"Prelude" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... prelude, pours forth his voice at once, launches into the most daring modulations, pursues the freshest and most delicate melodies, cadences, pauses, and trills; now you heard the notes murmuring at the bottom of its throat, like the ripple of the brook as it loses itself ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... and the Chieftain, for his own vengeance and the intimidation of justice, resolved upon an exemplary punishment. He waylaid the Lord of Session, emptied his pockets, killed his horses, broke his coach in pieces, and having bound his lackeys, drowned them in a pond. This was but the prelude of revenge, for presently (and here is the touch of humour) he made the Lord of Session ride at dead of night to the gallows, whereon the three malefactors were hanging. One arm of the crossbeams was still untenanted. 'By my soul, mon,' cried Gilderoy to the Lord ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... and I'll give you all a treat." He played the sentimental prelude of this characteristic product of the vaudeville stage, every note of which was plagiarized from a thousand plagiarisms and which imagined that eternity rhymed with serenity and mother with weather. ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... Micheltorena issued a decree which restored San Diego Mission temporalities to the management of the padre. He explained in his prelude that the decree was owing to the fact that the Mission establishments had been reduced to the mere space occupied by the buildings and orchards, that the padres had no support but that of charity, etc. Mofras gives the number of Indians in 1842 as five hundred, ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... imposing than the assemblage which listened to Mr. Bonar Law at Balmoral on Easter Tuesday, 1912; and the latter occasion, though never surpassed in splendour and magnitude by any single gathering, was in significance but a prelude to the magnificent climax reached in the following September on the day when the Covenant was signed ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... again, was stormy. We stayed quietly under shelter, preparing for our real journey after so much prelude. The Isaac Newton's steam-whistle had sent up the curtain; the overture had followed with strains Der-Frei-schutzy in the Adirondacks, pastoral in the valleys of Vermont and New Hampshire, funebral and andante in the fogs of Mollychunkamug; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... this prelude that I have come into Aunt Mary-zone again. Well, I have: we have not visited her yet; but she has been to New York on business and I know just how old I am, how many freckles I have on my nose, that my hair is shades darker than ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... hands while he spoke. I was not quite certain that I did hear the breakers, the noises on board the tumbling vessel making it difficult to distinguish sounds. Shortly after this there came a lull, but we thought it only the prelude to ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... tripod is going to break down here. I could tell you exactly what the difficulty is;—which would be as intelligible and amusing as a watchmaker's description of a diseased timekeeper to a ploughman. It is enough to say, that I found just what I expected to, and that I think this attack is only the prelude of more serious consequences,—which expression means you very ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... to Mrs. Delarayne's occasional affectation of valetudinarian peevishness, alleged ill-health as a fact. As a rule it was the prelude to the request for a favour on a grand scale, and being a man of very great wealth, and therefore somewhat tight-fisted, he was always rendered unusually solemn by his friend's ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... bridal couple. Two by two they came, and the air rang with their laughter and joyous chatter. Then another sound arose, and if the secretary and the pedagogue could have guessed of what that beating of hoofs was to be the prelude, they had scarce smiled so easily as they watched the ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... European civilisation, and with a much more developed proletariat, than that of England was in the seventeenth, and of France in the eighteenth century, and because the bourgeois revolution in Germany will be but the prelude to an ...
— The Communist Manifesto • Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
... the Back laid that Officer dead upon the Spot: And as it had been before concerted, the Spaniards of the Place at the same Time fell upon the poor, weak Soldiers, killing several; not even sparing their Wives. This was but a Prelude to their Barbarity; their savage Cruelty was only whetted, not glutted. They took the surviving few; hurried and dragg'd them up a Hill, a little without the Villa. On the Top of this Hill there was a Hole, or Opening, ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... farce over, as contrast and prelude, the curtain rising for the tragedy, I can, from my good seat in the pit, pretty well front, see again Booth's quiet entrance from the side, as, with head bent, he slowly and in silence, (amid the tempest of boisterous hand-clapping,) walks down the stage to the footlights ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... murmur, prelude of the coming storm, ran through the theatre, and Professor van Huysman permitted himself to snort distinctively, for which he was very promptly, though quietly, called to order by his daughter, who was sitting in front of the platform between ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... answer inconsistent with the first, thus showing that the definition was too narrow or too wide, or defective in some essential condition. [Footnote: Grote, part ii. ch. 68.] The respondent then amended his answer; but this was a prelude to other questions, which could only be answered in ways inconsistent with the amendment; and the respondent, after many attempts to disentangle himself, was obliged to plead guilty to his inconsistencies, with an admission that he could make no satisfactory ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... the prelude to the real struggle. The nomination was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary, of which Senator Edmunds, of Vermont, was chairman. The latter was very much out of humor with the President, because he had fully expected that Judge Phelps, of his own State, was to receive the honor, and he ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... the sword; I warn'd thee, but in vain, for well I knew What perils youthful ardour would pursue, That boiling blood would carry thee too far, Young as thou wert to dangers, raw to war. O curst essay of arms, disastrous doom, Prelude of bloody fields and fights to come! Hard elements of unauspicious war, Vain vows to heaven, and unavailing ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... half-hour preceding dinner, the dining-room was the scene of another struggle, only