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Vocal   /vˈoʊkəl/   Listen
Vocal

noun
1.
Music intended to be performed by one or more singers, usually with instrumental accompaniment.  Synonym: vocal music.
2.
A short musical composition with words.  Synonym: song.



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"Vocal" Quotes from Famous Books



... Stockholm. The neat and pleasant little church was crowded to its utmost capacity by the attendance of such a large number. Mr. Agneau, the chaplain, was invited to take a part in the service, and as Mrs. Kendall, Mrs. Shuffles, and many of the ship's company were good singers, the vocal music ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic

... with the gaiety of the morning. The general warbling continues, with now and then an interruption by the transient croak of the raven, the scream of the jay, or the pert chattering of the daw. The nightingale, unwearied by the vocal exertions of the night, joins his inferiors in sound in the general harmony. The thrush is wisely placed on the summit of some lofty tree, that its loud and piercing notes may be softened by distance before they reach the ear; while the mellow ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various

... that we may as well try what our voices can do toward proclaiming our situation to any living creature who may, by the barest possibility, be within hearing of us. I leave him to try the experiment, having no strength to spare for vocal efforts of any sort. My companion shouts at the highest pitch of his voice. Silence follows his first attempt. He tries again; and, this time, an answering hail reaches us faintly through the white fog. A fellow-creature of some sort, ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins

... was music upon the Grand Plaza, and the band-stand was surrounded by a merry, happy crowd. At nine the band was playing popular airs, and a picked chorus that had been singing in Choral Hall in the afternoon was filling the great space with vocal melody, in which from time to time the crowd ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch

... pass this by, and go down a plank-covered walk to reach the sandy-golden beach where the green waves dash with silent dignity, in these long calms of July. Before the hotel the river flows also sleepily; but both shores are vocal with ladies' laughter and the singing of young girls, the lively chatter of a ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various

... V. That every member or guest, be requested to bring with them their own vocal, instrumental, or dance music, and take it away with them, if possible, to ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... proverbe is slender and melancholy. She is unmarried and has no past, absolutely none. There is no one who knows the least thing about her. Yet these finely delineated, almost lean limbs, and these amber-pale, regular features are vocal. The face is shaded by raven-black curls, and borne on a strong masculine neck. Its mocking smile, in which there is also hungry desire, allures. The eyes are unfathomable and their depths are as soft and luminous as the dark petals in ...
— Mogens and Other Stories - Mogens; The Plague At Bergamo; There Should Have Been Roses; Mrs. Fonss • Jens Peter Jacobsen

... a person's hearing power or his hearing power under definite conditions, it is best never to depend, in even slightly important cases, on vocal tests merely. The examination must be made by experts, and if the case is really subtle it must be made under the same circumstances of place and condition, and with the same people as in the original situation. Otherwise ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... upward with extended jaws. His half-human eyes were turned benignantly upon me; but he was evidently in pain, and from a point in his back, where a broken harpoon still remained, gouts of blood curdled upward, coloring the water. His vocal power lay in his spiracle, and he ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend

... beside it; two or three wooden-bottom chairs, exceedingly decrepit and infirm; and—not to forget the library—on some shelves, a score or two of volumes of the Acts of Congress, and a bulky Digest of the Revenue laws. A tin pipe ascends through the ceiling, and forms a medium of vocal communication with other parts of the edifice. And here, some six months ago—pacing from corner to corner, or lounging on the long-legged stool, with his elbow on the desk, and his eyes wandering up and down the columns of the morning ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... and handle the bow early in life. The person who desires to become a great linguist, if he allows his early years to pass without acquiring the necessary skill, cannot expect in middle life to train his vocal organs to articulate a ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education

... oil companies of China, the Philippines, and Vietnam signed a joint accord on marine seismic activities in the Spratly Islands; China occupies some of the Paracel Islands also claimed by Vietnam and Taiwan; China and Taiwan have become more vocal in rejecting both Japan's claims to the uninhabited islands of Senkaku-shoto (Diaoyu Tai) and Japan's unilaterally declared exclusive economic zone in the East China Sea, the site of intensive hydrocarbon prospecting; certain islands in the Yalu and Tumen rivers are in an uncontested ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... and one cannot resist the thought that such local and homely renown would have been more to our simple hero's taste than the laurel and the throne. I groaned in spirit over the monstrous playhouse, with its pretentious Teutonic air; I walked through the churchyard, vocal with building rooks, and came to the noble church, full of the evidences of wealth and worship and honour. I do not like to confess the breathless awe with which I drew near to the chancel and gazed on the stone that, nameless, with its rude rhyme, covers the sacred dust. I cannot say what ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... instrumental music exist. Some of them, by acknowledged and competent authorities, have thrown valuable light on a most important element of musical art. Had I not believed that a similar need existed in connection with singing, this addition to vocal literature would not ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam

... general aspect or special points of Miss Cynthia; but she made a sound which the books write humph! but which real folks make with closed lips, thus: m'!—a sort of half-suppressed labio-palato-nasal utterance, implying that there is a good deal which might be said, and all the vocal organs want to have a chance at it, if there is to ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... disturbance in the theatre to stop Othello from murdering Malibran! The austere citizen would suppress artists as social excrescences that absorb too much of the sap; but this gentleman is fond of vocal music, and so will spare the singers. Let us hope that painters will find one among your strong heads who appreciates painting, and won't wall up all studio windows. And as for the poets, they are your cousins; ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas

... birth two realms contend; And each asserts her poet, patriot, friend: Her mitre jealous Britain may deny; That loss Ierne's laurel shall supply; Through life's low vale, she, grateful, gave him bread; Her vocal stones ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... criticisms on vocal and instrumental performers, operas, and new music, on the Continent as well as in England, with occasional ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous

... harpsichord in the orchestra (piano-fortes not being then known). His embellishments were so masterly, that the attention of the audience was frequently diverted from the singing to the accompaniment, to the frequent mortification of the vocal professors. A pompous Italian singer was, on a certain occasion, so chagrined at the marked attention paid to the harpsichord, in preference to his own singing, that he swore, that if ever Handel played ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various

... they can neither discourse, distinguish, nor be distinguished; while the other half are drinking hot water, under the denomination of tea, till nine or ten o'clock at night, to keep them awake for the rest of the evening. As for the orchestra, the vocal music especially, it is well for the performers that they cannot be heard distinctly. Vauxhall is a composition of baubles, overcharged with paltry ornaments, ill conceived, and poorly executed; without any ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... sprigs And curly tendrils, gracefully disposed, Follow the nimble finger of the fair; A wreath that cannot fade, of flowers that blow With most success when all besides decay. The poet's or historian's page, by one Made vocal for the amusement of the rest; The sprightly lyre, whose treasure of sweet sounds The touch from many a trembling chord shakes out; And the clear voice symphonious, yet distinct, And in the charming strife triumphant still, Beguile the night, and set a keener edge ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper

... because of longer practice. Education has nothing to do with it, though education may facilitate verbal expression. The essential matter is the inward prompting, under God's guidance. The Book of Discipline says, "Our conviction is that the Spirit of God is in all, and that vocal utterance comes when this Spirit works within us. The varying needs of a meeting can be best supplied by different personalities, and a meeting is enriched by the sharing of ...
— An Interpretation of Friends Worship • N. Jean Toomer

... Starnberg See to live in his dingy palace; since the opera has got into good working order, and the regular indoor concerts at the cafes have begun. There is no lack of amusements, with balls, theaters, and the cheap concerts, vocal and instrumental. I stepped into the West Ende Halle the other night, having first surrendered twelve kreuzers to the money-changer at the entrance,—double the usual fee, by the way. It was large and well lighted, with ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... perfect chord. Her voice is like a thing detachable from herself, a thing which she takes in her hands like a musical instrument, playing on the stops cunningly with her fingers. Prose, when she speaks it, becomes a kind of verse, with all the rhythms, the vocal harmonies, of a kind of human poetry. Her whisper is heard across the whole theatre, every syllable distinct, and yet it is really a whisper. She comes on the stage like a miraculous painted idol, all ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons

... playing being confined to strathspeys and other slow airs of the pathetic kind. On the other hand, his perception and his love of music are undeniable. For example, he possessed copies of the principal collections of Scottish vocal and instrumental music of the eighteenth century, and repeatedly refers to them in the Museum and in his letters. His copy of the Caledonian Pocket Companion (the largest collection of Scottish music), which copy still exists with pencil notes in his handwriting, ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson

... before they start, Five years of training, but the grasper Who grudges one to vocal art Will end, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 15, 1920 • Various

... certain inflections of the voice, in what is often called a "sing-song" way, quite different from the way in which he would read prose. Most poets aim rather at giving the musical effect, and the atmosphere, the vocal atmosphere, of the poem, than at emphasising individual meanings. They give, in the musician's sense, a "reading" of the poem, an interpretation of the poem as a composition. Mr. Yeats thinks that this kind of reading can be stereotyped, ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons

... of my life at this time I remember because I thought my parents were in the wrong. Vocal music was taught in singing school, which was conducted almost as regularly as were the day schools. I was passionately fond of music. Before the change of my voice came I had a fine alto voice and was a leader in my part of the class. This fact coming to the notice of ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker

... stopped fiddling and looked over its shoulder with a distressed air of "If I'm not hit this time!" Hand-organs, penny trumpets and rattles quite drowned the voice of a street-songstress with a large assortment of vocal music before her, from which she was giving the public a selection. Whether the songs had any reference to the pictures that formed her background we did not discover, but, at all events, the latter were tragic in the extreme. "The twenty-four-year-old ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various

... to make a jumble of sounds, being still too excited to get his vocal cords in decent working order. He kept pointing at a nail that had been driven ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie

... real scene in fairyland. Vita stands before the sea and invokes it in an incantation full of weird and beautiful vocal music: "O sea! Sinister sea with your angry charm, gentle sea with your kiss of death, hear me!" And the sea replies in a song. Voices mingle with the orchestra in a symphony of increasing anger. Vita swears she will give herself to no one but the Stranger. She lifts the emerald above ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland

... was generally far superior to the style of the Troubadours. In performing their works, they did not, like their western brethren, have recourse to hired accompanists, or Jongleurs, but supported the vocal part by playing on a small viol. The Jongleurs were essentially a French institution, and no class of musicians similar to them existed in Germany. The Minnesingers, like the Troubadours, were amateurs, and aimed to keep ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson

... of the expression and the forms have all relaxed some of their rigidity. In the oratorios of Handel and Haydn there are instances not a few of musical delineation in the instrumental as well as the vocal parts; but nothing in them can be thought of, so far at least as the ambition of the design extends, as a companion piece to the scene in the opera which pictures the destruction of the tower of Babel. This is as far beyond the horizon of the fancy of the old masters as ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... make you feel that, could the sounds become visible, they must shine; but there was a rich depth in her tones, which imparted to her lightest words an intonation of feeling, and told the hearer that her vocal chords were in close communication with her heart. Though her countenance did not lack the radiance of youthful gladness, there was so much thought mingled with its brightness that even her mirth conveyed the impression that she had ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... noble Liturgy, and I have always been struck with the deep personally religious feeling which pervades it, especially those parts of it which are for 'The People.' And an earnest Priest, earnestly pressing these parts by his vocal example on the notice of the People, can scarcely fail to excite a corresponding earnestness in them. All this is totally lost in the choral system. For a venerable persuasion there is substituted a rude irreverential confusion of voices; for an earnest acceptance of the ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy

... short lyric containing some pleasant thought or sweet sentiment daintily expressed; applied also to vocal music of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... I produced vocal effects calculated to charm away the love of travel from the breast of any canary; then, as Balaam persistently refused to come to me, I proceeded slowly but surely, and accompanied by the cage, to make my ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 4, 1914 • Various

... cordial invitation. I begged to contribute my mesquin supply of grapes and brioches, and the supper was a considerable event. Their canteens were filled with red wines, and one cup served the whole company. They drank my health and that of the President of the United States. Afterward we had vocal music, two of the officers being good singers. They sang Beranger's songs and the charming serenade from Lalla Rookh. I finally expressed a desire to hear the Marseillaise. This seemed to take them by surprise, but one of the singers, declaring ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various

... overwhelmingly and irresistibly English, as not less tonically English was our principal host there, with whom we had moreover, my father and I, thanks to his office, such personal and genial relations that I recall seeing him grace our board at home, in company with his wife, whose vocal strain and complexion and coiffure and flounces I found none the less informing, none the less "racial," for my not being then versed ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James

... greatest progress in speech culture. Reading aloud, properly done, compels you to pronounce the words, instead of skimming over them as in silent reading. It gives you the additional benefit of receiving a vocal impression of the rhythm and ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser

... true that the letter-combination Heaven is in a way as much to us a picture of the idea as of the sound; but the difference of procedure is radical. The glyph is related to the idea directly, the spelled word only through the formal combination of symbols for single vocal speech-elements, meaningless when separate. The relation of spoken sound to glyph is wholly adventitious; the relation of the idea to the spelled word is equally adventitious. The ascent, if we so call it, of written speech from the ideographic to the alphabetic, is ...
— Commentary Upon the Maya-Tzental Perez Codex - with a Concluding Note Upon the Linguistic Problem of the Maya Glyphs • William E. Gates

... of Atuona crowded my paepae. Water brought his ukulele, a Hawaiian taro-patch guitar, and sang his repertoire of ballads of Hawaii—"Aloha Oe," "Hawaii Ponoi," and "One, Two, Three, Four." Urged by all, I gave them for the last time my vocal masterpiece, "All Night Long He Calls Her Snooky-Ukums!" and was rewarded by a clamor of applauding cries. Marquesans think our singing strange—and no wonder! Theirs is a prolonged chant, a monotone without tune, with no high notes and little variance. But ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... Whippoorwill, in this part of the country, is first heard in May, and continues vocal until the middle of July. He begins to sing at dusk, and we usually hear his note soon after the Veery, the Philomel of our summer evenings, has become silent. His song consists of three notes, in a sort of triple or waltz time, with a slight ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... representing any group depending upon the character and complexity of the movements performed by the muscles, rather than upon the amount of muscular tissue that is governed by the centre—for example, the centre for the mouth, tongue, and vocal cords is larger than that for the muscles of ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles

... house. The Moonstone Orchestra, under the direction of Professor Wunsch, was to play, and the most talented members of each Sunday School were to take part in the programme. Thea was put down by the committee "for instrumental." This made her indignant, for the vocal numbers were always more popular. Thea went to the president of the committee and demanded hotly if her rival, Lily Fisher, were going to sing. The president was a big, florid, powdered woman, a fierce W.C.T.U. worker, one of Thea's natural enemies. Her name was Johnson; ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather

... to rouse the vocal organs, I took two drams. Wine has been celebrated for the production of eloquence. I put myself into violent motion, and I think repeated it; but all was vain. I then went to bed, and strange as it may seem, I think slept. When I saw light, it was time to contrive what I should do. Though God ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... the head-tones, this coquetting with the deep chest-tones, this affected, offensive, and almost inaudible nasal pianissimo, the aimless jerking out of single tones, and, in general, this whole false mode of vocal execution, must continually shock the natural sentiment of a cultivated, unprejudiced hearer, as well as of the composer and singing-teacher? What must be the effect on a voice in the middle register, when its extreme limits are forced in such a reckless manner, and when you expend as much breath ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck

... Ilfracombe was in those days an unpretending sort of fishing village. There was no huge "Ilfracombe Hotel," and the Capstone Hill was not strewed with whitey-brown biscuit bags and the fragments of bottles, nor continually vocal with nigger minstrels and ranting preachers. The "Royal Clarence" did exist in the little town, whether under that name or not, I forget. But I can testify from experience, acquired some forty years afterwards, that Mr. and ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... laryngitis are various, as prolonged use of the vocal organs in reading or speaking; using them too long on one pitch or key, without regard to their modulation; improper treatment of acute diseases of the throat; neglected nasal catarrh; the inordinate ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... what Richard Strauss may think, of an opera (let us adhere, for convenience, to an accommodating if inaccurate term) written for the voices, from beginning to end, in a kind of recitative which is virtually a chant; an opera in which there is no vocal melody whatsoever, and comparatively little symphonie development of themes in the orchestra; in which an enigmatic and wholly eccentric system of harmony is exploited; in which there are scarcely more than a dozen fortissimo passages ...
— Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - A Guide to the Opera with Musical Examples from the Score • Lawrence Gilman

