner-men." The corner-men were the weak spots in an otherwise ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... was not great, unless the player was great, but when the player was great it was the greatest musical instrument of all. He watched de Langeais' wrapt face, and for him too the thousands of soldiers, the pines and the cannon on the ridges melted away. He did not know what the young musician was playing, probably some old French air or a great lyric outburst of the fiery ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... very ancient musical instrument, and was called clarsach. It had thirty strings, with the peculiarity that the front arm was not perpendicular to the sounding board, but turned considerably towards the left, to afford a greater opening for ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... at once be admitted that this particular musical instrument differed very considerably from any piano-organ ever heard in the streets, and it could never have come anywhere from ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... fearfully she had disclosed herself; she was too profoundly innocent. Her soul was no more ashamed than the fair shapes that walked in Eden without a thought of over-liberal loveliness. Having nobody to tell her story to,—having, as she said in her verses, no musical instrument to laugh and cry with her,—nothing, in short, but the language of pen and pencil,—all the veinings of her nature were impressed on these pages as those of a fresh leaf are transferred to the blank sheets which inclose it. It was the same thing which I remember seeing beautifully ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... remain, though as late as about 1820, one of great antiquity, believed to be an original native production, continued to be acted. Its title was La Ollita or El Canahuate, the former word meaning the peculiar musical instrument of that locality, the "whistling jar." The subject was a tale of love, and one of these primitive flutes was used as an ...
— Aboriginal American Authors • Daniel G. Brinton
... divert them; and, on examining the several parts and ornaments of the instrument, they conceived that it was a living animal, which sung in different voices. Observing their simplicity, I told them it was a musical instrument, and put it into their hand unblown to examine. They then perceived that it was a work of art, but believed that it was something supernatural, and could only have been devised by a superior being, it ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... The crude musical instrument of the Sioux, the flute, was made to appeal to the susceptible ears of the maidens late into the night. There comes to me now the picture of two young men with their robes over their heads, and only a portion of the hand-made and carved ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... musical instrument is the rondador, a number of reeds of different lengths tied in a row. The "plaintive national songs" which Markham heard at Cuzco are ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... Draycott had forebodings even before he got on board that P. and O. Since then she has become almost historic amongst those of the Regular Army whose abode at the beginning of the war was overseas. Save for the fact that no one was playing the harmonium, or any other musical instrument, the appearance of her decks as they came alongside was reminiscent of one of those delightful pleasure steamers on which one may journey, at comparatively small cost, up and down the Thames. A seething mob of people, almost ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... examine the inner surface of the thighs, which, judging from analogy, would be finely serrated. The species of Pneumora have been more profoundly modified for the sake of stridulation than any other orthopterous insect; for in the male the whole body has been converted into a musical instrument, being distended with air, like a great pellucid bladder, so as to increase the resonance. Mr. Trimen informs me that at the Cape of Good Hope these insects make a wonderful noise ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... followed. Three or four planks, rudely nailed together, and forming a piece of rough flooring about two or three yards square, were hauled out from an archway, placed on the grass, and a piece of tarpaulin thrown over it. Then two of the boys took out their Jew's-harps—alas! alas! that was the only musical instrument within their reach, until the coveted bagpipes should be purchased—and gaily struck up with 'Green grow the rashes, O!' as a preliminary flourish. What was this now? What but a performance of the famous sword-dance by that renowned and valiant henchman, Nicol MacNicol of ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... character: many volumes of devotion, some of church history, one or two on ecclesiastical art, several works of our elder dramatists, some good reprints of our chronicles, and many folios of church music, which last indeed amounted to a remarkable collection. There was no musical instrument however in the room of any kind, and the only change in its furniture, since we last visited the room of Gerard, was the presence of a long-backed chair of antique form, most beautifully embroidered, and a portrait of a female saint over the mantel-piece. As for Gerard himself ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... the much coveted post of kebiishi, applied for permission to proceed at once to his brother's assistance. The Court refused his application, whereupon he resigned his office and, like a true bushi, hastened to the war. Yoshimitsu was a skilled performer upon a musical instrument called the sho. He had studied under a celebrated master, Toyohara Tokimoto, now no more, and, on setting out for the field of battle in the far north, he became apprehensive lest the secrets imparted to him by his teacher should die with him. He therefore ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... much practice, sums up a column of figures with a rapidity which resembles intuition. The act of speaking any language, of reading fluently, of playing music at sight, are cases as remarkable as they are familiar. Among bodily acts, dancing, gymnastic exercises, ease and brilliancy of execution on a musical instrument, are examples of the rapidity and facility acquired by repetition. In simpler manual operations the effect is, ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... finding a musical instrument in the road, asked the name of it, and was told that it was a fish-horn. The next time he went fishing he set his nets and blew the fish-horn all day to charm the fish into them; but at nightfall there ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce
... valuable a treasure. He stopped and looked at him with an expression of delight, and they exchanged glances that showed a genuine sympathy springing up between them. At once he resolved to possess a similar musical instrument, as I suppose it may be called; and away he hastened to the toy-shop, knowing that it ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... blood supply to the brain, leaving it imperfectly nourished, and flaccid, and unable, there-fore, to make due response to the demands of its owner, the man within, who seeks to manifest himself through the organism. Of an organism thus affected, as of an underpitched musical instrument, the tones will be flat. Of stimulants, the effect is the contrary. Owing to the over-tension of the strings, the music will be sharp. It is apt also to be irregular and discordant, owing to the action set up in the organism itself—an action which is not that of the performer or man. ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade
... beautiful girls; Praxiteles drew them all one after another; then from these diverse types of beauty, each one of which had its defects, he formed a single faultless beauty and created Venus. The man who first created a musical instrument, and who gave to harmony its rules and its laws, had for a long time listened to the murmuring of reeds and the singing of birds. Thus the poets, who understand life, after knowing much of love, more or less transitory, after feeling that sublime exaltation which real passion can for the moment ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... dollars to two hundred, according to the difficulty and respectability of the vocation. A carpenter or a blacksmith might be satisfied with a premium of sixty or seventy dollars, while a cabinet-maker would demand a hundred, and a musical instrument maker or ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... Geschichte des Buddhismus, German translation by Schiefner, pp. 84-85. See Suzuki's Awakening of Faith, pp. 24-32. As'vagho@sa wrote the Buddhacaritakavya, of great poetical excellence, and the Mahala@mkaras'astra. He was also a musician and had invented a musical instrument called Rastavara that he might by that means convert the people of the city. "Its melody was classical, mournful, and melodious, inducing the audience to ponder on the misery, emptiness, and non-atmanness of life." Suzuki, ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... get a natural underground chamber. 3. Syncopate a wise saying, and get to injure. 4. Syncopate a small house, and leave a fugitive named in the Bible. 5. Syncopate a crown of a person of rank, and leave a musical instrument. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... Museum by the Salting bequest, showing children going about with the star (a structure of oiled paper on a stick, lit from behind with a candle) on Epiphany-evening, and singing before the houses, as they also did, some months later, on Shrove Tuesday, accompanying their songs with the rommelpot, a musical instrument well known from Hals's pictures, and consisting of an earthenware pot, covered with parchment or bladder, through which a stick was moved up and down (plates 24 and 25). Rembrandt's etchings reproducing ...
— Rembrandt's Amsterdam • Frits Lugt
... Vanity of human Life; and passing from one Thought to another, Surely, said I, Man is but a Shadow and Life a Dream. Whilst I was thus musing, I cast my eyes towards the Summit of a Rock that was not far from me, where I discovered one in the Habit of a Shepherd, with a little Musical Instrument in his Hand. As I looked upon him he applied it to his Lips, and began to play upon it. The sound of it was exceeding sweet, and wrought into a Variety of Tunes that were inexpressibly melodious, and altogether different from any thing I had ever heard. They put me in mind of those heavenly Airs ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... noon when he reached the tavern. He went inside, saw men and women dancing in a dim light, and there was a huge, rainbow-colored musical instrument by the door which startled him by its resonance. The music was wild, weird, ...
— The Man from Time • Frank Belknap Long
... Hockins, putting his musical instrument in his pocket, "how are we to know that you are a friend—except by the cut o' your jib, which, I admit, looks honest enough, and your actions, which, we can't ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... hat and cloak, which were hanging by the door. When he had put them on he was turning away without saying good-night, when through a half-open door he saw an object which fascinated him: a piano. He had not touched a musical instrument for weeks. He went in and lovingly touched the keys, sat down just as he was, with his hat on his head and his cloak on his shoulders, and began to play. He had altogether forgotten where he was. He did not notice that two ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... to the lawn, where the dew lay white. The freshness in the air, the glamour of the moonlight, and the fumes of the port combined to make him feel strangely rhumantic, and if he had possessed a musical instrument he would very likely have begun to play on it. He spent some moments tracking to and fro in the dew before he settled on the centre of the lawn as the most suitable spot for the act which he contemplated, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... it will play. This instrument is on a somewhat similar principle to the wonderful Phonograph, the perforations in a flexible strip producing the effect. It has just been perfected (the accompanying cut showing it in its improved form), and is having the largest sale ever obtained by a musical instrument in the country. It has solid metal cases in imitation of green bronze; the notes or bars (the music producers) are metal, on same principle as a tuning-fork, which produce clear and most melodious notes, and never get out of tune; the bars are struck ...