a little less desperate than that which had been the prelude to lunch, and again an appeal to the head of the house was found necessary. Muscular activity and a liberal imitation of the jeremiads once more subjugated the rebel—and the same rebellion and its suppression in a like manner took place the ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... through the prelude to Tristan and Isolde, trying vainly to conjecture what that seething turmoil of strings and winds might mean to her, but she sat mutely staring at the violin bows that drove obliquely downward, like the pelting ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... After a prelude of some moments a clear and sweet voice accompanied the instrument, and the words of the ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... motif is the stealing of the fairy-woman's clothes. The idea is the same as that found in stories where the fisherman steals the sea-woman's skin canoe as a prelude to making her his wife, or the feather cloak of the swan-maiden is seized by the hunter when he finds her asleep, thus placing the supernatural maiden in his power. Among savages it is quite a common and usual circumstance for the spouses not to mention each other's names for months ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... prelude to the last revisal, which, in the month of January, ninety-seven, Mr. Cowper was persuaded to undertake; and to a faithful copy, as I trust, of which, I have at this time the honor to conduct the reader. But it may not be amiss to observe, that with regard to the earlier books of ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... wide diffusion of the songs in question before the date assignable to the earlier of the two MS. authorities. But while this is so, it must be observed that the Carmina Burana are richer in compositions which form a prelude to the Renaissance; the English collections, on the other hand, contain a larger number of serious and satirical pieces ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... there came to their ears a prelude of Chopin, played surely by more than mortal fingers—like the rustling of summer trees, under a summer wind. And suddenly they heard ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a limit to what I can endure. If you mean to make any promise of that kind a prelude to my father's freedom from persecution, we may as well end this conversation now as later. He would rather rot in prison than have his child sacrifice herself in such ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... me show you the 'outcome' of all this wise and learned chat, with which you edify one another. You know she beguiled me into giving her lessons on the organ, as well as the piano, and yesterday when I went over to the church at instruction hour, I was astonished at a prelude, which she had evidently improvised. Screened from her view, I listened till she finished playing. Of course I praised her (for really she has remarkable talent), and asked her when she began to compose, to improvise. Now what do you suppose she answered? A brigade ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... the crash of my unlucky fall seemed to release all the prisoned noises of the house. A faint scream within the room was but a prelude, lost the next moment in the roar of dismay, the clatter of weapons, and volley of oaths and cries and curses which, rolling up from below, echoed hollowly about me, as the startled knaves rushed to their weapons, and charged across ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... are common enough all over the world, but this was no holiday review. Every one knew that it was the prelude to war, and there was an appropriate gravity and silence in the conduct of spectators. It was deeply impressive, too, to watch the long lines and masses of troops,—each unit full of youth, strength, energy, enthusiasm, hope,—standing perfectly silent, absolutely motionless, like statues, for ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... of big plans was the prelude to nothing! Yet it was by no means a farce when enacted. Philip fully intended to make this crusade the crowning event of his life, and his proceedings immediately after the great fete were all to further that end. To obtain allies abroad, to raise money at home, and to ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... little act of kindness was only a prelude to a greater one. That is to say, it was the introduction to a sumptuous dinner, composed of flesh and fish of every description, in which there was no lack of turkeys and capons. All set out with the intent of manifesting to us the abundance ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... and have still destructive work to do. The 'once more' began when Jesus came, but the final 'shaking' lies in front still. Every smaller revolution in thought or sweeping away of institutions is a prelude to that great 'shaking' when everything will go except the kingdom that cannot be moved. Its result shall be that the treasures of the nations shall be poured at His feet who is 'worthy to receive riches,' ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... have played accompaniments gladly for anybody else, but she considered that Bess had already received quite enough attention in one afternoon. For her own credit, however, she must do her best, so she concentrated her energies on the prelude. When the first strains of the violin joined in, her musical ear recognized immediately that Bess's playing was of a very high quality. The tone was pure, the notes were perfectly in tune, and there was a ringing sweetness, a crisp power of expression, and ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... evidently to what was an opening prelude, for several different subjects were introduced and only partially ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... very good comes from this impulse, for the purpose to "tell the world" that my vision of America is startlingly different from what I have read about America is identical with that break with the past which has again and again been prelude to a new era. I do not wish to discuss the alleged new era. Like the younger generation, it has been discussed too much and is becoming evidently self-conscious. But if the autobiographical novel is to be regarded as its literary herald (and they are all prophetic Declarations of Independence), ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... be seen of the enemy, which at present was nothing. Their battlefield at Cedar Run had been reoccupied by Northern troops and Pope was now confirmed in his belief that his men had won a victory there. And this victory was to be merely a prelude to another and ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... dark. The great wonder began—the amazing prelude with its brooding, its surmisals, its storms, its pounding hooves remorselessly pursuing, and flashes of the horn, like the blare of lightning. She surrendered herself, and as the curtain rose settled down to ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... of prelude, the first great parliamentary