... native-born, and on any ship may be heard the Southern drawl, the picturesque vernacular of the lower East or West side of New York City, the twang of New England, the rising intonation of the Western Pennsylvanian, and that indescribable vocal cadence that comes only from ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry

... not agree with him. If one prima donna is good, she argued, why would not two be better? So she never desisted from her importunity until she was permitted to become a pupil of Professor Coccherani, vocal instructor at the Lycee. At this time she had committed to memory more than a dozen grand opera roles, and at the end of six months the professor confessed that he could do nothing more for her voice; that she was ready for ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini

... Avon, crown'd with vocal reeds, That strain I heard, was of a higher mood!— But now ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge

... while we make an exception in favour of genius; for as a general rule (which will of course apply to those chorales which we do not use in Bach's version), all the music of this Reformation period must be harmonized strictly in the vocal counterpoint which prevailed at the end of the sixteenth century; since that is not only its proper musical interpretation, but it is also the ecclesiastical style par excellence, the field of which may reasonably be extended, but by no means contracted. It is suitable both ...
— A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn-Singing • Robert Bridges

... oppositions. Normal adolescence, ever in England of a conservative tendency though not taking things too seriously, was vehement for a fight to a finish and a good licking for the Boers. Of this larger faction Val Dartie was naturally a member. Radical youth, on the other hand, a small but perhaps more vocal body, was for stopping the war and giving the Boers autonomy. Until Black Week, however, the groups were amorphous, without sharp edges, and argument remained but academic. Jolly was one of those who knew not where he stood. A streak of his grandfather old Jolyon's love of justice prevented, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... well-developed heads, acute intellects, and singularly warm feelings. And on this occasion at least there could be no possibility of mistake respecting the feelings with which they regarded their minister. Rarely have I seen human countenances so eloquently vocal with veneration and love. The gospel message, which my friend had been the first effectually to bring home to their hearts,—the palpable fact of his sacrifice for the sake of the high principles which he has taught,—his ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... and she knew what that meant. Her work dropped in her lap, she covered her face with her hands, and the tears gushed through her fingers and she trembled in her chair with the intensity of her emotions. There was no sobbing, or other vocal manifestation of feeling, but her silence made her grief seem all the more impressive. I was distressed, and didn't know what to say, so I said nothing, and walked out into the kitchen, thence back to ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell

... before evening. By the time he was back, promised Tussie, the shoemaker and Mrs. Shaw should be cleared out and put into a place so much better according to their views that they would probably make it vocal with ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim

... principle. The windpipe takes the place of the glass pipe; the two vocal cords represent the rubber edges; and the arytenoid muscles stand instead of the hands. When contracted, these muscles bring the edges of the cords nearer to one another, stretch the cords, and shorten the cords. A person gifted with a "very good ear" can, it has been calculated, adjust the ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams

... struck the quivering wire, The throbbing breast was all on fire: And when she raised the vocal lay, The captive soul was ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett

... fell back into their former pattern of first joining the general conversation politely and then gradually confining their remarks to one another until there were two conversations going on at the same time, one between James and Martha and another between Janet and Tim. Again, the vocal interference and cross-talk became too high, and it was Tim and Janet who left the living room to mix a couple of highballs and ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith

... again, running over in his mind such gulls as he knew, and coming to the conclusion that unless it was some unusual specimen, of great vocal powers, it could not be the black-backed nor the lesser black-backed, nor the black-headed ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn

... fifth residence yielded its toll to the grewsome lure. At last but one newspaper remained. He redoubled his vocal efforts. ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely

... living stuff, in the first lame, crude fugues the medium was being prepared for the triumphs of Handel and Bach; and in the same way, while Bach was writing the G minor and A minor fugues (I am not speaking of vocal music) some smaller men were working at what was destined to grow into the symphony, sonata and quartet. These terms are used here in their present-day signification. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries such words as symphony and overture, and suite and sonata, were ...
— Haydn • John F. Runciman

... level: often, when they were quite young, she would feign infantine ignorance, in order to hunt trite truth in couples with them, and detect, by joint experiment, that rainbows cannot, or else will not, be walked into, nor Jack-o'-lantern be gathered like a cowslip; and that, dissect we the vocal dog—whose hair is so like a lamb's—never so skilfully, no fragment of palpable bark, no sediment of tangible squeak, remains inside him to bless the inquisitive little operator, &c., &c. When they advanced ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... kinds. In one, a large wicker cylinder with a ring at top, revelled a mocking bird; in another an oriole; in a third the impudent bobolink—while three or four more delicate prisons were loudly vocal with canaries. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... me certain it was not a porcupine, for it is one of the animals without vocal cords, therefore cannot make a vocal sound. It was more likely a wild pig, for there are a number about here," said Burton, who was ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various

... as an instance of how new words are still formed with a view to similarity of sound with the sound of what they are intended to express, by Dr. Francis Lieber, in a "Paper on the Vocal Sounds of Laura Bridgeman compared with the Elements of Phonetic Language," and its authorship is assigned {388} to Daniel Webster, who said in a speech of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 81, May 17, 1851 • Various

... there are many favourable critics, though personally I consider them to be extremely poor. Their music, both vocal and instrumental, is worse than rubbish; in sketching and painting they are without sense of perspective; their architecture is clumsy and coarse; their much-vaunted pottery is full of flaws and ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready

... melancholy temperament; and, instead of pursuing a professional career, he settled down upon his property and, about the year 1745, began to turn it into a ferme ornee. There he wooed the rustic muse in elegy, ode, and pastoral ballad, sounding upon the vocal reed the beauties of simplicity and the vanity of ambition, and mingling with these strains complaints of Delia's cruelty and of the shortness of his own purse, which hampered him seriously in his gardening designs. Mr. Saintsbury has described Shenstone as a master of "the artificial-natural style ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... Tunes from the best Poets and Musicians. Selected and arranged by John Hullah, Professor of Vocal Music ...
— MacMillan & Co.'s General Catalogue of Works in the Departments of History, Biography, Travels, and Belles Lettres, December, 1869 • Unknown

... Keyserling; of good gifts too,—which, it was once thought, would be practically sublime; for he carried off all manner of college prizes, and was the Admirable-Crichton of Konigsberg University and the Graduates there. But in the end they proved to be gifts of the vocal sort rather: and have led only to what we see. A man, I should guess, rather of buoyant vivacity than of depth or strength in intellect or otherwise. Excessively buoyant, ingenious; full of wit, kindly exuberance; a loyal-hearted, gay-tempered man, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle

... of over a hundred men, I would try hard to be the first ONE.'' That was all. He said nothing more, except good-bye. On my way to New Haven I thought much of this, and on arriving, went to a student, who had some reputation as an elocutionist, and engaged him for a course in vocal gymnastics. When he wished me to recite my oration before him, I declined, saying that it must be spoken in my own way, not in his; that his way might be better, but that mine was my own, and I would have no other. ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... artist. His optimistic faith has driven the poet into a realm into which poetry never ventured before. His battle is now, not with flesh and blood, but with the subtler powers of darkness grown vocal and argumentative, and threatening to turn the poet's faith in good into a defence of immorality, and to justify the worst evil by what is highest of all. Having indicated in outward fact "the need," as well as the "transiency of sin and death," he seeks here to ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones

... State rose as one man and clamored for Clayton's pardon and retrial. The governor issued the pardon, but the Supreme Court was in duty bound to annul it, and did so, and poor Clayton was hanged yesterday. The city is draped in black, and, indeed, the like may be said of the State. All America is vocal with scorn of 'French justice,' and of the malignant little soldiers who invented it and inflicted it upon the other ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... Him by the exercise of their fatal prerogative of free-will. Force, then, is the act of immanent Divinity. I find no meaning in mechanical explanations. Newton's hypothesis of an ether filling the heavenly spaces does not, I confess, help my conceptions. I will, and the muscles of my vocal organs shape my speech. God wills, and the universe articulates His power, wisdom, and goodness. That is all I know. There is no bridge my mind can throw from the "immaterial" cause ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... teachers (colored) of the county have for years held monthly meetings at Le Moyne Institute, and for the past year have received regular instruction in the teaching of vocal music from the director of music of ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 54, No. 4, October, 1900 • Various

... Hackett, M. D., writes: "The physical defects which prevent Mr. Brazenthwaite from joining the colours have left his vocal gifts and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol 150, February 9, 1916 • Various

... its Right Management in Speaking, Reading, and Debating, including the Principles of True Eloquence; together with the Functions of the Vocal Organs,—the Motion of the Letters of the Alphabet,—the Cultivation of the Ear,—the Disorders of the Vocal and Articulating Organs,—Origin and Construction of the English Language.—Proper Methods ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various

... close of an observation, may serve as evidence of processes subsidiary to ideation, and may be compared, in respect of the motor factors which the 'striving' implies, with the preparatory stage which Binet found to be an inseparable and essential part of any given (vocal) ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various

... the veil of the flesh could be removed, and the inward life revealed, how we should pity one another, and how we should pray! In how many lives should we behold a spirit "bound together," who "could in no wise lift herself up!" Wills like crushed reeds, consciences like broken vocal chords, hopes like birds with injured wings, and hearts ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett

... seemed so capable of rising 90 That, had he soared like thistle-down, beholders Had thought the circumstance noways surprising; Enough that he remained, and, when the scolders Hailed him as umpire in their vocal prize-ring, The painter of his boat he lightly threw Around a lotos-stem, and brought ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... everyone knows, we mean the relative position of a vocal tone—as, high, medium, low, or any variation between. In public speech we apply it not only to a single utterance, as an exclamation or a monosyllable (Oh! or the) but to any group of syllables, words, and even sentences that may be spoken in a single ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... what is less to its credit, it has apparently found a scapegoat, to which it would ever appear anxious to call our attention, as it stammers forth, in accents of warning, "c, c, cow, cow, cow! cowow, cowow!" It never gets any further than this; but doubtless in due process of vocal evolution we shall yet hear the "bunting," or "black-bird," which is evidently what he ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson

... its May, and all is joyous then The woods are vocal, and the flowers breathe odour, The very breeze ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar

... of our days, When earth and heaven were vocal of her praise, The fates have slain, and her sweet soul reposes; And tears I bring, and sighs, and on her tomb Pour milk, and scatter buds of many a bloom, That dead, as living, she may ...
— Ballads and Lyrics of Old France: with other Poems • Andrew Lang

... all but spoke, and produced a sensation of dancing in the toes of even those who happened to be seated. Bryan was great as a linguist, too, and exhibited his powers in this respect with singular felicity in the vocal entertainment that followed the dancing. The Esquimau language seemed a mere trifle to him, and he conversed, while playing the violin, with several "purty craytures" in their native tongue, with an amount of volubility ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne

... of vocal power among birds seems to be complementary to the development of accessory plumes and ornaments. All our finest singing birds are plainly coloured, with no crests, neck or tail plumes to display. The gorgeously ornamented birds of the tropics have no song, and those ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... the Academic Don once so popularly represented by Mr. J.L. TOOLE, but MOZART's Italianised Spanish Don. A propos of Mr. TOOLE, it has always been the wonder of his friends, to whom the quality of his vocal powers is so well known, that he has never been tempted to renounce the simple histrionic for the lyric Drama. It is said, and "greatly to his credit," that, had it not been for his unwillingness to rob his friend SIMS REEVES of the laurel-crown he wears as first English Tenor of his age, he ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 16, 1891 • Various

... Raffles was laughing as though his vocal cords would snap—there was neither tragedy nor illusion in the apparition of Raffles. A life-size Jack-in-the-box, he had thrust his head through a lid within the lid, cut by himself between the two iron bands that ran round the chest like the straps of a ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung

... of other pieces to be spoken, most of them by the youngsters. There were songs, also exercises in vocal gymnastics. Pupils of the lower classes displayed their expertness at mental arithmetic. Then, after more singing, the superintendent of schools, who had just arrived, mounted the platform and presented each graduating one with a diploma, showing that the recipients had faithfully ...
— The Grammar School Boys in Summer Athletics • H. Irving Hancock

... English traveller, Mr. Wilkinson, has discovered the secret of the vocal Memnon. There was a cavity in which a person was concealed, and struck a stone, which gave a ringing sound like brass. The Arabs, who stood below when Mr. Wilkinson performed the miracle, described sound just as the author of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon

... off your things and stay to tea, at least," urged Felicity, as hospitably as her strained vocal chords would admit. ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... his wine he would volunteer an imitation of somebody, generally of Incledon. His imitation was vocal; I made pretensions to the oratorical parts; and between us, we boasted, that we made up the entire phenomenon." ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 393, October 10, 1829 • Various

... to engulf and enfold them. The real poets have written in words that live because, unknowingly, they have fallen back on and given expression to the accumulated hopes and visions of the mind of man. The prophets have simply been those with the power to make their instincts vocal. Genius, in all its phases, is seemingly but the measure of the extent to which men cooerdinate their two minds, ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)

... out of his lofty contempt of them, whirled suddenly and picked up a rock. Johnny could pitch a very fair ball for an amateur, and the rock went true without any frills or curving deception. It landed in the middle of Bud Norris's back, and Bud's vocal efforts ended in a ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower

... intellectual brow, and his thoughtful, far-looking eyes intensified the impression he gave of force and original power. He smiled humorously. "All the youth, beauty and intellect of Leipzig in one room. I leave you to apportion the qualities. Making much noise, too! And did I hear the strains of a vocal recital?" ...
— A Day with Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy • George Sampson

... awakened by a series of awful screams from Bill. They weren't yells, or howls, or shouts, or whoops, or yawps, such as you'd expect from a manly set of vocal organs—they were simply indecent, terrifying, humiliating screams, such as women emit when they see ghosts or caterpillars. It's an awful thing to hear a strong, desperate, fat man scream incontinently in a ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry

... assembled together in one and the same forest, surpassing all other coniferous forests in the world, both in the number of its species and in the size and beauty of its trees. The winds flow in melody through their colossal spires, and they are vocal everywhere with the songs of birds and running water. Miles of fragrant ceanothus and manzanita bushes bloom beneath them, and lily gardens and meadows, and damp, ferny glens in endless variety of fragrance and color, compelling the ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir

... as such shall forever remember it. I was walking down the Rue de Sevres toward the Boulevard Montparnasse, hoping to pick up a stray taxicab which would carry me to the Embassy. Suddenly, and with startling abruptness, I was brought to a full stop by a wave of sharp, staccato vocal sound. Wave beat upon wave,—a great volume of male voices shouting in unison. There was something so strange, so startling, and so appalling in their quality that, without comprehending what was coming, a shiver ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood

... Titus, with Heav'n's King to help, Aveng'd those piteous gashes, whence the blood By Judas sold did issue, with the name Most lasting and most honour'd there was I Abundantly renown'd," the shade reply'd, "Not yet with faith endued. So passing sweet My vocal Spirit, from Tolosa, Rome To herself drew me, where I merited A myrtle garland to inwreathe my brow. Statius they name me still. Of Thebes I sang, And next of great Achilles: but i' th' way Fell with the second burthen. Of my flame Those ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... yek saat," he says, and so I mount and bid him follow along behind. By vocal suasion and a liberal application of his cruel, triple-thonged, raw-hide whip, he urges his well-nigh staggering animal into a canter, lifting his forefeet clear of the ground seemingly by the bridle ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... to see her every morning, and the tunefulness of the piano was really all that reminded them of their change of residence. From twelve until three they worked at music, both vocal and instrumental. Dick sought for excuses to absent himself, but when he returned he always insisted that Montgomery should remain to dinner. All formalities between them were abolished, and Kate did not hesitate to sit on her lover's knees in ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore

... highest possible stimulation. At the same time, through the competition of composers for pleasing the ear, there was an ever increasing tendency toward symmetry and graceful forms. And so the aria became, after a little, a piece of vocal display, often entirely opposed to the action, and sometimes foreign to the genius of the scene; still, it was heard for the sake of the pleasure which people have in a skilfully managed voice. Toward the end of this century, somebody, whose ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews

... on a straight footing, which were awry when he found them. In fact, it is Papa's second self; looks into the bottom of all things quite as Papa would have done, and is fatal to mendacities, practical or vocal, wherever he meets them. What a joy to Papa: "Here, after all, is one that can replace me, in case of accident. This Apprentice of mine, after all, he has fairly learned the Art; and will continue ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... had," replied the duke, with careless naivete and a complaisant forgetfulness, of which no words could translate the tone and the vocal expression. "Now, here is poor Raoul, who ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... zeal, they might employ the day, which they passed in their cells, either in vocal or mental prayer: they assembled in the evening, and they were awakened in the night, for the public worship of the monastery. The precise moment was determined by the stars, which are seldom clouded in the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon

... remain for hours, even days and weeks in these halls listening in a sort of stupor or trance to beautiful music; for music is the one great recreation of the Martians, and is spontaneous, appearing as a vocal gift in beings who have never enjoyed its exercise ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap

... instincts are present at birth; most of them develop later in the child's life. Pillsbury says, "One may recognize the food-taking instincts, the vocal protests at discomfort, but relatively few others." This delay in the appearance of instincts and capacities is dependent upon the development of the nervous system. No one of them can appear until the connections ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy

... think that the present belief in mortality is nothing but the almost universal although unsuspected unbelief in immortality grown vocal and articulate. ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... cases where the spelling has been previously determined by others,—that form of orthography has been employed, which might be supposed most easily to convey their sound to a stranger. In several works descriptive of the islands in the Pacific, many of the most beautiful combinations of vocal sounds have been altogether lost to the ear of the reader by an over-attention to the ordinary rules ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville

... second letter of the alphabet. It is called a vocal labial consonant, which, no doubt, serves it ...
— The Silly Syclopedia • Noah Lott

... arrive at Diou-djen-dji in the starry night, the music of her 'chamecen', heard from afar, recalls to us her existence; she is studying some vocal duet with ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... occupy their minds. Now," he continued, with a hope of getting into some sort of human relations with his guest which he had not felt before, "why shouldn't a young man on a farm take up some scientific study, like geology, for instance, which makes every inch of earth vocal, every rock historic, and the waste places social?" Barker looked so blankly at him that he asked again, ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells

... amusement, Vauxhall Gardens, which must ever be an estate to its proprietor, as it is peculiarly adapted to the taste of the English nation; there being a mixture of curious show,—gay exhibition,—musick, vocal and instrumental, not too refined for the general ear;—for all which only a shilling is paid[906]; and, though last, not least, good eating and drinking for those who choose to purchase that regale[907]. Mr. Thomas Tyers was bred to the law; but having a handsome fortune, vivacity ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell

... mixture of Earths mould Breath such Divine inchanting ravishment? Sure somthing holy lodges in that brest, And with these raptures moves the vocal air To testifie his hidd'n residence; How sweetly did they float upon the wings Of silence, through the empty-vaulted night 250 At every fall smoothing the Raven doune Of darknes till it smil'd: I have oft heard My mother Circe with the Sirens three, Amid'st the ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... concluded inconsequently with a vocal imitation of a post-horn; and, looking up, I saw the head and shoulders of Byfield projected over the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... talk. He was driven to America by ill-health, coming first to Canada, and in 1871 he settled in Boston, where he accepted a position in Boston University to introduce his system of teaching deaf-mutes. He opened a school of "Vocal Physiology," and his success in his chosen field brought him into association with the people who afterward played an important part in the development of the telephone. Not a single element of romance was lacking in Bell's experience; his great ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick

... the verse of Mr. Yeats has had vocal quality, a quality that is unfortunately often rarer in good poetry than in verse that is good rhetoric. I cannot see that his interest in the psaltery, that developed after 1900, has brought about any change in the quality of his verse. There have been constant to it since "The Wanderings of Oisin" ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt

... the vocal expression of feeling, though it is also applied to written forms which are intended to express emotion. Thus in describing a towering mountain we can write "Heavens, what a piece of Nature's handiwork! how majestic! how sublime! how ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin

... Hallelujahs to Him"; it was just "the overflowing fountain and efflux of Almighty Love bestowing itself upon men and crowning Itself by communicating Itself."[38] The Christ who is thus divine Grace become visible and vocal is also at the same time the irresistible attraction, "strongly and forcibly moving the souls of men into a conjunction with Divine Goodness," which is what Smith always means by the great word, ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones

... to-day Breaks forth, that sweep the wavelets of my lake:— When will the mountain cuckoo come and make The garden vocal with his ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various

... defined as "the collection of vocal prayers established by the Church, which must be recited daily by persons deputed for ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley

... any money by this enterprise; but I assure you that if I knew I should not make a farthing profit, I would ratify the engagement, so anxious am I that the United States should be visited by a lady whose vocal powers have never been approached by any other human being, and whose character is ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton

... most beautiful ballad in the English language. But let me remark to you, that in the sentiment and style of our Scottish airs there is a pastoral simplicity, a something that one may call the Doric style and dialect of vocal music, to which a dash of our native tongue and manners is particularly, nay, peculiarly apposite. For this reason, and upon my honour, for this reason alone, I am of opinion (but, as I told you before, my opinion is yours, freely yours to approve or reject as you please) that ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... yells" of the United States and Canada offer an inviting field for study in linguistic atavism and barbaric vocal expression. The New York World Almanac for 1895 contains a list of the "yells" of some three hundred colleges and universities in the United States. Out of this great number, in which there is a plenitude of "Rah! rah! rah!" ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... eye. Conscience is the witness of His continued Presence; the drawing which we feel toward higher things is born in the unlost image of God which is planted in our nature "like the tree of Life in Eden." He pleads in our hearts by His inner Word; He reveals the goodness of Himself in His vocal opposition to all that would harm and spoil us, and He labours unceasingly to be born in us and to bring forth His love and His spiritual kingdom in the domain of our own spirits. The way of life is to die to the flesh and to the narrow will of ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones

... is really robbing an audience of its rights, to pass so quickly from one point to another that the mind must lose a new one if it lingers to take in the old. Every vital point in a tale must be given a certain amount of time: by an anticipatory pause, by some form of vocal or repetitive emphasis, and by actual time. But even more than other tales does the funny story demand this. It cannot ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant

... vocal cords, of the muscles of the eye, of the nerves of hearing, the exudations from the nose and eyes after diphteria, meningitis and scarlet fever, adhesions, suppurations after pneumonia and other forms of inflammatory disease, are often the ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann

... sacrifice effect. Her scarf's description, wrought by Fate; Ostents that threaten her estate; The strange, yet physical, events, Leander's counterfeit[70] presents. In thunder Cyprides descends, Presaging both the lovers' ends: Ecte, the goddess of remorse, With vocal and articulate force 10 Inspires Leucote, Venus' swan, T' excuse the Beauteous Sestian. Venus, to wreak her rites' abuses, Creates the monster Eronusis, Inflaming Hero's sacrifice With lightning darted from her eyes; And thereof ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe

... little beasts are of incalculable value to the laboring classes of southern Europe, Egypt, Mexico, and similar lands. If they have failed to win affection, it is, perhaps, because of their one infirmity,—their fearful vocal tones, which in America have won for them the sarcastic ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard

... so cold during that season that it came to be known in the profession as the "Cave of the Winds," and this title was no reflection on the vocal qualities ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman

... Then I would say something to those who talk nonsense about apathy and supineness. We will not be hurried into repression, any more than we will be hurried into the other direction. This party, which is very vocal in this country, say:—Oh! we are astonished, and India is astonished, and amazed at the licence that you extend to newspapers and to speakers; why don't you stop it? Orientals, they say, do not understand it. Yes, but just let us look at that. We are not Orientals; that is the ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)

... diamonded light, The echo, feeble child of sound, The heavy thunder's girding might, The herald lightning's starry bound, The vocal spring of bursting bloom, The naked summer's glowing birth, The troublous autumn's sallow gloom, The hoarhead winter paving earth With sheeny white, are full of strange Astonishment and ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... belongs to the singing species of animals. True it is, that wherever found, he has some notion of music, cultivates the accord of sounds by some sort of instrument, and gives expression to his most acute emotions in modulations of vocal tone. ...
— Aboriginal American Authors • Daniel G. Brinton

... "The limit of his narrower fate". Compare the direction in which he looks in his day dreams now, with the direction in which he looked in those of his boyhood. What is meant by "vocal springs"? ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education

... of words, and do not need it, since they can only be isolated in thought from each other by a distance greater than that which any vocal sound can traverse; but their organs of voice and hearing are far more complex and perfect than ours, and their atmosphere infinitely more conductive ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... agree in pitch and quantity, yet be unlike in quality. The same is true in regard to the tones of the voice of two individuals. This difference is occasioned mainly by the different positions of the vocal organs. ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders

... appeared as he mounted the stairs the audience burst into the short, sharply staccato song of welcome, something like a tuneful, sing-song college yell, with which Roman crowds greeted their master. This vocal salute, a mere tag of eight or nine syllables, each with its distinctive note, was repeated over and over until the Emperor ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White

... to Hamlet, "The morning cock crew loud;" and I have no doubt he did; he always does, especially if he is confined during the performance of his vocal exercises to a narrow city yard surrounded by brick walls which act as sounding-boards to carry the vibrations to the ears of a sleeper who is already restless with the summer heat and with the buzzing of early and pertinacious flies. To such a man, aroused and indignant, ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)

... the greater part of it still remains (what it must all have been in the beginning) useless and without ulterior significance. The musical side of language is its primary and elementary side. Man is endowed with vocal organs so plastic as to emit a great variety of delicately varied sounds; and by good fortune his ear has a parallel sensibility, so that much vocal expression can be registered and confronted by auditory feeling. It has been ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... GOSCHEN and HICKS-BEACH, so that they should miss nothing of his counsel, and started off. Instantly arose stormy cries for Division. GEDGE, wherever he has been, seems to have been well-fed, and kept generally in good fettle. Cheerfully accepted challenge to vocal contest. Every time he commenced sentence the boisterous chorus, "'vide! 'vide! 'vide!" rang though House. Opposition, who didn't want Bill, started it; Ministerialists, anxious to see Bill pass, took it up; a roaring, excited crowd; amid them GEDGE, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 21, 1891 • Various



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