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Bass   /bæs/  /beɪs/   Listen
Bass

noun
(in the sense of fish: pl. bass, and sometimes basses)
1.
The lowest part of the musical range.
2.
The lowest part in polyphonic music.  Synonym: bass part.
3.
An adult male singer with the lowest voice.  Synonym: basso.
4.
The lean flesh of a saltwater fish of the family Serranidae.  Synonym: sea bass.
5.
Any of various North American freshwater fish with lean flesh (especially of the genus Micropterus).  Synonym: freshwater bass.
6.
The lowest adult male singing voice.  Synonyms: bass voice, basso.
7.
The member with the lowest range of a family of musical instruments.
8.
Nontechnical name for any of numerous edible marine and freshwater spiny-finned fishes.



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"Bass" Quotes from Famous Books



... heard, note by note, and like a child who is learning the piano, always goes back to the beginning of the piece when he strikes a false note. After many trials the whole air is discovered. Then the trombones and bass instruments put in the accompaniment also by experiment, and in the end the result is really quite good for Africans unlike Asiatics, take kindly ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman

... die. Whereon this Miller both of corn and meal An hundred times more than before did steal; For, ere this chance, he stole but courteously, But now he was a thief outrageously. The Warden scolded with an angry air; But this the Miller rated not a tare: He sang high bass, and ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley

... bag which bore the name of a patent fertilizer; a small hand mowing-machine blocked the entrance; and a plank, too long to lie flat on the ground, had been propped slantwise between the floor and the roof. Bunches of bass hung from nails above the shelf; and on the wall opposite, a coloured advertisement, representing phloxes of so fierce an intensity of hue that nature was put to the blush, had been tacked by some ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce

... organ, and there was one whose face I well knew sitting at the keyboard, smiling and pluming himself like a bird as he thundered forth a giant fugue by way of overture. I heard the great pedal notes in the bass stalk majestically up and down, like the rays of the Aurora that go about upon the face of the heavens off the coast of Labrador. Then presently the people rose and sang the chorus "Venus laughing from the skies;" but ere the sound had well died away, I awoke, and all ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler

... old choir, with their fiddles and bass-viols,' said the home-comer, musingly. 'Are they still going on the same ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy

... trumpet. The heads of the peasants Are eagerly lifted, They gaze at the tower. On the balcony round it A man is now standing; He wears a pope's cassock; 290 He sings ... on the balmy Soft air of the evening, The bass, like a huge Silver bell, is vibrating, And throbbing it enters The hearts of the peasants. The words are not Russian, But some foreign language, But, like Russian songs, It is full of great sorrow, 300 Of passionate grief, Unending, unfathomed; ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov

... especially important, because if Laperouse had not perished, but had lived to carry out his programme, it is evident that he would have forestalled the later discoveries of Bass and Flinders in southern Australia. What a vast difference to the later course of history that ...
— Laperouse • Ernest Scott

... salmon flies; but the breed is all but extinct now, or rather, perhaps, has been crossed and re-crossed out of recognition. It is said, however, to be still maintained in the parish of Advie, and when the late Mr. Bass had the Tulchan shootings and fishings his head keeper used to breed and ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes

... the room, at two small tables joined together, were to be seen the party from the Yungfrau; some were drinking beer, some grog, and Jemmy Ducks was perched on the table, with his fiddle as usual held like a bass viol. He was known by those who frequented the house by the name of the Mannikin, and was a universal object of admiration and good-will. The quadrille was ended, and the music ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat

... church, he held his double eye-glass to his eyes during the Morning Hymn, and then lifted up his head erect and sang out loud and joyfully. He made the responses louder than the clerk—an old man with a piping feeble voice, who, I think, felt aggrieved at the Captain's sonorous bass, and quivered higher and higher ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... a hackney launch. He was received at her snowy sides as if he were the emperor of somewhere come to visit one of his rear admirals. He went up the steps as if he were a school-boy caught playing hooky and going up-stairs to play the bass drum to ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... is one of the great idling places of those upon this continent who can afford to idle. It is a shallow lake, upon the American side stretching out into what are known as the "Flats," a vast area of wild rice with deep blue waterways through them, the haunt of the pickerel and black bass and of duck and wild geese. Upon the Canadian side, the Thames River comes through the lowlands, a deep and reed-fringed stream to contribute to the lake's pure waters. It was upon the banks of this stream, a little way from the lake, that the ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo

... feminine consciousness, which the vulgar have named, in derision, a movement for woman's rights. She will seek to be more truly woman, to assert her special power and privilege, to approach from her own side the common ideal, offering a pure soprano to match the manly bass. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various

... below. At about four o'clock their papa generally awoke, and demanded a succession of hymn tunes played on the piano. When the weather permitted, the lower sash was opened a little, and the neighbours were indulged with the performance of "Vital Spark," the father "coming in" now and then with a bass note or two at the end where he was tolerably certain of the harmony. At five o'clock a prophecy of the incoming tea brought us some relief from the contemplation of the landscape or brick-scape. I say "some relief," for meals at M'Kay's were a little ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford

... clearing in which the hut was situated, they were unable to approach any nearer. The place was a whirlwind of flame. The smell of kerosene was almost overpowering. The wild yell of the leopard rose above the strange, half-human gibbering of the monkeys and the hoarse, bass calling of another voice, at the sound of which Lenora and even Quest shuddered. Then, as they came, breathless, to a standstill, they saw a strange thing. One side of the hut fell in, and almost ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... language Their skirted children chide; Beyond the land of sunshine, Where never skies are blue, There lives a silent people Who know a thing or two. All is not gold that glitters, And sirops are rather sad; All is not Bass that's "bitters," And Gallic beer is bad; But out of the misty regions Where loom the mountains tall There comes the drink of princes— Whisky, the best ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 8, 1917 • Various

... dining-room, emerged into the full light of the lamp, and disappeared behind a door. After that there was no voice, no step, no noise—nothing living. All at once a clock began to strike nine. Its metallic sound inclined to bass, and was heard clearly in the silence which had settled in the vacant chambers. One, two, three—at the fourth stroke another clock was heard in a distant study. Its sound was thinner and more like singing—these two seemed to be a voice and its echo; the sounds from these resembled ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)

... and had it out with Mrs. Buzza. Indeed, at the end of half-an-hour that poor lady's feelings were so overwrought, and, in consequence, her sobs so loud, that the Admiral had perforce to get out his double-bass and play a selection of martial music to prevent Miss Limpenny's hearing them on the other ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... Banksia, it is a singular fact in the geographical distribution of this genus that its species, which have been traced through almost every meridian of the south coast, upon the islands in Bass Strait, in Van Diemen's Land, and widely scattered throughout the whole extent of New South Wales to the north coast, at which extreme Banksia dentata has been observed as far west as longitude 136 degrees south, should be wholly wanting on the ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey

... the street-lamp became the social center of Benton. At last the mad race was ended. I think it was the cornet that won, with the clarinet a close second. The tuba, as I recollect it, complacently claimed third money, and the bass-drum finished last with ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt

... her in a body and hung over the banisters at a perilous angle, straining their ears in the direction of the drawing-room. Nothing but a murmur of voices floated up, punctuated by an occasional deep bass laugh. When they heard the front door close, with one accord they invaded Harriet Gladden's room, which commanded the walk, and pressed their noses against the pane. A short, thick-set man of German build was ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster

... a loud tenor shout that doubtless penetrated the cane jungle farther than would the deep bass of the able-seaman, and after a minute's listening, Murray hailed again; but somehow the shout did not seem ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn

... J. R. Bass, the well-known "ossified man" of the dime museums, has been examined by many physicians, and was quite intelligent and cheerful in spite of his complete ankylosis. Figure 269 represents his ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... direction as that from which the gale was approaching. Another heavy salt-laden gust struck us, lasting just long enough to give the schooner way and render her obedient to her helm, and then the deep bass roar rose into a deafening, yelling medley of indescribable sounds as the gale struck us, and the poor little schooner bowed beneath the blow until the water poured in over her lee gunwale and I thought that she ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood

... when eating grapefruit for the first time. Indeed, there may have been a few even whose execution in regard to consuming soup out of the side of the spoon was a thing calculated to remind you of a bass tuba player emptying his instrument at the end of a hard ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... party. Frank made just a feeble answer about not drinking, and a pretence of holding back his glass, and then allowed himself to be helped first to one tumbler, then another, and then another, of foaming Bass. He was soon past all ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson

... composition of metal which is very sonorous. The gongs, a kind of bell, but differing much in shape and struck on the outside, are cast in sets regularly tuned to thirds, fourth, fifth, and octave, and often serve as a bass, or under part, to the kalintang. They are also sounded for the purpose of calling together the inhabitants of the village upon any particular occasion; but the more ancient and still common instrument for this use is a hollowed log of wood ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... to be in good spirits, for they can hear her voice in song, blending with the bass of the baronet, floating over the waves, which are really rougher than any ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne

... "Sing bass, now, Lovell," said Mrs. Barlow; and the expression of awed delight and expectancy on her face, as she uttered these words, was a rebuke to all cynics and ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene

... big teddy, with electric eyes, and a deep bass growl, if they make 'em that way. The best you can get. Fetch it out to-morrow afternoon, and come decently dressed, for once. Bring Murdoch along if you can ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead

... spoken these words, with her teeth set with rage, and had raised her small fist to threaten her brother; but Euergetes preserved a perfect composure till she had ceased speaking. Then he took a step closer to her, crossed his arms over his breast, and asked her in the deepest bass of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... raven gleaming blackness, her cheeks were red, her manner so assured and commanding that she seemed to Maggie at once like a policeman directing the traffic. The policeman of Christian Skeaton she was, and it did not take Maggie two minutes to discover that Paul was afraid of her. She had a deep bass voice and ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole

... was terrible. On the right Raged for hours the heady fight, Thundered the battery's double bass,— Difficult music for men to face While on the left—where now the graves Undulate like the living waves That all that day unceasing swept Up to the pits the rebels kept— Round shot ploughed the upland glades, ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte

... into the new work before him, and the branch of the school under his direction soon rivalled any similar school. Various branches were added to the school,—in 1871 a class for organ, in 1872 classes for brass instruments, double-bass, and solo vocalists, in 1873 a chorus class. In 1875 the Royal Academy of Arts was reorganised and became the Royal High School for Music, with Joachim as director. That Joachim had earned a very high position as early as 1859 is shown by an extract ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee

... fiddle, flute, and piano, to hear the sorrows of their wailing brother. 'Tis but for a moment: before the melancholy of those low notes has been fully realised, again comes the full force of all the band;—down go the pedals, away rush twenty fingers scouring over the bass notes with all the impetus of passion. Apollo blows till his stiff neckcloth is no better than a rope, and the minor canon works with both arms till he falls in a syncope of exhaustion against ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope

... already beginning to assert their light among the shadows of evening. A chorus of fresh and accurate voices was pouring forth from the garden, the pure young tenors and altos weaving their melodies like network over the sustained, vibrating, vigorous bass voices. It was the antiphony of the youthful promenaders to the drinkers, the diastole of the heart above the stomach, the elisire d'amore in rivalry with beer. Amid this scene I recognized my waiter, illuminated fitfully like some extraordinary firefly as he sprang into sight ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various

... Oswiu had vowed to build twelve minsters in his kingdom, and he redeemed his vow by founding six in Bernicia and six in Deira. In 669, Ecgberht of Kent "gave Reculver to Bass, the mass-priest, to build a monastery thereon." In 663, AEthelthryth, a lady of royal blood, better known by the Latinised name of St. Etheldreda, "began the monastery at Ely." Before Baeda's death, in 735, religious houses ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen

... golden-blossomed furze. The sun came down warmly, birds twittered in the boughs, and a couple of rabbits showed their white cottony tails for a moment or two as they plunged down into their burrows, while above all, in a low, deep, roaring bass, there was the heavy thunder of the river as it swept sand, gravel, trees, and everything it could tear from its flooded ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn

... colony of Britain, lying fully 100 m. S. of Australia, from which it is separated by Bass Strait; about the size of Scotland; the beauty of its mountain and lake scenery has won it the name of "the Switzerland of the South"; extensive stretches of tableland diversified by lakes—largest Great ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... Charlton stepped out on the piazza with his microscope in his hand and stopped a moment to take in the scene—the rawness and newness and flimsiness of the mushroom village, with its hundred unpainted bass-wood houses, the sweetness, peacefulness, and freshness of the unfurrowed prairie beyond, the calmness and immutability of the clear, star-lit sky above—when he heard a voice round the corner of the building that put out his eyes and opened his ears, if I may so speak. Somebody was reproaching ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston

... herrings, but shad, trout, bass, pike, pickerel, grayling, have no plural form. "I caught three bass and seven fine ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel

... partial glimpses of great beauty, and brought out into bold relief little bits of the landscape—now a town, and now an islet, and anon the blue summit of a hill. A sunlit wreath rose from around the abrupt and rugged Bass as we passed; and my heart leaped within me as I saw, for the first time, that stern Patmos of the devout and brave of another age looming dark and high through the diluted mist, and enveloped for a moment, as the cloud parted, in an amber-tinted glory. ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller

... ever rolled so deep a bass through arches so grand! See how the sunlight glances amid the gnarled branches of the roof, and here and there falls through on the floor below; making those low icy forms look like the shrubs of the valley of diamonds in the eastern story. Just so ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various

... gave a concert and I accompanied my proteges to hear it. The bass instruments with their deep notes jarred upon the acoustic sense of the poor fellows and visibly inspired them with terror. They stopped their ears with their fingers and gave clear signs of the unpleasant feelings they were suffering from. But it was quite ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti

... that big vibrant bass voice, the mere vitality of the magnate's presence was stimulating. Here was a two-fisted, hard-headed, straight-spoken man's man who had fought his way to the top by refusing pointblank to stay at the bottom. As Phil stood renewing acquaintance he realized more fully why his aunt had always ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse

... a black, ugly slug to be found under stones in summer streams, is the most tempting bait you can offer a black bass. After a time the hellgrammite comes to the surface and takes to the air as a beetle, but in that state he interests the naturalist rather ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort

... "horrent locks," to frown darkly without any possible reason, and to look daggers at his landlady when invited to help himself to brown-bread toast. His voice, in imitation of the "Boy," the "Great American tragedian," alternates between the deep bass of a veteran porker and the mellifluous tenor of a "pig's whisper." He is apt to roll his eyes quickly from side to side, to gasp and heave his chest most unaccountably. He reads nothing of the papers but the theatrical advertisements and critiques. He has an acquaintance with two or three fourth-rate ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage

... at the slave." The speaker hurled this in a deep bass voice full at McCall. She was a black-browed, handsome young woman, wrapped in a good deal of scarlet, who sat sideways on one chair with her feet on the rung of another. "How long will the world dare to laugh?" fixing him fiercely with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various

... your opinion is the nature of happiness?" asked the Angel thereal, as he finished his second bottle of Bass, in the grounds of the White City. The dragoman regarded his angel ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy

... in hand in another quarter. She bustled off down to Water-Dock Lane, where, as we said in a former narrative, lived the old music-teacher, Dr. Bullfrog. The poor old doctor was a simple-minded, good, amiable creature, who had played the double-bass and led the forest choir on all public occasions since nobody knows when. Latterly some youngsters had arisen who sneered at his performances as behind the age. In fact, since a great city had grown up in the vicinity of the forest, tribes of wandering ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... degree of knowledge which enabled me to estimate the transcendent skill of this performer. As if the pathos of her touch were insufficient, I found after some time that the lawless jarrings of the keys were chastened by her own more liquid notes. She played without a book, and, though her bass might be preconcerted, it was plain that her right-hand notes were momentary and spontaneous inspirations. Meanwhile Welbeck stood, leaning his arms on the back of a chair near her, with his eyes fixed on her face. His features were fraught with a meaning ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown

... rather hard, and his words were tripping. Managing his voice ill, the tones of it ran away from bass to shrill treble. She saw it all at a glance, and realised that Martin had been blundering on, in pure ignorance and pure love, all these weary weeks. She sat down silently and her mind moved like light along the wide gamut of fifty emotions in a second. Anger and sorrow ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts

... win Roosevelt over: La Follette being eliminated, there was no other Progressive whom the majority would agree upon. The party spoke with only one voice, and uttered only one name. And, presently, the Governors of seven States—Bass of New Hampshire, Hadley of Missouri, Osborn of Michigan, Glasscock of West Virginia, Carey of Wyoming, Aldrich of Nebraska, and Stubbs of Kansas—issued an appeal to him which seemed to give an official stamp to the popular entreaties. Roosevelt's ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... who lived at Bass Cove, where he shot wild ducks, took some to town for sale, and attracted the attention of a portly gentleman fond of shooting. This gentleman went duck shooting with Joe, and their adventures were more amusing to the boy ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic

... to it! When she had finished the duet with her daughter, Frau Lenore observed that Emilio had a fine voice, like a silver bell, but that now he was at the age when the voice changes—he did, in fact, talk in a sort of bass constantly falling into falsetto—and that he was therefore forbidden to sing; but that Pantaleone now really might try his skill of old days in honour of their guest! Pantaleone promptly put on a displeased air, frowned, ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev

... many years old when he went to the meeting; just turned of twenty now,—he said. He made various youthful proposals to me, including a duet under the landlady's daughter's window. He had just learned a trick, he said, of one of "the boys," of getting a splendid bass out of a door-panel by rubbing it with the palm of his hand. Offered to sing "The sky is bright," accompanying himself on the front-door, if I would go down and help in the chorus. Said there never was such a set of fellows as the old boys of the set he ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... dress as the postillion de Longjumeau, you would appear as Debardeurs, sup in the morning, and breakfast at night at Very's—sometimes even at the Rocher de Cancale.—Dry bread for you, my boys! Why," said I, in a big bass voice, "you deserve to sleep under the bed, you are not ...
— Z. Marcas • Honore de Balzac

... as the king finished his royal repast he disguised himself in the long cloak and hat of a soldier and went with the prime minister and the turnkey to catch a glimpse of the prisoner. As they approached the dungeon they heard a rich bass voice singing: ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various

... of the bass voice, putting down a small portmanteau, straightening himself, touching his forehead with a military salute, and stalking ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne

... perspective. The ruin of a soul, the tragedy of a heart, demand, as a necessity of harmony and picturesque effect, a corresponding and conspiring environment and stage—just as, in music, the air in the treble is supported and reverberated by the bass accompaniment. The immediate, contemporary act or predicament loses more than half its meaning and impressiveness if it be re-echoed from no sounding-board in the past—its notes, however sweetly and truly touched, fall flatly on the ear. The deeper we attempt to pitch ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne

... to my mind, I cut its companion as true to the lines of the other as possible, fig. 14, when I take in hand the placing of the bass bar on the belly, in the rough, preparatory to toning it down in shape, etc., when ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson

... clergyman, indeed, wore his dress and manners in relaxed and even slouchy fashion; but this seemed not due to lightness of heart, but only to weariness of mind. I knew that something had caused him to feel acutely the limitations of his office. One might attribute such feelings to the bass-viol player in an orchestra, who, in whatever whirl of harmony, is permitted to scrape out only a few gruff notes. But there was dear Mrs. Widesworth, so deliciously drugged by the anodynes of Authority ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various

... canvas chair, a manuscript in his hand. Scattered about were a dozen men and women, poised tensely, as if they were afraid to move a muscle. To the left was the orchestra, a violin, 'cello and bass viol. Why, thought John, do bass viol players always have that far-away, woebegone look on their faces as they saw ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson

... rich, but uncultivated bass voice joined in the melody. Still the effect was better tahn would have been expected from amateurs. After a few moments, Stanton stood back and Miss Burton and Van Berg sang together; then every one leaned forward and listened with a breathless ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe

... carpenter in a weak voice, very unlike his usual sturdy bass. "True Blue, is it you, my lad? Right glad to see you!" he exclaimed in a more cheerful tone. "Well, we have had a warm brush. Only sorry you were not with us; but we took her, as you see, though we had a ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston

... and a fellow servant to keep the house, in which was much money and plate, belonging to his master and others. Lilly was faithful to his charge in this fearful time, and kept himself cheerful by amusements. 'I bought a bass viol, and got a master to instruct me; the intervals of time I spent in bowling in Lincoln's Inn Fields with Watt, the cobbler, Dick, the blacksmith, and such-like companions.' Nor did he neglect more ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... bass voice comfortably. "But I married very young, before I left Guy's. Now I'll go up again. You needn't ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens

... crack! crack!—something like motion is experienced, when there is a sudden stop, and the conducteur is seen descending from his eminence, muttering sundry expressions of no very gentle nature—"what the devil's the matter now," growls a more than bass voice out of one window—"qu'est ce que c'est, conducteur," simultaneously demand a treble and a tenor from another window—"rien, Madame," the answer is always addressed to the lady, "rien du tout," he replies whilst endeavouring to ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... Table-cloth for meals, light drab varnished cloth, imitating leather, very clean and pretty, china plates, and two metal plates in case of breakages. Luncheon consisted of excellent cold corned beef, tongue, bread and butter, Bass's ale, beer, whiskey, champagne, all Mr. Tyson's. We supplied cold fowls, bread, and claret. The door at the end opens on a sort of platform or balcony, surrounded by a strong high iron railing, with the rails ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter

... prisoners of the Crown, or seamen, lived on the islands in Bass' Straits, as well as on islands in the Pacific Ocean, fishing, sealing, or hunting, and sometimes cultivating patches of ground. The freedom of this kind of life was pleasing to those who had spent years under restraint in ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale

... large garden in the rear and spacious rooms where they entertained a great deal. Not long ago, I saw a fascinating drawing of a party in Georgetown in the fifties. It represented four musicians intent upon playing a bass viol, a cello, a violin, and a flute; a few of the company standing near by with curls and puffed coiffures, and among them a tiny man, side-whiskered, so short that he barely reached the shoulders of the ladies. He must, of course, have been Prince Iturbide. There was never anyone ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker

... from the water like the gentle thrills of a musical chord, or the faint vibrations of a wine-glass when its rim is rubbed by a moistened finger. It was not one sustained note, but a multitude of tiny, sounds, each clear and distinct in itself; the sweetest treble mingling with the lowest bass. On applying the ear to the woodwork of the boat, the vibration was greatly increased in volume. The sounds varied considerably at different points, as we moved across the lake, as if the number of the animals ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent

... a low pitch. Another departure from the usual style of this hula was that the hoopaa, at the same time, devoted themselves with the right hand to playing upon the pu-niu, the small drum, while with the left they developed the deep bass of the pahu. The result of this outre combination ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson

... seaman wore his best uniform. They had been carefully taught to march, and Professor Badois had organized a band of eight pieces, which performed a few tunes very well. Unfortunately, on the present occasion, the band was not available, for Stockwell, the cornet player, and Boyden, the bass drummer, belonged to the absent crew of the second cutter, and the procession moved to the sterling notes of ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic

... I can tell you that," Mrs. Courage declared in her rich, decided bass. "Just let me 'ave a word with Master Rashleigh. I'll tell 'im what 'is ma would 'ave said. She left 'im to me, she did. 'Courage,' she's told me many a time, 'that boy'll be your boy after I'm gone.' As good as mykin' a will, I call it. And now to ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King

... men in the woods rustled. There was a general uplifting of heads. A murmuring of voices broke upon the air. In it there was much bass of grumbling oaths. Strange gods were addressed in condemnation of the early hours necessary to correct war. An officer's peremptory tenor rang out and quickened the stiffened movement of the men. The tangled limbs unraveled. The corpse-hued ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane

... down East? I'm sure a summer amid the orchards of her old home would be a delight to her, and, of course, Mr. Harris, you are able to gratify yourself in these little matters now. Things are not what they were in the early days, Jack, when I preached in Tom Morrison's log-house, and you led the bass at the services. I'll warrant that voice of yours could sing yet if you ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead

... maudlin youths, with faded southernwood in their button-holes; another long low booth, from every crevice of which reeked odours of stale beer and smoke, by courtesy denominated tobacco, to the treble accompaniment of a jigging fiddle and a tambourine, and the bass one of grumbled oaths and curses within— these were the means of relaxation which the piety, freedom, and civilisation of fourteen centuries, from Hengist to Queen Victoria, had devised and made possible ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley

... got rid of all gloom in the excitement of the exercise, and our pleasure was increased by the arrival of the Gimmerton band, mustering fifteen strong: a trumpet, a trombone, clarionets, bassoons, French horns, and a bass viol, besides singers. They go the rounds of all the respectable houses, and receive contributions every Christmas, and we esteemed it a first-rate treat to hear them. After the usual carols had been sung, we set them to songs and ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte

... fresh cheese, cut in small pieces; in chafing-dish add 1 cup of milk (or cup of Bass' ale), 4 teaspoonfuls butter, 4 small teaspoons of mustard, 2 of salt and a little pepper. Stir it well, and cook until it thickens (not curdle). ...
— The Cookery Blue Book • Society for Christian Work of the First Unitarian Church, San

... their billets and got together their kits. The square buzzed and hummed with excitement and the guns kept up a steady bass accompaniment. ...
— Lucia Rudini - Somewhere in Italy • Martha Trent

... the Mystic Symbols of the Order!" was the next command. The Mystic Symbols were placed on a stand in the middle of the room, and turned out to be a gilt fish about the size of a four-pound bass, a jar of human bones, and a rolled-up scroll said to contain the Gospels. The fish, as explained by the Deacon Militant, typified a great many things connected with early Christianity, and served always as a reminder of the password ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick

... the sudden dash of the spear, followed by the struggles of the transfixed fish, or perhaps the characteristic "Eh," from the Indian steersman. In this manner, sometimes fifty or sixty fish of three or four pounds are speared in the course of a night, consisting of black bass, white fish, and sometimes a noble maskimongi. A little practice soon enables the young settler to take an active part in this pursuit. The light seems to attract the fish, as round it they thickly congregate. But few fish are caught in this country by the fly: at some ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 541, Saturday, April 7, 1832 • Various

... wheezy and radiator-boiling halt at the foot of a rock-summit so steep that no vehicle could breast it. In a cup, at the summit of this mountain-top hillock, was the camp-site; its farther edge only a few yards above a little bass-populated spring-lake. ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune

... guitar, all out of tune. His faithful Pylades is an ill-bred dwarfish eunuch, whom the Romans call Pitichinaccio. There is a third member of the company—guess who it is?—Why, none other than the Pyramid Doctor, who kicks up a noise like a melancholy ass and yet fancies he's singing an excellent bass, quite as good as Martinelli of the Papal choir. Now these three estimable people are in the habit of meeting in the evening on the balcony of Capuzzi's house, where they sing Carissimi's[2.19] motets, until ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... North-East and South-West, or rather more to the Westward, makes me Doubtfull whether they are one land or no.* (* Had not the gale on the day before forced Cook to run to the northward, he would have made the north end of the Furneaux Group, and probably have discovered Bass Strait, which would have cleared up the doubt, which he evidently felt, as to whether Tasmania was an island or not. The fact was not positively known until Dr. Bass sailed through the Strait in a whale-boat in 1797. Point Hicks ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook

... and Mrs. Slater filled their plates without comment. Ardelia had never in her life eaten in silence. Through the open door the buzz of the katydids was beginning tentatively. In the intervals of William's gulps a faint bass note ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various

... knew, and leaping out, I whirled my cap and yelled to wake the marsh. The startled hawk jerked, keeled, lifted with a violent struggle, and let go her hold. Down fell the writhing, twisting fish at my feet. It was a splendid striped bass, weighing at least four pounds, and ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp

... italic, the hickory descended. It fell about as regularly and after the fashion of the stick beating upon the bass drum during a funeral march. But the beast, although convinced that something serious was impending, did not consider a funeral march appropriate for the occasion. He protested, at first, with vigorous whiskings of his tail and a rapid shifting of his ears. Finding these demonstrations ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various

... suddenly, for the king was looking at him; and calling up the most sonorous bass notes that he could find in the depths of his throat, he continued with an inspired air, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... trombone she looked to him like one of the angels on a cathedral trumpeting an apocalyptic summons to the dead to bloom from their graves. When she played the cornet it was with a superhuman tone that shook his emotions almost insufferably. She had sung, too, in four voices—in an imitation of a bass, a tenor, a contralto, and finally as a lyric soprano, then skipping from one to the other. They called her "Mamise, ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes

... over the counter. "I knew it the minute I heard you play. You've got the touch. Now listen. See if you can get this, and fake the bass." ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber

... of gunfire, with the dull drum of horses' hoofs as a bass accompaniment. Red spurred his horse toward the fire, shouting his battle cry and throwing down on the two startled men who leaped to their feet, reaching for their guns. Kid Wolf's great white charger burned the breeze at the two guards on the ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens

... turned, canny for my years, from the professors to the poets, listening—to the lyric tenor of Swinburne and the tenor robusto of Shelley, to Shakespeare with his first bass and his fine range, to Tennyson with his second bass and his occasional falsetto, to Milton and Marlow, bassos profundo. I gave ear to Browning chatting, Byron declaiming, and Wordsworth droning. This, at least, did me no harm. I learned a little of beauty—enough to know that it had ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... "Sit down. You will have the canoe upset in a moment. Hold your rod steady and keep the line taut. That's right. Now lead him round toward me. There," and grasping the line he lifted a fine rock bass over ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey

... welcome sound greets our eyes. Coming on the wings of the wind out of the south is the strong deep bass of Liberty Motor music—the all-American made—which, though arriving in quantity late in the war, proved at once its superiority to all others. Our ground guns have driven the Foker high into the air; which, evidently noting that the on-coming ships are merely ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy

... you adopted the opinion of certain observers of the human heart, and thought that the chevalier had the voice of his nose, his organ of speech would have amazed you by its full and redundant sound. Without possessing the volume of classical bass voices, the tone of it was pleasing from a slightly muffled quality like that of an English bugle, which is firm and sweet, strong ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac

... from its enveloping blanket he presently emerged, recrossed the stream, and soon could be seen pushing out into the midst of it, poling an old punt up stream. Anchoring presently in a small cove where the water was deep and cool, he sat in silent watchfulness, occasionally jerking out a perch bass, sometimes a pickerel, but for the most part so still he might have been the occupant of a "painted boat upon a painted" stream. Yet all the time the soft influences of the hour and place were weaving their spell about him. The sun was now only a great half-round of red upon the horizon's line, ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry

... simultaneously. They searched for their knives in vain. Antoine appeared amused and looked encouragement. It was a very nightmare to the two warriors. Then, from the rock over their heads, they heard a deep bass voice of such volume that it sounded like half-a-dozen ordinary ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie

... (General T. J. WOOD).-Thirty-eighth Indiana, Colonel Scribner; Thirty-ninth Indiana, Colonel Harrison; Thirtieth Indiana, Colonel Bass; ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... in his company." Before he would accept him as a guide, Lieutenant Lion Gardiner, commander of the fort at Saybrook, said to him, "You say you will help Captain Mason, but I will first see it; therefore send twenty men to Bass River, for there went six Indians there in a canoe, fetch them, dead or alive; and you shall go with Mason or else you ...
— Once Upon A Time In Connecticut • Caroline Clifford Newton



Words linked to "Bass" :   vocalist, percoid, low, singer, singing voice, continuo, tuba, part, bombardon, voice, percoid fish, vocaliser, freshwater fish, striper, pitch, largemouthed bass, contrabass, smallmouthed black bass, sousaphone, vocalizer, bull fiddle, musical instrument, instrument, smallmouth bass, percoidean, bombard, smallmouth black bass, saltwater fish, low-pitched



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