conflict between the parties, which have ever since contended, and are still contending, for the government of the nation, took place on the twenty-second of November, 1641. It was moved by the opposition, that the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the graceful performers. The music stirred him a good deal; he had also been introduced to one or two young persons as Mr. Hopkins, the poet, and he began to feel a kind of excitement, such as was often the prelude of a lyric burst from his pen. Others might have wealth and beauty, he thought to himself, but what were these to the gift of genius? In fifty years the wealth of these people would have passed into other hands. In fifty years all these beauties would be dead, or wrinkled ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... some part of the harbour, but fell harmlessly in the sea. The aeroplane then went home. Three days later, on the 24th, a single aeroplane again dropped a bomb, this time on English soil near Dover. This was the prelude to a formidable series of air raids, which, however, were not made in strength till well on ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... push your boat round some acute angle of water, with willows and tall rushes obscuring your course, and then suddenly shoot out into the open, with a view, perhaps, of an old church or manor-house, or of stately fields and trees—things which a boy feels may be the prelude to the romance of his life. So strong with me, indeed, was this feeling that fate was waiting round the corner, not to stick a knife into me, but perhaps to crown me, that when I wrote my unfinished novel, ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... the summer of 1788 brought him back to his old school in the vale of Esthwaite, and either this or the next of his undergraduate summers restored him to the society of his sister at Penrith. This meeting is thus described in the 'Prelude:'— ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... the merest prelude, and then the theme, which appeared, disappeared and re-appeared again and again to be woven about every emotion, at once ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... no second invitation, and a moment later had forgotten everything in the delightful prelude to the "break-down." He did not even observe that Mr Armstrong had not returned ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... although they did not have a role in the action. Their function was to interject comical comments from time to time. The comments aimed to be witty, but were generally gross, coarse, and obscene. Late in the fifteenth century, in France, a buffoon recited a prelude containing licentious jests to an ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... the child, Yea, saw the child's smile on the lips of death, That magic, mystic, smile! O heart of man, What strange capacities of grief and joy Are thine! How vain, how ruthless such, if given For transient things alone! O life of man! What wert thou but some laughing demon's scoff, If prelude only to the eternal grave! 'Deep cries to deep'—ay, but the deepest deep Crying to summits of the mount of God Drags forth for echo, 'Immortality.' It was the Death Divine that vanquished death! Shorn of that Death Divine the Life Divine, Albeit its feeblest tear had cleansed all ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... the details of the task which lay before him. With the notes he had thrust into his pocket a little handful of business papers involving a knotty and delicate point of business, and he intended that the discussion of the point they raised should act as the prelude to the disclosure and the restitution he desired to make. He could not, even in his newfound heroism, and with whatever hysteric hardihood he was prepared to meet the stroke of fate, he could not as yet encounter Brown, and lay bare before him the plot of the melancholy farce he had played an hour ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... had inundated the world, and to the inordinate covetousness of kings,[23] there were not wanting considerations to mitigate the disappointment of the people. Chief among them, doubtless, in the view of shrewd observers, was the fact that the assembling of the States was the invariable prelude to an increase of taxation, and that never had they met without benefiting the king's exchequer at the expense of the ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... return to Graywater Park is destined to live in my memory for ever. The storm, of which the violet rainfall had been a prelude, gathered blackly over the hills. Ebon clouds lowered upon us as we came racing to the gates. Then the big car was spinning around the carriage sweep, amid a deathly stillness of Nature indescribably gloomy and ominous. I have said, a stillness of ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... the tragedy that is happening under the cover of the cocoon. The flacid and faded larva is the mason bee's. A month ago, in June, having finished its mess of honey, it wove its silken sheath for a bedchamber wherein to take the long sleep which is the prelude to the metamorphosis. Bulging with fat, it is a rich and defenseless morsel for whoever is able to reach it. Then, in spite of apparently insurmountable obstacles, the mortar wall and the tent without an opening, the flesh-eating larvae appeared in the secret retreat and ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... mind of the captive queen with terror, which prepared her to listen with avidity to any schemes, however desperate, for her own deliverance and the destruction of her enemy; and proved the prelude to that tragical castastrophe which was now advancing fast ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... in office by a counter-charm. But where is such a charm, or counter-charm, to be found? Throughout, as usual in so provident a writer as Plato, the answer to that leading [263] question has had its prelude, even in the ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... and made her ask if he had ever fallen into his old habits while they were away. The Major and Glenarvan exchanged smiling glances, and Paganel burst out laughing, and protested on his honor that he would never be caught tripping again once more during the whole voyage. After this prelude, he gave an amusing recital of his disastrous mistake in learning Spanish, and his profound study of Camoens. "After all," he added, "it's an ill wind that blows nobody good, and I don't regret ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... The pianist made discursive prelude, then Mr. Coppock gave forth a ditty of the most sentimental character, telling of the disappearance of a young lady to whom he was devoted. The burden, in which all bore a ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... mustard, rub smooth and add one-half teaspoonful of vinegar, one tablespoonful of Worcestershire sauce and the juice of one small lime. Lay the tripe in this sauce as soon as it is removed from the fire. Serve with buttered toast. An excellent prelude to this dish is a plate of ...
— Joe Tilden's Recipes for Epicures • Joe Tilden
... is heightened by the rapid subsidence of the passion that inspires them and the quick advent of a calmer mood. We have hardly turned the page ere denunciations of Catherine and Frederick William give place to prayerful invocations of the Supreme Being, which are in their turn the prelude of a long and beautiful contemplative passage: "In the prim'val age, a dateless while," etc., on the pastoral origin of human society. It is as though some sweet and solemn strain of organ music had succeeded to the blast of ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... that advancing wood must be checked, else the horrors of fire would be the prelude to one of the most awful massacres that ever took ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... something singularly appalling in all the circumstances which formed the prelude to this contemplated tragedy. Hitherto the Queen-mother had created dangers for herself—had started at shadows—and distrusted even those who sought to serve her; while her son, silent, saturnine, and inert, had patiently submitted to the indignities and insults ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... the name of Heaven is coming now," he said to himself, "that calls for so ominous a prelude? It must be something more than usually serious. May the good Lord give me courage ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... other points along our border line, and excitement was consequently as intense. It was felt at the time, and subsequently confirmed as correct, that the diversion of Gen. O'Neil at Fort Erie was only a prelude to cover more formidable attacks along the line of the St. Lawrence, and the frontier of the Eastern ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... and stood erect and stiff, with her arms folded. Ina fixed her deep eyes on her, playing a liquid prelude all the time, then swelled her chest and sung the old Venetian cauzonet, "Il pescatore de'll' onda." It is a small thing, but there is no limit to the genius of song. The Klosking sung this trifle ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... this prelude, with its dark hints of unutterable woe, Mr. Lyddon took off his spectacles in some agitation, and prayed to know the worst without any ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... beside them, they had lost their accustomed leaders, shrapnel and heavy shell were bursting among them, and when the cry for bombs and bombers was given, it must have seemed to many to be but the prelude to disaster, the vain cry for further and useless sacrifice. What is it then that stops the individual from hanging back, from letting others lead, from justifying himself to himself by continuing to fire in comparative safety at longer ranges? Who would ...
— With a Highland Regiment in Mesopotamia - 1916—1917 • Anonymous
... McClellan in a position where he will have neither partner nor censor in his plans and movements. The graceful and appropriate manner in which the old veteran leaves the field, which age and infirmity will no longer allow him to command, is but a fitting prelude to the military rule of one upon whose brow the dew of youth still rests, and who brings to his responsible task the highest qualities, combined with a veneration for the noble virtues and an emulation of the magnanimous ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... spared them. He sacrificed them to his impulses from mere selfish indifference. With their wives and mistresses Henry VIII. and George IV. were governed by the same self-indulgent despotism—the same animal disgusts. Henry VIII. had six wives, and sent one to the scaffold as the prelude to his marriage with another. George IV. had only one wife, but she suffered the persecutions of six; and if she escaped decapitation or divorce, it was from no failure of inclination or instruments. Henry ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 545, May 5, 1832 • Various
... meditation, she never lectured her attendants, knowing probably that sermons in example are more impressive than sermons in words. In illustration of the freedom they enjoyed in her presence and hearing, one of them, behind the curtain, touched a stringed instrument—a cithern—and followed the prelude with a ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... said, "it is the prelude to 'L'Arlesienne' that they should play for you and me. Yes, I think ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... was exasperated by insults showered upon him by the inhabitants, but the story cannot go far to excuse the massacre which followed the capture of the town. After more than a century of peace, the first important act of war was marked by a brutality which was a fitting prelude to more than two centuries of fierce and bloody fighting. On Edward's policy of "Thorough," as exemplified at Berwick, must rest, to some extent, the responsibility for the unnecessary ferocity which distinguished the Scottish War of Independence. It was, from a military ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait
... their men as soldiers had never fought on the American continent before; and the third day, when for an hour a hundred cannon on Seminary Ridge belched hell-fire at a hundred cannon on Cemetery Ridge, prelude, in the natural key, to ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... incessant activity it has often been difficult for me, as the reader has probably observed, to round off my narratives, and to give those final details which the curious might expect. Each case has been the prelude to another, and the crisis once over the actors have passed for ever out of our busy lives. I find, however, a short note at the end of my manuscripts dealing with this case, in which I have put it upon record that Miss Violet Smith did indeed inherit a large fortune, and that she is now the ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a mere meaningless prelude to a sentence this word is overtasked. "Well, I don't know about that." "Well, you may try." ...
— Write It Right - A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults • Ambrose Bierce
... of chapters of "Artemus Ward" is a prelude to such a deed as this, the book should be filed among the archives of the nation, and the author should be canonized. Henceforth I see the light and ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... Carlos' eye, and in the yearning curl of his finger round the trigger, which told the Spaniard that the least sign of hesitation would be fatal; and, with the fear of death upon him, he instantly halted and flung up his hands. Had he only known to what that was the prelude he would probably have kept them down and ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... The announced expedient and prelude to an alliance with France and Spain against ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... A great crowd was slowly filling the room and an orchestra in a balcony on the left of the dais began to make delightful music on instruments the strangers had never before seen. After an entrancing prelude a sound of singing was heard, and far up in a grand dome, lighted like the one the captives had just admired over the central court of the palace, they saw a bevy of maidens, robed in white, moving about in ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben
... by way of prelude, 'You must have many lovers—' when Bella checked her with a little ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... time that you will go to India all this prelude will have vanished, you will rattle through in a train-de-luxe from Calais, by way of Baku or Constantinople; you will have none of this effect of a deliberate sullen approach across limitless miles ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... fear'd. She rais'd her head, and, with deep sighs, Shook the large tear-drops from her eyes; And, ere they dried upon her cheek, Before she gather'd force to speak, Convulsively her fingers play'd, While his proud heart the prelude met, Aiming at calmness, though dismay'd, A loud, high measure, like a threat; Soon sinking to that lower [Errata: slower] swell Which love and sorrow ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... notable personages, but notable events have been engendered under the shadow of these hills. The Suffolk Resolves, which were the prelude of the Declaration of Independence, were adopted at the Vose House, which still stands, square and unadorned, easy of access from the sidewalk, as is suitable for a home of democracy. The first piano ever made in this country received ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... Dick, sharply, and the Nilghai opened his eyes. The old chanty whereof he, among a very few, possessed all the words was not a pretty one, but Dick had heard it many times before without wincing. Without prelude he launched into that stately tune that calls together and troubles the hearts of ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... wandered here A-strolling through this sordid city, And piping to the civic ear The prelude of some pastoral ditty! The demigod had crossed the seas,— From haunts of shepherd, nymph, and satyr, And Syracusan times,—to these Far shores and ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... of America ended the war; and the treaty of peace with the United States was a prelude to treaties of peace with the Bourbon powers. Their actual gains were insignificant. France indeed won nothing in the treaties with which the war ended; Spain gained only Florida and Minorca. Nor could they feel even in this hour of their triumph that the end at which they aimed ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green
... in the history of the Vaudois forms a fitting prelude to the advent of a yet more substantial token of good-will on the part of their sovereign. I mean that edict of emancipation which, while it did justice to the people of the valleys, also, by the circumstances ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... against this narrowing down of life, though it be done with the faultless skill and taste of the most cultured genius. The children of men are not orphaned. Our Creator is still "Emmanuel—God with us." Earthly existence is but the prelude of our life, and even from this the Divine artist can take much of the discord, and give an earnest of ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... arise" William Drummond Hymn of Apollo Percy Bysshe Shelley Prelude to "The New Day" Richard Watson Gilder Dawn on the Headland William Watson The Miracle of the Dawn Madison Cawein Dawn-angels A. Mary F. Robinson Music of the Dawn Virginia Bioren Harrison Sunrise on Mansfield ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... sentiment with which he approached the place he says: "In the avenue leading to the house, the spreading trees just opening into leaf, with spring flowers around and beneath—yellow cowslips and blue forget-me-nots—and the song of birds in the branches overhead, seemed a fitting prelude to all that followed. Shortly after I was seated in the ante-room, the poet's son appeared, and, as his father was engaged, he said, 'Come and see my mother.' We went into the drawing-room, where the old lady was reclining on a couch. Immediately the lines beginning 'Such age, how ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... verse we should, I hold, go farther even than the Revisers. As you know, much of the poetry in the Bible, especially of such as was meant for music, is composed in stanzaic form, or in strophe and anti-strophe, with prelude and conclusion, sometimes with a choral refrain. We should print these, I contend, in their proper form, just as we should print an English poem in ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... should go to the deanery, after a residence of six months with Lady Linlithgow. At the deanery of course she would see Frank; and she also understood that a long visit to the deanery would be the surest prelude to that home of her own of which she ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... appearances of each of these four elderly ladies, their distinct idiosyncrasies, and their former high position as members of a now moribund nobility, left a lasting impression on my memory. One might expect, perhaps, from such a prelude, to find in the old Marquise traces of stately demeanour, or a regretted superiority. Nothing of the kind. She herself was a short, square-built woman, with large head and strong features, framed in a mob cap, ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... the door were noiselessly drawn, and that of the lock forced back; then the two little parties stole out, in the order in which they had been directed. The guerillas had just begun to fire heavily, as a prelude, Terence had no doubt, to a serious attack upon the church. Fortunately there were no houses at the back of the church, and no shout indicated that the party were seen. They therefore kept together, until fifty or sixty yards from the door; then they separated, and continued ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... portion of this lecture has been taken up with the past. But even so rough and brief a review as I have attempted is a necessary prelude to a just estimate, both of our present position and of our future prospects. It is often supposed, indeed, that the study of history predisposes a man's mind to a conservative view. He studies the slow development of institutions, or the gradual influence of movements, and the trend of ...