— Scientific American, Volume XLIII., No. 25, December 18, 1880 • Various
... delicacy. One served soup in small lacquer bowls, another fish, a third cakes, a fourth tea in very tiny cups, and others various things, and finally saki, the wine of the country, was produced, served in small cups like the tea. Then came the girls. Seven approached, each carrying a musical instrument of queer construction. They bowed profoundly, but I noticed did not touch the mat with their foreheads, their rank being much superior to that of the servants, and began to play ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... New York City woman, last week, observing a beautiful brass model of an Oliver Plow on my mantel, asked me, "What is this musical instrument?" she proved herself not of the Peter Cooper tribe. She was the other kind—the kind that seeing the pollywogs remarks, "Oh, how lovely—they will all be butterflies next week!" Or, "Which cow is it that gives the butter-milk?" a question that ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... been noted for their remarkable skill of giving vent, extempore, to their feelings in the form of {Schnaderhpfel} (lit., reapers [ country-people's] dancing-songs) or "Tyrolese ditties." They have all the same rhythm, are sung to the accompaniment of the cithern, the favorite musical instrument of the mountaineers, and recite in verse, more or less rude, the interests of mountain-life, such as the adventures of lovers, and the mysteries of ...
— Eingeschneit - Eine Studentengeschichte • Emil Frommel
... a lawyer, but yet he considered that his most important pursuit was not the law but these novels. He believed that he had a subtle, aesthetic temperament, and he always had leanings towards art. He neither sang nor played on any musical instrument, and was absolutely without an ear for music, but he attended all the symphony and philharmonic concerts, got up concerts for charitable objects, and made the acquaintance of singers. . ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... you really must think less of psychology and electrobiology. This develops into a mania with you. Don't you see that this wild music is a natural acoustic phenomenon? Each of the reeds around us—and there are thousands on this island—contains a natural musical instrument; and the musician, Wind, comes here daily to try his art after nightfall—especially during the last ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... gallery of pictures, where she soon found a portrait of the same handsome Prince, as large as life, and so well painted that as she studied it he seemed to smile kindly at her. Tearing herself away from the portrait at last, she passed through into a room which contained every musical instrument under the sun, and here she amused herself for a long while in trying some of them, and singing until she was tired. The next room was a library, and she saw everything she had ever wanted to read, as well as everything she had read, and it seemed to her that a whole lifetime would ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... greatest momentary importance had to sing. That these arias very soon degenerated into show pieces for virtuoso singers was an accident due to the popularity of the operatic stage, the development of the new art of singing, and a delight in the human voice as a musical instrument. It has no concern with our ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... reflection of it. At the first nobody had cared a straw about artistic excellence. The homely or grotesque accomplishments of the village found their way surprisingly on to a public platform, and were not laughed to scorn; anyone who could sing a song or play a musical instrument—it mattered not what—was welcomed and applauded. But how could it go on? The people able to do anything at all were not many, and when their repertory of songs learnt by ear was exhausted, there was nothing new forthcoming. ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... the high notes, from which he scrambled back to the first position with sounds not of unmixed purity of tone. At seven the shrill tweedle-dee of this youngster had begun, accompanied by a booming ground-bass from Elijah New, the parish-clerk, who had thoughtfully brought with him his favorite musical instrument, the serpent. Dancing was instantaneous, Mrs. Fennel privately enjoining the players on no account to let the dance exceed the length of ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... the history of the life-work of the great Italian stringed musical instrument maker.... There is a most interesting analysis of Stradivari's method of mechanical construction which again is illustrated by original drawings from the many Strads which it has been Mr. Petherick's privilege to ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson
... age; climbing its seven terraces. But in the approaching dawn, the one outstanding thrill of the night was that of a half-naked Javanese girl, who stood for an hour, poised in her brown beauty on the top of one of the Bells of Buddha, with some weird Javanese musical instrument, ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... I was sitting in the cupboard in the drawing-room from dinner-time onwards. After that I came out and started cannoning about among Aunt Adeline's china, so I thought I'd better switch the light on. Unfortunately I switched on some sort of musical instrument instead. And then somebody started shooting. So, what with one thing and another, I thought it would be best to hide somewhere. I hid in one of the suits of ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... You don't imagine that because one is a successful composer he must be a brilliant virtuoso. I hardly ever touch a musical instrument. Wagner was a very poor player, and Berlioz simply couldn't play at all. I'm a musical dreamer. Do you know that I literally dreamt "The Light of Home"? Now, that's ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing |
