"Pedal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... abandoned for another. If the right hand thrusts the flute, it is the duty of the left to see that the alternate and the limiting threads of the warp are properly lifted. First comes a pressure of the foot on a long, lath-like pedal which is attached to the bar holding in turn the loops which pass around ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... ARE TREADING ON MY FAVORITE CORN,' was the mild protest of one in a crowd against the act of a neighbor who had encroached on his pedal extremities, by attempting to violate the philosophical axiom that two bodies can not occupy the same space simultaneously. The remark raised a laugh; yet it involved a great truth. Each of us has at least one pet infirmity, which we nurse as earnestly, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... way to learn to write is to sit down and write, just as the best way how to learn to ride a bicycle is to mount the wheel and pedal away. Write first about common things, subjects that are familiar to you. Try for instance an essay on a cat. Say something original about her. Don't say "she is very playful when young but becomes grave as she grows old." That has been said more than fifty thousand times before. Tell ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... "Flying Dutchman." He looked very "fin" as the French say, but did not reply. He never gives a direct answer to a direct question. "Ah," said I, "you won't tell." He smiled and then immediately played the passage. It was a long arpeggio, and the effect he made was, as I had supposed, a pedal effect. He kept the pedal down throughout, and played the beginning of the passage in a grand sort of manner, and then all the rest of it with a very pianissimo touch, and so lightly, that the continuity of the arpeggios was ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... the fibres of Crotolaria juncea, was steeped repeatedly in limewater, and then exposed to the air by spreading it on the grass; it was also repeatedly pounded by the dhenki or pedal, and when sufficiently reduced by this process to make a pulp, it was mixed in a gumla with water, so as to make it of the consistence of thick soup. The frames with which the sheets were taken up were made of mat of the size of a sheet of paper. The operator sitting by the ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... in surprise at her own feet, and I observed the slight roughening of the side of the sole caused by the friction of the edge of the pedal. ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... naturally the decreasing amplitude of the vibration may in itself tend to create a diminuendo, yet it is possible to make up for this in some degree by causing the air-blast to increase in force, through the use of any suitable means, modified by an extra pedal as ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... poet. Some maintained the justness of Shakspear's delineations of aerial beings, while others denied it. By no violent transition, Ariel and his songs were introduced, and a lady, celebrated for her musical skill, was solicited to accompany her pedal harp with the song of "Five fathom deep thy father lies"... She was known to have set, for her favourite instrument, all ...
— Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist - (A Fragment) • Charles Brockden Brown
... turn pale, and clutch the banisters; he was racing out of the hotel. He ran to the coach-house, wheeled his bicycle into the courtyard, mounted, and rode down the street. He went at a moderate pace through the town, but once on the Corniche road, he drove the machine as hard as he could pedal. ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... unobserved out of the drawing-room where Miss Burton was "performing" on my mother's piano, and crept slowly and sadly upstairs. I went slowly, partly out of my heavy grief, and partly because I carried Rubens in my arms. Had not the lawyer kicked him because he lay upon the pedal? I was resolved that after such an insult he should not so much as have the trouble of walking upstairs. So I carried him, and as I went I ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... that a woman sobbed, but his eyes, used by now to the obscurity, told him that it was neither Mrs. Bruce nor Barbara. The piano burst into a storm of sound, under cover of which Rose, still at her post, torn with jealousy, continued to pedal at the direction of her lord and master, and sobbed as if her heart would break. Devils filled the room, whirling in mad dances; they screamed and yelled; the souls of the damned screeched in torment; and the face of him who invoked the inferno, swollen, streaming with ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... raises the damper of the string. If the key is held down, the vibrations continue for a long time after the blow; but if released at once, the damper stifles them as the hammer regains its seat. A bar, L, passing along under all the damper lifters, is raised by depressing the loud pedal. The soft pedal slides the whole keyboard along such a distance that the hammers strike two only out of the three strings allotted to all except the bass notes, which have only one string apiece, or ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... Hastens adown to subdominant key, Where melody mellow-like Singing so 'cello-like Rises and falls in a wild ecstasy. Scarce is this finished When chords all diminished Break loose in a patter that comes down like rain, A pedal-point wonder Rivaling thunder. Now all is mad agitation again. Like laughter jolly Begins the finale; Again does the 'cello its tones seem to lend Diminuendo ad molto crescendo. Ah! Rubinstein only could ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... same!" she cried, so loud that I had half to drown it in the pedal. "He's taken to following the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... gentleman who is accompanying a lady holds her wheel; she stands on the left side of the machine and puts her right foot across the frame to the right pedal, which at the time must be up; pushing the right pedal causes the machine to start and then with the left foot in place, the rider starts ahead—slowly at first, in order to give her cavalier time to mount his wheel, which he will do in the briefest ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... echoing aisles. There is a hush of expectation. A few quiet worshippers assemble; the western light grows low, and lights spring to life, one after another, in the misty choir. Then murmurs a voice, an Amen rises in full concord, and as it dies away the slumberous thunder of a pedal note rolls on the air; the casements whirr, the organ speaks. That fills, as it were, to the brim, as with some sweet and fragrant potion, the cup of beauty; and the dreaming, inquiring spirit sinks content into the flowing, the aspiring tide, ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Denys!" she exclaimed. "I have borrowed your machine—I have bent my pedal somehow, and ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... Winifred flung a swift glance round, and then fixed her eyes upon the dominant figure in the corn-straw dress that the glare of light fell shimmering on. The sweet voice was still rising, and she longed that the accompanist would force the tone to cover it a little, and put the loud pedal on. He, however, was gazing at his music, and played on quietly until, with startling ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... and piano of Love's Old Sweet Song (words by G. Clifton Bingham, composed by J. L. Molloy, sung by Madam Antoinette Sterling) open at the last page with the final indications ad libitum, forte, pedal, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... Mark climbed into the saddle. He began to pedal, and then threw in the gasolene and spark. The ...
— Lost on the Moon - or In Quest Of The Field of Diamonds • Roy Rockwood
... tears," and "breath," and "smiles," and "Eden zephyrs," "sighs of seraph lovers," and "lyres of slumbering cherubs," dancing away to "the Pedal Harp!" How strange it is that Thomson, in his stanzas on the AEolian lyre (see the 'Castle of Indolence'), never dreamed of such things, but left all these prettinesses to the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... Indian summer weather and labored out a ponderous joke or two about such a bad-tempered man having such a good-looking wife—for which I despised them all. But I could see that even if my intrusion had put the soft pedal on their talk it had also left everything uncomfortably tentative and non-committal. For some reason or other this was a man's fight, one which had to be settled in a man's way. So I decided to retire with outward dignity even if ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... his voice in that act! Why, it’s a scene to be played with the soft pedal down! This is the way it should be done!” Dropping into a chair in the middle of the room my host began miming the gestures and expression of Robespierre as the phantoms (which, after all, are but the figments of an over-wrought brain) ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... turtle shell with side pieces like horns, an instrument having but little effective resonance. The later form was the so-called cithara, the most common shape of which is that made familiar to all by the pedal piece of the square pianoforte. This instrument rarely had more than six strings, and as it had no finger board it could have had no more notes than strings. Chappell, the English historian, attempts to demonstrate that certain ones of these instruments had a bridge ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... Bob's dog that bothered you the other day," she told him as he stood ready to mount, his foot on the pedal; "Bob hasn't ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... various superscriptions naturally cause the sonata to be ranked as programme-music, but of a very simple kind. It is easy to suggest pastoral scenes: a few pedal notes, a certain simplicity of melody, and a few realistic touches expressive of the waving of branches of trees, or the meandering of a brook, ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... again, and I shall turn over for you. Bring out that forte passage properly! Remember there's a pedal on the piano!" ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... coterie at Rome that was running the Church and the world pretty much as they pleased, or against the brutal "Hans Wurst" (Duke Henry of Brunswick). Erasmus and his school of gentle reformers always counseled a slackening of the pace and the use of the soft pedal. Where is Erasmus to-day in the world's valuation? Even Rome, in whose bosom he nestled, and who fondled him for a season, has cast him aside as worthless. Luther lives yet, to the delight not ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... the pedal of power, and decision in the conscious action of the chin (not the jaw) will induce by reflex action that stroke which expresses well-aimed will-power. It may be noticed in connection with this suggestion that when a person means what he says the action of the ...
— Expressive Voice Culture - Including the Emerson System • Jessie Eldridge Southwick
... twice tired, dirty stragglers, lying at the roadside, raised a cheer as they recognized the small American flag that fluttered from our taxi's door; and once we gave a lift to a Belgian bicycle courier, who had grown too leg-weary to pedal his machine another inch. He was the color of the dust through which he had ridden, and his face under its dirt mask was thin and drawn with fatigue; but his racial enthusiasm endured, and when we dropped him ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... but he is not my man. He is younger than I, pleases the ladies very much, makes pot-pourris on "La Muette" ["Masaniello"], plays the forte and piano with the pedal, but not with the hand, takes tenths as easily as I do octaves, and wears studs with diamonds. Moscheles does not at all astonish him; therefore it is no wonder that only the tuttis of my concerto have pleased him. ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... pedal. "Oh, dear, yes. It is quite, quite easy. I shall get there all right—if the Matabele don't burst ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... clapping when she finished, and when this was over, as an encore, she gave a piece which imitated the sea; there were little trills to represent the lapping waves and thundering chords, with the loud pedal down, to suggest a storm. After this a gentleman sang a song called Bid me Good-bye, and as an encore obliged with Sing me to Sleep. The audience measured their enthusiasm with a nice discrimination. Everyone was applauded till ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... by sight an' started in to give you the tip to put the soft pedal on the wiggle stuff, when, zowie! I guess you didn't reach out an' soak me—a cop!" He tapped the bandage upon the aggressively ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... up a couple of conversations on their own hook—kind of side issue, soft pedal dialogues—and they wa'n't takin' the slightest notice of my brilliant efforts. At the other end of the table Sadie is havin' more or less the same experience; for every time she tries to cut in with some cheerful observation she finds she's addressin' either Marjorie's ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... a motor bicycle, which saves you the trouble of working the pedals. It can go quite fast, but if it breaks down it is very heavy to pedal home. ...
— The Motor Car Dumpy Book - The Dumpy Books for Children #32 • T. W. H. Crosland
... shuddered; then they dodged through an opening where the mud-guards missed by an inch and were whirling west toward Broadway. At 109th Street a bicycle officer stared in amazement at the dwindling number beneath the rear axle, then ducked his head and began to pedal. He overhauled the speeding machine as it throbbed before the doors of Mercy Hospital, to be greeted by a grinning chauffeur who waved him toward the building and told of a ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... that spins no more! old death with open eyes! old devil's cradle! vile lantern of an old town-crier too! Old wretch whose look kills! old moustache of an old theriacler! old wretch to make dead men weep! old organ-pedal! old sheath with a hundred knives! old church porch, worn out by the knees! old poor-box in which everyone has dropped. I'll give all my future to be quit of thee!" As he finished these gentle thoughts the pretty bride, who ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... I saw the corporal at the gate repeat the gesture; then a big bicycle corps, four abreast, guns on their backs, slid round the corner and came gliding down the hill. There was not a sound, not the rattle of a chain or a pedal. ...
— A Hilltop on the Marne • Mildred Aldrich
... to come out openly and say what they thought. The chief facts had already been in the hands of the various editors and publishers for a week and more, but word had gone around from Mollenhauer, Simpson, and Butler to use the soft pedal for the present. It was not good for Philadelphia, for local commerce, etc., to make a row. The fair name of the city would be smirched. It was ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... of being played alone or in connection with each other. Four manuals, or hand key-boards, and two pedals, or foot key-boards, command these several systems,—the solo organ, the choir organ, the swell organ, and the great organ, and the piano and forte pedal-organ. Twelve pairs of bellows, which it is intended to move by water-power, derived from the Cochituate reservoirs, furnish the breath which pours itself forth in music. Those beautiful effects, for which the organ is incomparable, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... by its black and white diagonals and by the little sentry hut half hidden behind the other car that it marked the frontier. A man with a rifle on his shoulder stood there. They drew up to it fast, but his foot automatically eased up on the floorboard pedal until the ...
— Double Take • Richard Wilson
... the evening. He had never heard Madame Arnaud playing again: she was too shy to play in company: and even when she was alone, now that she knew she could be heard on the stairs, she kept the soft pedal down. But Christophe used to play to them, and they would talk about it for hours together. The Arnauds used to speak of music with such eagerness and freshness of feeling that he was enchanted with them. He had not ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... piano, and began softly playing, with the hush-pedal on. The two women drew close around her. Suddenly she released the pedal, and lifted her hands from the keys, as if they burned her. One string was still faintly singing which she had not touched, the string of the key that the ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... there would be faraway looks and sighs, and the notings down of the titles of books that conducted the pilgrim on the Way. Perhaps as they softly assembled for departure, a little music would be suggested to round off the evening, and she saw herself putting down the soft pedal as people rustled into their places, for the first movement of the "Moonlight Sonata." Then at the end there would be silence, and she would get up with a sigh, and someone would say "Lucia mia"! and somebody ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... is making her way through the sailors to where Tristan is standing at the helm, an interlude made of the sailors' song phrase is played on four horns and two bassoons over a pedal bass, the strings coming in in strongly marked rhythm on the last beat of each bar, marking the hauling of the ropes to clear the anchor. Tristan is in a reverie, scarcely conscious of what is going on around him; the love-motive once in the oboe shows ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... the uproar that its own activities have brought about, will welcome the soft pedal that Sir Hiram Maxim, inventor of the gun silencer, is preparing to put on the hubbub in which every great urban community has condemned itself ...
— Owen Clancy's Happy Trail - or, The Motor Wizard in California • Burt L. Standish
... nearer the mark to say, since you began by being so plain-spoken, that you came here to ask me to give you my husband," I retorted as quietly as I could, not because I preferred the soft pedal, but because I nursed a strong suspicion that Struthers' attentive ear was just ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... toe was presented to us for adoration, but as we did not seem to "ad," he withdrew his pedal attachment and talked about the "relics" ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... we don't drift the way we ought to," said Harry, pressing on his clutch pedal and trying ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... vibrations, and we know no better than to make the whole series leading up to them. It is as though, in order to sound some little shrill octave of pipes in an organ, we are obliged to depress every key and every pedal, and to blow a ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 717, September 28, 1889 • Various
... that he must interject an "in short" and summarize his meaning in a phrase amusing through its homely contrast. But humor based on ponderous diction is too often wearisome. Better say simply "He died," or colloquially "He kicked the bucket," than "He propelled his pedal extremities with violence against the wooden pail which is customarily employed in the ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... the reply, "by means of a pedal attachment a fulcrumed lever concerts a vertical reciprocating motion into a circular movement. The principal part of the machine is a huge disk that revolves in a vertical plane. Power is applied through the axis of the disk, and work is done on the periphery, and ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... working the pedal and I was sailing around very fast," said Raggedy Andy, "and all of a sudden the ...
— Raggedy Andy Stories • Johnny Gruelle
... and he never forgot about John, in Browning's poem, scorning ale. But many years afterward, reading Browning, he found that the words really were: "John's corns ail," meaning apparently that John was troubled by pedal callouses.) Peter, we repeat, and to avoid any further misunderstanding and press diligently toward our theme, having mentioned his garden, who should come up to us but Pete Corcoran, also of the composing room force, and a waggish friend of ours, and gazing ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... he has," retorted Joe. "But when it's that kind of opinion he ought to put on the soft pedal. Any one has a right to have a club foot or a hunched back or cross eyes, but he doesn't usually go round ...
— The Radio Boys' First Wireless - Or Winning the Ferberton Prize • Allen Chapman
... household. There, according to reports, Chopin and Liszt were in friendly rivalry—are two pianists ever friendly?—Liszt imitating Chopin's style, and once in the dark they exchanged places and fooled their listeners. Liszt denied this. Another story is of one or the other working the pedal rods—the pedals being broken. This too has been laughed to scorn by Liszt. Nor could he recall having played while Viardot-Garcia sang out on the terrace of the chateau. Garcia's memory is also short about this event. Rollinat, Delacroix and Sand have written abundant souvenirs ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... When at last a stray musician with a worn face, long hair, and an eyeglass stuck into his contorted eyebrow sat down to the grand piano and flinging his hands with a sweep on the keys and his foot on the pedal, began to attack a fantasia of Liszt on a Wagner motive, Aratov could not stand it, and stole off, bearing away in his heart a vague, painful impression; across which, however, flitted something incomprehensible to him, but ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... master played the same bars for the second time. He was still able to sustain, if it were necessary, a quavering, imperfect phrase. But John delivered the second repetition without a mistake, singing easily from the chest. The master put his foot upon the soft pedal. Nobody was watching him. Had any one done so, he would have seen the perspiration break upon the musician's forehead. The piano purred its accompaniment. Then, in the middle of the phrase, the master lifted his hands and held them poised above the instrument. ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... such comparatively recent times is almost incredible. As Hilary was telling me of such things as we sat in his house one evening, there grew upon our ears a peculiar sound, a humming deep bass, somewhat resembling the low notes of a piano with a pressure on the pedal. It increased and became louder, coming from the road which passed the house; it was caused by a very large flock of sheep driven slowly. The individual 'baa' of each lamb was so mixed, as it were, with the bleat of its fellow that the swelling sound took a strange, mysterious ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... the control pedal at his foot and the small ship shot out into the black void of space. Ahead of them, thousands of yards away, he could see the ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell
... with one quick turn of the head and made no answer. But she played the air over again—the girls sing it to this day over their household work at Farlingford to other words—with her foot on the soft pedal. The Marquis hummed it between his teeth at the other end of ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... Kranich & Bach Small Grand. Although only 5'4" long it produces, in a manner almost unbelievable, all the magnificent qualities of tone that make "grands" infinitely more satisfying than "upright" pianos. With its new full-tone scale and the marvelous "Isotonic Pedal," this superb instrument IS the Small Grand leader of ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... evening which would inevitably run into the small hours, Joan went over to the piano and, with what was a quite unconscious touch of irony, played one of Heller's inimitable "Sleepless Nights," with the soft pedal down. The large imposing room, a chaotic mixture of French and Italian furniture with Flemish tapestries and Persian rugs, which accurately typified the ubiquitous mind of the hostess, was discreetly lighted. The numerous screened windows ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... a very soft, deep-throated drum. Vezin was very sensitive to music, knew about it intelligently, and had even ventured, unknown to his friends, upon the composition of quiet melodies with low-running chords which he played to himself with the soft pedal when no one was about. And this music floating up through the trees from an invisible and doubtless very picturesque band of the townspeople wholly charmed him. He recognised nothing that they played, and it sounded as though they were simply improvising without a conductor. No definitely marked ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... in his love to notice such mere sublunary matters. The girl had promised nothing positive for the future. She kept him on the brittle edge of nervous expectation. The opposition of the dancer had been successfully met by threats of dismissal; Hugh continued to lose flesh and gain in vocal and pedal agility. ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... ears dear," she ordered, "my pillows aren't unpacked yet and you may find Neddie's last year tacks in that burlap. There now, you look almost human. But the wistful whimper lingers. Jane, what has happened? You are simply smothered in the soft pedal. Tell your Judy all ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... weighed nearly 30 tons. There are 4 keyboards, 71 draw stops, and over 4,000 pipes of various forms and sizes, some long, some short, some trumpet-like in shape, and others cylindrical, while in size they range from two or three inches in length to the great pedal pipe, 32ft. high and a yard in width, with an interior capacity of 224 cubic feet. In the "great organ" there are 18 stops, viz.: Clarion (2ft.), ditto (4ft.), posanne, trumpet, principal (1 and 2), gamba, stopped diapason, four open diapasons, doublette, harmonic flute, mixture sesquialtra, fifteenth, ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... the hour he spent on Sweet Sorrow laid over anything that the town had ever seen for sadness. Put 'em through every stage of grief from the snuffles to the snorts. Doc always was a pretty noisy preacher, but he began work on that head with soft-pedal-tremolo-stop preaching and wound up with a peroration like a steamboat explosion. Started with his illustrations dying of consumption and other peaceful diseases, and finished up with railroad wrecks. He'd been at it two hours ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... who has made several important innovations in writing for bass brass instruments, requires an octave bass trombone in B flat; an octave lower than the tenor one, in the "Nibelungen." The fundamental tones of the trombone are called "pedal" notes. They are difficult to get and less valuable than harmonics because, in all wind instruments, notes produced by overblowing are richer than the fundamental notes in tone quality. Valve trombones do not, however, find favor, the defects of intonation being more prominent than in ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various
... Arthur Sullivan, in the struggling years of his career, once showed great presence of mind, which saved the entire breakdown of a performance of 'Faust.' In the midst of the church scene, the wire connecting the pedal under Costa's foot with the metronome stick at the organ, broke. Costa was the conductor. In the concerted music this meant disaster, as the organist could hear nothing but his own instrument. Quick as thought, while he was playing the introductory ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... of the machine's pedal set the needle to stitching like mad. A second touch in the opposite direction brought it to an abrupt standstill. For the five hours of my first afternoon session there was not an instant's harmony between what I did and what I intended to do. I sewed frantically into ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... the ramifications of your society are like a net-work of wires, all over the earth, penetrating everywhere, and at every point touching the most deadly explosives of human passions and hates; and that it needs but the pressure of your finger upon the pedal to blow up the world. The folly of centuries has culminated in the most terrible organization that ever grew out of the wretchedness of mankind. But oh, my friend—you have a broad mind and a benevolent soul—tell me, is there no remedy? Cannot the ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... one of your feet off?" asked Grant, soberly looking down at the pedal extremities of the mechanic, as ...
— Go Ahead Boys and the Racing Motorboat • Ross Kay
... he asked again: "What was there before the world was born?" That was an easy one; so I said in a tone of finality: "There wasn't anything." Then I went on with my meditations, thinking I had used the soft pedal effectively. Silence reigned supreme for some minutes, and then was rudely shattered. His thumb flew from his mouth, and he laughed so lustily that he could be heard throughout the house. When his laughter had spent itself somewhat, I asked meekly: "What are you laughing at?" His answer ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... when it happened. "Get out of the way!" a voice shrieked "out of the way, out of the way, OUT OF THE WAY!" Her heart lurched, her stomach twisted convulsively, and there was a brassy taste in her mouth. Instinctively, she stamped down on the brake pedal, swerved sharply into the outer lane. By the time she had topped the rise, she was going a cautious 50 miles an hour and hugging the far edge of the freeway. Then, and only then, she heard the squeal of agonized tires and saw the cumbersome semitrailer coming from the opposite direction rock dangerously, ...
— The Sound of Silence • Barbara Constant
... that time a few cycling beginners used the circle for practice, and their alarming performances were gradually depleting the number of equestrians. One of these novices came down the hill, having an arm round the neck of his instructor, and one leg on the pedal, the other in mid air. He was unable to steer the machine, and as I cantered up, the performer's hat, which had been over one eye, fell off, disclosing the features of Professor Bryce. The next moment the machine, its rider and his ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... and buildings may be here mentioned. The County Court occupies what was then a tinker's shop and a farm-yard behind; the pedal stone of the ancient Cross, now in the Institute garden, was then at the back entrance to the Bull Yard, near Mr. Innes' shop, having been removed from the Cross a few years before; the market place could only be approached from the High Street, through the inn yards. Of the ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... hat went back on his head; his long arms dangled, pendulum-like, by his sides, while his lanky legs, dragging along anyhow, were ever lagging behind one another. But when he opened the piano and put hands and feet to keys and pedal, he was not the same individual. He would turn on nerve and muscle-power, and would hurl avalanches of music and torrents of notes at his audience till he, in his turn, was overwhelmed with thunders of applause. And those were the days, we must remember, when but few men could play at a greater ...
— In Bohemia with Du Maurier - The First Of A Series Of Reminiscences • Felix Moscheles
... trousers, and boots, not forgetting his stockings; and then deliberately planting his chair in the open entry of the door, and gathering up one foot on the seat thereof, was amusing himself by cutting and picking the horny excrescences of his pedal digits, for the benefit of the passengers in the gentlemen's saloon; and, unfortunately, you could not be sure that his hands would be washed before he sat next to you at breakfast in the morning,—for I can testify that I have, over and over again, sat next ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... follow his course after he left the field he would soon have known that Frank was rather heading for town than intending to pedal in the direction of his own house, which was situated ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy
... derivation of the word appears both ingenious and correct. Roger North shrewdly conjectured that the "rude and gross" Gothic Fiddle "used to stir up the vulgar to dancing, or perhaps to solemnise their idolatrous sacrifices." In the Dark Ages dancing may have been regarded as bi-pedal trembling. I have remarked in another place,[19] "In the early ages of mankind dancing or jigging must have been done to the sound of the voice, next to that of the pipe, and, when the bow was discovered, ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... and crank. He did it quietly, not looking at her. She could see that his hand trembled on the crank. When he did glance at her, as he drove off, it was apologetically, miserably. His foot was shaking on the clutch pedal. ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... Weaver at his loom is sitting, Throws his shuttle to and fro; Foot and treadle, Hand and pedal, Upward, downward, Hither, thither, How the weaver makes them go! As the weaver wills they go. Up and down the web is plying, And across the woof is flying; What a rattling! What a battling! What a shuffling! What ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... it?—and my tone seemed rich and virile. I played the first theme, and all went well until the next interlude for the orchestra; I looked about me confidently, feeling quite like a virtuoso, and soon spied my parents, when suddenly my knees began to tremble, trembled so that the damper pedal vibrated. Then my eyes blurred and I missed my cue and felt Richter's great spectacles burning into the side of my head like two fierce suns. I scrambled, got my place, lost it, rambled and was roused to my position by the short rapping of the conductor's stick on his desk. The band stopped, ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... right at the start. We had a suicide the other day who left an apologetic note that was played up by some of the papers. Now comes this affair. The management are just as anxious to have the crime cleared up as any one - if it is a crime. But can't it be done with the soft pedal? We will stop at nothing in the way of expense - just so long as the name of the Vanderveer is kept in the background. Only, I'm afraid the coroner will try to rub it in ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... had been to give vent as he had done to an animal passion for a woman, and allow it to lead to such disastrous consequences; then to think of putting an end to himself; then to go recklessly and get drunk. The great waves of pedal music tumbled round the choir, and, nursed on the supernatural as he had been, it is not wonderful that he could hardly believe that the psalm was not specially set by some regardful Providence for this moment of his first entry into the solemn building. And yet it was the ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... Then he'd pedal away, shaking his head. Later on the handyman would come around to swap sanitary tanks under the trailers and Joey would ask him the same question. Once a month the power company sent out a man to read the electric meters and he was part ...
— To Remember Charlie By • Roger Dee
... the most beautiful melody of bells I ever heard is toning through the air. They are the bells of S. Michael's church, and I am told that the musician plays them by a set of pedal keys, and works himself into a mighty heat and flurry in the operation. But we cannot think of the wild manner and mad motions of the player in connection with those beautiful sounds, so clear and melodious; that half plaintive music so sweetly ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... in motion. Rick dropped into the seat next to Scotty and his pal pushed the gas pedal all the way. The nose lifted and the ...
— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine
... lessons in flying. The catbird's nest, with four greenish-blue eggs, is in a wild gooseberry bush and the catbird is up among the shad-trees feasting on the ripening June berries. The gentle notes of soft pedal music come floating sweetly down. Did you ever stop long enough to listen to the full song of the catbird? First, the brilliant, ringing strains, often softening into a subdued sympathetic melody, and then, just as the music seems almost divine, the long cat-like ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... keys have small wire eyes attached to their undersides near the front. A corresponding slot is cut through the inner and outer cases, allowing the eyes to be connected to a short pedal keyboard which has ...
— Italian Harpsichord-Building in the 16th and 17th Centuries • John D. Shortridge
... to bear too hard on this pedal. It is easier to look at things from the commonplace standpoint. One thing or another prevented any of my companions in the jail from doing what it was desirable to do, and circumstances quite unforeseen ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... below seemed to float up lazily to the little group in the open window, as the smoke of their pipes and cigars floated up lazily to the ceiling above. The gentle hum of the traffic made a pleasant accompaniment to their conversation, as the holding down of a soft pedal fills in and supports dreamy organ music. But for the six young men in the bow window the room was untenanted, save for a waiter who had just brought some fresh drinks, and who was now clearing away empty ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... hit out a tune or two with the soft pedal on?' I asks Marilla. 'Uncle Cal has begged you so often. It would please him a good deal to hear you touch up the piano he's bought for you. Don't you think ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... studying the exhibits in the distillery got the idea in his head that my foot was the loud pedal on a piano and he started to play the overture from William Tell ...
— The Silly Syclopedia • Noah Lott
... argument which makes me pause, if it does not convince me. No! I can't answer it. I—I don't want to answer it. I simply surrender. He shall have his way with you—and with me. Only," he added in a gloomy lowered tone which struck Mr Powell as if a pedal had been put down, "only it shall take a little time. I have never lied to you. Never. I renounce not only my chance but my life. In a few days, directly we get into port, the very moment we do, I, who have said I could never let you go, I shall ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... note. They put the soft pedal on me. They 'muted' me," he amended, in deference to her ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... Dohong learned to pedal and to guide a tricycle in about three lessons. He caught the two ideas almost instantly, and soon brought his muscles under control sufficiently to ride ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... group of students and was being made the butt of a good-humoured jest. And beneath the high, laughing tones, the perpetual hum of a thousand talking voices neither rose nor fell, but droned unceasingly like the long pedal in a fugue, whose full deep note stands still amidst the strife of moving sounds, as the sun stood while the battle was fought out in Ajalon. The very life of the multitude seemed to produce a sound of its own, in the breathing of a thousand ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... an entirely different matter. The moment you begin to "paddle your own canoe," lively and—to the lookers-on—mirth-provoking exercises ensue. When you stick your hand under to make a stroke your feet decline to stay anywhere but on top; and when, after an exciting tussle with your refractory pedal extremities, you again get them beneath the surface, your hands fly out with the splash and splutter of a half-dozen flutter wheels. If, on account of your brains being heavier than your heels, you chance to turn a somersault, and your head goes under, ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... second supper with undiminished appetite. Then Esther mounted the platform where the band had been seated, and played a last waltz, and a very last waltz, and "really the last waltz of all." The squire's son played a polka with two fingers, and a great deal of loud pedal, and the fun grew faster and more uproarious with every moment. Even Rosalind threw aside young ladylike affectations and pranced about without thinking of appearances, and when at last the others left the room to prepare for ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... suppose that iambic verse may drop its initial short syllable, and still be iambic, still be measured as before, is not only to take a single long syllable for a foot, not only to recognize a pedal caesura at the beginning of each line, but utterly to destroy the only principles on which iambics and trochaics can be discriminated. Yet Hiley, of Leeds, and Wells, of Andover, while they are careful ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... All your janglings now; Notes false-chorded, slithering slaps, Pedal-aided row! Where is Minx, we wonder? Ah! those scrambling skips! Back she's come to torture us With ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 17, 1891 • Various
... wished to dwell with emphasis on a particular theme, he almost invariably resorts to some form of fugal treatment, strict or free. The most effective media for rendering fugues are the chorus of mixed voices, the organ (by reason of its pedal key-board always making the subject in the bass stand out majestically) and the stringed orchestra which, with the "bite" of the strings, brings out—with peculiar sharpness—the different entrances ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... and then fixed her eyes upon the dominant figure in the corn-straw dress. The sweet voice was still rising and the interested listener hoped that the accompanist would force the tone to cover it a little, and put on the loud pedal. The pianist, however, was gazing at his music, and played on until, with ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... but very clearly, very concisely, the Senior Surgeon called out to the White Linen Nurse just how every lever, every pedal should be ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... the pedal and bent over the wheel as if urging the machine to its utmost. Then there was jolt—a roar! a bang! Cora jammed ...
— The Motor Girls Through New England - or, Held by the Gypsies • Margaret Penrose
... clutch, and slipped in first speed. Then releasing the clutch pedal gradually she felt the car move slowly forward. A flush of pleasure came to her face; for, though she had several times performed this feat of late, the demonstrator had always sat beside her. Now she was ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car - The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley • Laura Lee Hope
... motion songs is outgrown, especially with boys. During many years there has remained in memory the expression in the face of a boy, head and shoulders taller than any other child in the primary department, as he stood pointing to pedal extremities, not less than number fours, and singing, "Little feet, be very careful where you take me to." The sentiment could not possibly have been wrung from him had not ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... speaking voice a range of pitch from high to low, with a great many shades between the extremes. With all these notes available there is no excuse for offending the ears and taste of your audience by continually using the one note. True, the reiteration of the same tone in music—as in pedal point on an organ composition—may be made the foundation of beauty, for the harmony weaving about that one basic tone produces a consistent, insistent quality not felt in pure variety of chord sequences. In like manner the intoning voice in a ritual may—though it rarely ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... line with that distant planet and Seaton stepped down hard, upon a pedal. Instantly they seemed infinite myriads of miles out in space, the green system barely visible as a ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... opening. It is to fill the recess behind the spacious platform, and is described as containing pneumatic wind-chests throughout, and having an AEolian attachment. It is of three-manual compass, C.C.C. to C.4, 61 notes; and pedal compass, C.C.C. to F.30. The great organ has double open diapason (stopped bass), open diapason, dulciana, viola di gamba, doppel flute, hohl flute, octave, octave quint, superoctave, and trumpet,—61 pipes each. The swell organ has bourdon, open diapason, ...