— The War and Unity - Being Lectures Delivered At The Local Lectures Summer - Meeting Of The University Of Cambridge, 1918 • Various
... eyes not been held I might have known that that broken muttering over the fire was the swan-song of Charlie Mears. But I thought it the prelude to fuller revelation. At last and at last I should cheat the Lords ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... succession to the throne, "or to advise as to the means of establishing a uniformity of coins, weights, and measures;" he was perfectly aware that the authority of burgherdom would be of great assistance to him in the accomplishment of acts so grave. And the three estates played the prelude to the formation, painful and slow as it was, of constitutional monarchy, when, in 1338, under Philip of Valois, they declared, "in presence of the said king, Philip of Valois, who assented thereto, that there should be no power to impose or ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... into the shanty suspended the conversation for a moment only, and then General Sherman, without prelude, rehearsed his plans for moving his army, pointing out with every detail how he would come up through the Carolinas to join the troops besieging Petersburg and Richmond, and intimating that my cavalry, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... the Day of Judgment; and at length the Senta motive enters triumphantly, and with the redemption of the wanderer the thing ends. That, one can see, is the chain of incidents Wagner has translated into tones, or illustrated with tones; but as a prelude to the opera, it is the atmosphere of the sea that counts: the roar of the billows, the "hui!" of the wind, the dashing and plunging. When the curtain rises the storm goes on while Daland's men, with their hoarse "Yo-ho-ho," ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... wandering, forever grieves Low overhead, Above grey mosses whispering of leaves Fallen and dead. And through the lonely night sweeps their refrain Like Chopin's prelude, sobbing 'neath the rain. ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... minds insensible to every other consideration; the principal members caballed secretly on the perils by which they were surrounded; and the sullen concord which now marked their deliberations, was beheld by the Committee rather as the prelude to revolt, than the indication of continued obedience. In the mean while it was openly proposed to concentrate still more the functions of government. The circulation of newspapers was insinuated ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... she was made by fate an Empress. The crown, so far from tempting her, filled her with fear. She yearned to descend as her husband yearned to rise. The proclamation of the Consulate for life, the prelude of the Empire, filled her with gloom and apprehension, Neither the pomp of Saint Cloud, nor the triumphal trip in Belgium. robbed her of her wise and modest ideas. She much preferred Malmaison to any splendid ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... change was greeted with little enthusiasm by the old soldiers in our midst, but old soldiers are invariably pessimists, and imagine that every inspection is the prelude to more "dirty work at the cross-roads" and that every change made in their dispositions is for ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... registered lobbyist in Washington, representing foreign commercial interests. He is a chief architect of President Kennedy's 1962 tariff-and-trade proposals—which would internationalize American trade and commerce, as a prelude to amalgamating our economy with ...
— The Invisible Government • Dan Smoot
... the apparently deceased comes back to life. The tarsi quiver, those of the fore-legs first; the palpi and the antennae move slowly to and fro: this is the prelude to the awakening. Now the legs begin to kick. The insect bends slightly at its pinched waist; it buttresses itself on its head and back; it turns over. There it goes, jogging away, ready to become an apparent corpse once more if I renew ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... fighting actually taking place. It is true that there is a theoretical exception to this in the fact that a violation of the rules of a demilitarized zone is equivalent to a resort to war; but this exception is more apparent than real for the violation of a demilitarized zone would be only a brief prelude to hostilities. ...
— The Geneva Protocol • David Hunter Miller
... desirable to prelude the story by a reminder to the reader that the general characteristics of these various sources were "harlequin" in their diversity of apparent colour. The Amadis romances and, indeed, all the later examples of that great kind, such as Arthur of Little Britain, ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... show was given first as a sort of prelude to the games which were to follow, and in these even the older girls joined with spirit. The main idea seemed to be that everyone should do his or her best to make the party a success and to give the poorer children as good a time as possible. Ben, ...
— A Dear Little Girl at School • Amy E. Blanchard
... gave egress to a staid matron, of high stature, and sharp countenance; I would have pledged my existence on her shrewishness from the first moment I beheld her. When I had placed a chair for her, and reseated myself, this prelude to my ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various
... were but the prelude to a harsher sound which interrupted and annihilated them: the Court-house bell clanging out twelve. "All right," said Joe. "It's noon and I'm ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... Back of every word we utter is a life we have lived. We have been spending years in preparing for that word. Perhaps when the time comes to speak it, it is not the word we thought we were going to speak, it was not the prelude to the action we thought that we were going to perform; it reveals a character other than the character that we thought we had. How often the Gospel brings that before us! We see the young Ruler come running with his brave and perfectly sincere words about inheriting eternal ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... she put on her mackintosh, it was very wet and misty, got out her car, and lit her lamps, her face was still fretful and her mind disturbed. For now, as she looked back on it, Beaumaroy's conversation with her at Old Place seemed just a prelude to this summons, and meant to prepare her for it. Perhaps that too was pardonable diplomacy, and no reference to it could be expected in a letter which she was at liberty to show to Dr. Irechester. She wondered, uncomfortably, how ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... The prelude to such phenomena of Nature as the majestic flight of birds, the ferocity of wild beasts, the song of the nightingale, the variegated beauty of the butterfly's wings, is the preparation in the secret places of a nest or a den, or in the motionless intimacy of the cocoon. ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... dunce of more renown than they, Was sent before but to prepare thy way; And, coarsely clad in Norwich drugget, came To teach the nations in thy greater name. My warbling lute, the lute I whilom strung, When to king John of Portugal I sung, Was but the prelude to that glorious day, When thou on silver Thames didst cut thy way, With well-timed oars before the royal barge, Swell'd with the pride of thy celestial charge; 40 And big with hymn, commander of an host, The like was ne'er in Epsom blankets toss'd. Methinks ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... interim venders went about holding up photographic portraits of the tamer, lustily shouting his professional and private virtues. Their voices were, however, soon drowned in the clash of the brass band, which played a prelude to what was coming. At the conclusion of this a lone and last voice cried out, "Ice-cold lemonade," but it was promptly suppressed by those near the crier, ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... you saw," said Pet, and viciously started to change the subject, so that Prissy had to jump the prelude. ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... at Covent-Garden theatre, but was performed only a few nights. It was imprudently ushered in by a prelude, in which the author treated the newspaper editors as a set ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... had brought the strings into some order, and after a short prelude, asked his host whether he would choose a "sirvente" in the language of "oc", or a "lai" in the language of "oui", or a "virelai", or a ballad in the vulgar ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... the enemy's cavalry was a fitting prelude to the events of the memorable sortie of ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... Probably he is the elect of Fortune, because of that notable faculty of being intent upon his own business: "Which is," says The Pilgrim's Scrip, "with men to be valued equal to that force which in water makes a stream." This prelude was necessary to the present ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of their profound studies in the schools of popular Composers? Surely they may; and was I not pleased with Mr. DE KOOEN (whose name seems to suggest "the voice of the turtle,"—the dove, not the soup) when his prelude to the Third Act distinctly recalled to my attentive mind the celebrated unison effect in L'Africaine, only without the marvellous jump, which, when first heard, thrilled the audience, and compelled an enthusiastic encore? Then Miss VIOLET CAMERON sang a song ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 100. Feb. 28, 1891 • Various
... during the night between the advanced parties, with scarcely any other effect than to discover the situation of the armies, evince the intention of the generals, and serve as a prelude to the events ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall
... gets into the spirit of his theme by means of a dreamy prelude, so the poet by means of this introduction intends to suggest the spirit of the poem ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... modulation! That all languages designate the melody of birds as singing (though according to Blumenbach man only sings, while birds do but whistle), demonstrates that it has been felt as, what indeed it is, a tentative and prophetic prelude of something yet to come. With this conjoin the power and the tendency to acquire articulation, and to imitate speech; conjoin the building instinct and the migratory, the monogamy of several species, and the pairing of almost all; and we shall have collected new ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... situated within the line of fire of Fort Quelin; so, as may be imagined, their destruction was hailed with a ringing cheer by the besiegers. The artillerymen in the fort, however, apparently anticipating an attack in force of which this explosion was but the prelude, were on the alert at once; and, soon after sunrise, they began to pour in a heavy rain of fire on the German works, which the conflagration of the buildings and removal of intervening obstacles now clearly disclosed. Whole broadsides of projectiles from the great ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... become extinct—to feel no surprise at the comparative rarity of one species with another, and yet to call in some extraordinary agent and to marvel greatly when a species ceases to exist, appears to me much the same as to admit that sickness in the individual is the prelude to death—to feel no surprise at sickness—but when the sick man dies, to wonder, and to believe that he ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... Germans! we pant to give you glorious evidence of this. And, as a prelude to the friendly relations we hope to form with your governments, we seek to alleviate as much as possible the pains of captivity to some officers and soldiers belonging to various states of the Germanic Confederation, who fought in ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... The expectations of the clergy were soon realized. In the first Convocation of his reign Henry declared himself the protector of the Church and ordered the prelates to take measures for the suppression of heresy and of the wandering preachers. His declaration was but a prelude to the Statute of Heresy which was passed at the opening of 1401. By the provisions of this infamous Act the hindrances which had till now neutralized the efforts of the bishops to enforce the common law were utterly taken away. ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... with warmth, and it began to dawn upon him, with a sort of slow surprise, that the country was beautiful, the heather purple, and the far-away hills all marbled with sun and shadow. Wordsworth, in a beautiful passage of the "Prelude," has used this as a figure for the feeling struck in us by the quiet by-streets of London after the uproar of the great thoroughfares; and the comparison may be turned the other way with as ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... towards ten, when Leonora had gone up to bed. It had been a very hot day, but there it was cool. The man called Bagshawe had been reading The Times on the other side of the room, but then he moved over to me with some trifling question as a prelude to suggesting an acquaintance. I fancy he asked me something About the poll-tax on Kur-guests, and whether it could not be sneaked out of. He was that ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... dress, or not having yet quite recovered an unlucky extra tumbler of exciting fluids, and the green curtain has therefore unduly delayed its ascent, you perceive that the thorough-bass in the orchestra charitably devotes himself to a prelude of astonishing prolixity, calling in "Lodoiska" or "Der Freischutz" to beguile the time, and allow the procrastinating histrio leisure sufficient to draw on his flesh-colored pantaloons and give himself the proper complexion for a Coriolanus or Macbeth,—even so had Sir Sedley made that long ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Confederate lines caissons were blown up by the fire, riderless horses dashed hither and thither, the dead lay in heaps, and throngs of wounded streamed to the rear. Every man lay down and sought what cover he could. It was evident that the Confederate cannonade was but a prelude to a great infantry attack, and at three o'clock Hunt ordered the fire to stop, that the guns might cool, to be ready for the coming assault. The Confederates thought that they had silenced the hostile artillery, and for a few minutes their firing continued; then, suddenly, it ceased, and ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... the prelude to a Moody and Sankey hymn, and, in keeping with the music, the voice of Vance sank to a ...
— Vera - The Medium • Richard Harding Davis
... slavery of their wives and children. Such was the extraordinary document, which, from this time forward, was read by the Spanish discoverers to the wondering savages of any newly-found country, as a prelude to sanctify the violence about to be ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... as these form a hesitating prelude to an expression of opinion on a controverted question. They will serve, however, to indicate the limits within which the said opinion is supposed to be hazarded. And in fact, neither in this nor in any historical ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... he did begin: "Ladies and gentlemen, I am to have the honor of reading to you this evening the trial-scene from Pickwick, and a Christmas Carol in a prelude and three scenes. Scene first, Marley's Ghost. Marley was dead, to begin with." These words, or words very similar, were spoken in a husky voice, not remarkable in any way, and with the English cadence in articulation, a ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... declining health, began at last to rally, and it is to this first gush of the recovery of his once splendid bodily condition that we owe not only "The Gay Science", which in its mood may be regarded as a prelude to "Zarathustra", but also "Zarathustra" itself. Just as he was beginning to recuperate his health, however, an unkind destiny brought him a number of most painful personal experiences. His friends caused him many disappointments, which were the more bitter to ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... a lute from which there pulsing came A lively prelude, fashioning the way In which her voice should wander. 'T was a lay More subtle-cadenced, more forest-wild Than Dryope's lone lulling ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... moved past the town we saw neither any of our troops nor those of the enemy, and heard no firing. Although there was complete absence of the usual prelude to battle, still the apprehension came over us that something serious in that line was not very remote, either in time or place. The commanders of both armies were conscious of the importance of the impending contest, which perhaps explains ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... fleet were also in the town, and other officers came there every day, so that Brest afforded a most animated spectacle. Admiral Truguet and the commander-in-chief held a number of brilliant receptions, scenes that have often been the prelude to war. ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... sum which he receives from the trade and customs of Constantinople. On these terms, I may allow him to reign. If he refuses, it is war. I am not ignorant of the art of war, and I trust the event to God and my sword." [56] An expedition against the despot of Epirus was the first prelude of his arms. If a victory was followed by a defeat; if the race of the Comneni or Angeli survived in those mountains his efforts and his reign; the captivity of Villehardouin, prince of Achaia, deprived the Latins of the most ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... such an overbearing spirit that a war broke out. The real desire of France was to obtain the much-coveted frontier of the Rhine, and the Emperor heated their armies with boastful proclamations which were but the prelude to direful defeats, at Weissenburg, Woerth, and Forbach. At Sedan, the Emperor was forced to surrender himself as a prisoner, and the tidings no sooner arrived at Paris than the whole of the people turned their wrath on ...
— History of France • Charlotte M. Yonge |