— Pulpit and Press • Mary Baker Eddy
... the boys threw themselves down upon the ground and gave way to merriment that was none the less overpowering because it had to be indulged in "with the soft pedal on," as Arthur ...
— The Boy Scouts with the Motion Picture Players • Robert Shaler
... in a clump of bushes, he drew out a bicycle and prepared to mount. He was in the act of driving the gear around with his foot for the purpose of getting the opposite pedal in position, when he heard the thud of a heavy body that landed lightly and evidently on its feet. He did not wait for more, but ran, with hands on the handles of his bicycle, until he was able to vault astride the saddle, catch the pedals, and start a spurt. Behind he could hear the quick thud-thud ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... reputation for such, a battalion adjutant, a tall and handsome fellow with a slight partiality for legs, came dashing up on a native pony. His knees were bent and elevated toward his chin in order that his pedal extremities might not collide with the frail limbs of ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... are some—there are half a dozen—" muttered Marzio, relapsing into sullen discontent and slowly turning the body of the chalice beneath the cord stretched by the pedal on which he pressed his foot. Having brought under his hand a round boss which was to become the head of a cherub under his chisel, he rubbed his fingers over the smooth silver, mechanically, while he contemplated the red wax ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... not content with refusing to be ruled, must needs set up as a ruler, and manifested a determination to keep, not only his sisters, but his governess in order, by violent manual and pedal applications; and, as he was a tall, strong boy of his years, this occasioned no trifling inconvenience. A few sound boxes on the ear, on such occasions, might have settled the matter easily enough: but as, ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... sixty-five in Berlioz's 'Dance of the Sylphs,'" said Dr. Dubbe. "The spirits hover over Faust, who has fallen asleep. The 'cellos are sawing away drowsily on their pedal point D (probably in sympathy with Faust), and what sounds like Herr Thomas tuning the orchestra is the lone A of the fifth. The absent third represents the sleep of Faust. This is a trick common to the new school. Wagner uses it in 'Siegfried,' in the close of the Tarnhelm motive, to illustrate ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... started now to pedal out into the great world, I was icily sober, and the old skill, in consequence, had deserted me entirely. I found myself wobbling badly, and all the stories I had ever heard of nasty bicycle accidents came back to me with a rush, headed by Jeeves's Uncle Cyril's ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... inspections are held—in many instances daily. This simple preventive, coupled with a copious supply of socks sent out by the people at home, has helped the great majority of 'Tommies' to keep their pedal extremities in going order. ...
— With The Immortal Seventh Division • E. J. Kennedy and the Lord Bishop of Winchester
... head and Spanish Johnny grinned. He said he would stay. The doctor laughed at him. "Ten fellows like you couldn't hold him, Spanish, if he got obstreperous; an Irishman would have his hands full. Guess I'd better put the soft pedal on him." He pulled ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... not be absolutely erect, but leaning slightly forward, so as to allow the weight to be distributed between the handle-bars, the pedal, and the saddle. This slightly inclined attitude also maintains the proper and harmonious relation of the internal organs, so that the bowels do not crowd down on ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... serviceable shoes, such as would astonish the Parisian makers of bottines. But these shoes were only for show. The ladies walked painfully about in the unaccustomed leather. They seemed to have innumerable corns, to wrestle with bunions huge and dire, to suffer from unknown pedal infirmities. Outside the town the ladies put on their shoes. Outside the town, after the fair, they took them off again, sitting on the roadside, stripping their shapely feet, bundling the obnoxious, crippling abominations into Isabella-colour handkerchiefs, which they tucked ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... that," he said, putting on the husky conversational pedal, "I was naturally trusted. And I ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... at him as he started to speak, and Jack's finger shot out to the forbidden wheel on the instant. Elizabeth saw it at a point when she could not control the pedal with her foot. Mother love brought a scream to her lips, and to save the child she gave him a shove with her hand. Jack fell on the floor in a heap, striking his head on the ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... bread and green water, in an unknown dungeon. My part shall be to discover her imprisonment. Sounds of strange music attract my attention to a part of the castle which I have not before frequented. There I shall distinctly hear a female voice chaunting the 'Bridesmaids' Chorus,' with Erard's double pedal accompaniment. By the aid of the confessors of the two families, two drinking, rattling, impertinent, most corrupt, and most amusing friars, to wit, ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... any movement of the arms, depending entirely upon his narrow feminine hands and slender fingers. The wide arpeggios in the left hand, maintained in a continuous stream of tone by the strict legato and fine and constant use of the damper-pedal, formed an harmonious substructure for a wonderfully poetic cantabile. His delicate pianissimo, the ever-changing modifications of tone and time (tempo rubato) were of indescribable effect. Even in energetic passages he scarcely ever ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... it all, like a throbbing pedal note, ran his need of this girl. He would do anything, suffer anything, make any sacrifice, momentary or lifelong, if he could but see her again, hold her hand for one instant, look into her eyes mysterious with the secret of death. He had but three ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson |
