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More "Improvise" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... free evenings was in the habit of telling Seryozha stories. Like most people engaged in practical affairs, he did not know a single poem by heart, and could not remember a single fairy tale, so he had to improvise. As a rule he began with the stereotyped: "In a certain country, in a certain kingdom," then he heaped up all kinds of innocent nonsense and had no notion as he told the beginning how the story would go on, and how it would end. Scenes, characters, and situations were ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... don't improvise. It looks too egotistical. It will provoke remark. Just stick to 'Coronation,' like the others. It is a good tune—you can't improve it any, just off-hand, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... would have scouted the idea of obtaining supplies otherwise than from the country traversed, but weapons for the men and transport for the guns, and ammunition for both, were necessaries difficult to improvise on the spur of the moment. The Habshiabadis took the field at last, in a state that would have made a European commander tear his hair, and Gerrard hustled them on, blooding them by a smart little ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... bleeding at so fearful a rate that he found himself compelled to pause long enough to improvise a tourniquet by knotting his handkerchief above the wound, tying it as tightly as he could with the left hand aided by his teeth. He stooped and felt on the ground in the darkness and rain, for a stick, ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... warm. They are a golden shell. Conceive my Madonna to be a hand's breadth high, of live ivory, and imagine some rosy flecks here and there on her. Imagine her robed in the garments that Godiva wore, that is, nothing but her hair of flowing sunbeams, and so on, and so on." Frederick began to improvise poetry. ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... from one, who though he lived ages ago, never saw, scarcely heard of Alma. And mark me, my lord, this time I improvise nothing. What I have recited, Is here. Mohi, this book is more marvelous than the prophecies. My lord, that a mere man, and a heathen, in that most heathenish time, should give utterance to such heavenly wisdom, seems more wonderful than that an in-spired prophet ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... in which their provisions have been carried. Such a packing box is easily made into a cupboard, and it is not difficult to improvise shelves, hinges, or even a rough lock for the ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... them through for him. Constanze fell in love with the fugues as soon as she had heard them; she doesn't want to hear anything but fugues, especially those of Handel and Bach. Having often heard me improvise fugues she asked me if I had never written any down, and when I said no, she gave me a good scolding, for not being willing to write the most beautiful things in music, and did not cease her begging until I had composed one for ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... covers, each boat, with its proportion of balks and cheeses, constituting a load for one wagon. By uniting two such sections together, we could make a bridge of eighteen hundred feet, enough for any river we had to traverse; but habitually the leading brigade would, out of the abundant timber, improvise a bridge before the pontoon-train could come up, unless in the cases of rivers of considerable magnitude, such as the Ocmulgee, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... common sense and practical business capacity. His family moved to Colorado, Texas, while he was still a lad and here his musical talent began to display itself. "The inventive faculties of the small boy, and the innate harmony of the musician, combined to improvise a crude instrument which emitted the notes of the scale. Successful at drawing forth a concord of sweet sounds, he continued to experiment upon everything which would emit musical vibrations. (Even the pigs, I take ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... opened by two non-commissioned officers, and take possession of the arms and ammunition, carrying them to the Church of Santa Annunziata, where all the guns should be stored. At certain places in the city material was already gathered with which to improvise barricades. One hundred republicans had promised to take part in the movement, not as a group, but individually. On the 7th copies of the proclamation of the Italian Committee for the Social Revolution were distributed throughout the city, calling the masses to arms and urging ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... means unique. The profession moves ahead, and national security advances with it, because of men who have the confidence and courage to toss the rule book out the window when it doesn't fit the situation, and who dare to trust their own decisions and improvise swiftly. ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... galoot, that ain't the step we took at rehearsal no more'n nuthin'. If you're going to improvise a new cow duet, I wish you wouldn't take the ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... daylight might be compared to marching on a battery; every face that I confronted would threaten me like the muzzle of a gun; and it came into my head suddenly with how much better a countenance I should be able to do it if I could but improvise a companion. Hard by Merchiston I was so fortunate as to observe a bulky gentleman in broadcloth and gaiters, stooping with his head almost between his knees, before a stone wall. Seizing occasion by the forelock, I drew up as I came alongside and inquired ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... first of all on the skilled labour of some one we can hire; second, if we undertake the job ourselves, on the tools made for us by skilled labour; and third, on the shops to supply us with the materials we may need. Not once in a lifetime are we thrown entirely on our own resources. Then we improvise bunglingly ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... scout must know: The fireman's lift. How to drag an insensible man with ropes. How to improvise a stretcher. How to fling a life-line. The position of main arteries. How to stop bleeding from vein or artery, internal or external. How to improvise splints and to diagnose and bind fractured limb. The Schafer method of artificial respiration. How to deal with ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... powerful nations. In Italy all roads now lead to Milan, the city of industry and commerce, and Rome is but a town of passage. And so the most valiant efforts have failed to rouse it from its invincible slumber. The capital which the newcomers sought to improvise with such extreme haste has remained unfinished, and has almost ruined the nation. The Government, legislators, and functionaries only camp there, fleeing directly the warm weather sets in so as to escape the pernicious ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... were speeding back to New York. Kennedy had no apparatus to work with out at Goodyear and could not improvise it. Winslow agreed to keep us in touch with any new developments during the few hours that Craig felt it was necessary to leave the scene ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... your million-and-one favorite melodies which nobody but that all-around musical amateur, the Auto-Comrade, can so exquisitely whistle, hum, strum, fiddle, blat, or roar. There is also a universe full of new ones for him to improvise. And he is the jolliest sort of fellow musician, because, when you play or sing a duet with him, you can combine with the exciting give-and-take and reciprocal stimulation of the duet, the god-like ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... music. She was very fond of it, but had never been able to perceive the difference between good and bad. She used to make Jean-Christophe play through strange programmes, in which dull rhapsodies stood side by side with masterpieces. But her greatest pleasure was to make him improvise, and she used to provide him with ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... at hand to carry us to our own doors. I see clearly there are great disadvantages in city life. If a friend and his wife drop in suddenly in the evening or to dine, it is monstrously inconvenient to have an oyster-shop round the corner whence to improvise a supper or a dinner. It would be so much better to have nothing but the village grocery a mile or two away. The advantages are conspicuous. I wonder the entire population of the city doesn't go out to ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... you say,—if I have courage? You shall soon see. And you shall see, too, what a lawyer-like defence I am able to improvise. I wager that if I put the case before them, they will give ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... ring had been taken down the week before to make room for drills and the physical exercises of the Earthworms, so the three boys had to improvise a ring. They dragged four large tumbling mats together, spreading them side by side to form a square close to the size of an actual ring. Astro went to one of the small lockers under the balcony and returned with two pairs ...
— Stand by for Mars! • Carey Rockwell
... upon her make-believe stronger than we have. She play-acts his existence very well. But suppose someone asks her what he eats, or where he gets his exercise, or some other personal question. She hasn't the command of logic to improvise ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... determined to have bread, and it did not take long to improvise an old Dutch oven with the firebrick, and in this a fire was built, so that the bricks were heated up intensely, and the fire then withdrawn, and a cover put over the chimney. The heated brick, therefore, did the baking. Loaf after loaf was ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Conquest of the Savages • Roger Thompson Finlay
... competition, no correct solution was received, but an ingenious and neatly executed attempt by a man lying in a London infirmary was accompanied by the following note: "Having no compasses here, I was compelled to improvise a pair with the aid of a small penknife, a bit of firewood from a bundle, a piece of tin from a toy engine, a tin tack, and two portions of a hairpin, for points. They are a fairly serviceable pair of compasses, and I shall keep them as ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... itself, does not contain above seventy stock verses, but these perennial lines are a nucleus, round which the men improvise the topics of the day, giving, I know not for what reason, the preference to such as verge ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... anybody else you ever listened to. I write merely to disabuse your mind of the common impression which we are all apt to form of these singular geniuses; and very strongly recommend you not only to hear him play, but privately test him (as I have done) in any way you like. Improvise to him as difficult or elaborate or out-of-the-way piece as you please, and he will instantly reproduce it. Now, this is no common gift; and therefore you and I, and all who know any thing of music, should use our best efforts to let the public know, that, so far from there being ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... quarters. He set to work upon the highly necessary task of pretending that he was a castaway from the children's civilization in order to improvise conveniences that as a castaway he'd consider crude, but as an ...
— Long Ago, Far Away • William Fitzgerald Jenkins AKA Murray Leinster
... expression would have scored a hit in farce comedy. Unfortunately there was no audience present to appreciate it here, and the prompter forgot to ring down the curtain just then, so that Patsy stood helpless, forced to go on hearing all that Marjorie and her leading man wished to improvise in the ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... low voice; and then in a louder tone, looking at Noel, he added mockingly, "Till then I shall busy myself in writing my last will and testament, and bequeathing a thousand nothings to a thousand nobodies to puzzle posterity. You shall taste of my bounty, Messire Noel," and he began to improvise derisively: ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... said Mr. Slocum, who had not provided himself with an explanation, and was puzzled to improvise one. "I discharged him,—that is to say, I let him go. I forgot to mention it. He didn't take ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... current among the negroes of the district, and though of little poetic value, they interested me, as indicating the feelings of the slaves. The blacks are a musical race, and the readiness with which many of them improvise words and melody is wonderful; but I had met none who possessed the readiness of my new acquaintance. Several of the tunes he repeated several times, and each time with a new accompaniment of words. I will try to render the sentiment ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... undoubtedly late, as is the recognised custom of brides all the world over. The organist, who had been playing an impressive selection, was drawing to the end of his resources and beginning to improvise somewhat spasmodically. The bridegroom betrayed no impatience, but there was undeniable strain in his attitude. He stood stiff and motionless as a soldier on parade. The guests were commencing to peer and wonder. Mrs. Chester made her tenth ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... Fury of suicides who know they have botched up life for good. The Fury of cocksure men who realize they have been outsmarted by fate, the enemy, and themselves, and know that they will never be able to improvise a defense when arraigned before the high court of history—and whose unadmitted hope is that there will be no high court of history left to arraign them. More cobalt bombs were dropped during the Fury than in all the preceding years ...
— The Moon is Green • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... poems, which are thought to have been composed about 1000 B.C. In these we find the minstrel everywhere a central figure, an honored guest, ready at call to entertain the company with some ballad of the ancient times, or to improvise a new one appropriate to the case in hand. The heroes themselves were not loth to take part in these exercises. Ulysses, the Odyssey tells us, occasionally took the lyre in his own hand and sang a rhapsody of his own adventures. Several centuries later, Solon, one of the famed seven wise men of Greece, ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... This was no new nation struggling for its birth, but an Old nation, as old as any of those who had assumed the responsibility of planning her future. The Belgian statesmen of 1830 had nothing to improvise. They had merely to pick up the threads broken through the vicissitudes of European struggle. Their new Constitution was based on the old Joyous Entry of Brabant, which Joseph II had vainly attempted to abolish, and whose memory forty years of French and Dutch centralization had ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... region for grasshoppers out there, you know; you'd improvise us such charming dishes of locusts and wild honey! As for cookies, a snowflake and a sunbeam, and there they are," said Ray, making inroads on the Fort-Riley stores; while little Jane set down a cup of beaten ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... manufactured for the occasion. Selden evinced an extraordinary interest in her household arrangements: complimented her on the ingenuity with which she had utilized every inch of her small quarters, asked how her servant managed about afternoons out, learned that one may improvise delicious dinners in a chafing-dish, and uttered thoughtful generalizations on the ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... she will do; but I am sure of this—that you will not take her for an angel afterwards.—And now play for me; improvise and make me happy. It will divert your thoughts; your gloomy ideas will vanish, and for me the dark hours will be filled with your dreams. ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... possible to improvise a navy after war breaks out. The ships must be built and the men trained long in advance. Some auxiliary vessels can be turned into makeshifts which will do in default of any better for the minor work, and a proportion of raw men can be mixed with the highly trained, their ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... all that Lincoln could say availed to persuade him to renew the attack upon the retreating foe. When Lee reached the Potomac he found the river so swollen as to be impassable. He could only wait for the waters to subside or for time to improvise ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... no composition, but he had trained himself to improvise, singing out of his heart for the joy of the music. He told of the land of Elis, beloved of Jupiter, in which they were gathered that day, of the great bare mountain slopes, of the swift shadows of the clouds, of the winding blue river, of the keen air of the ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... complimented thus: "It is marvelous, Mr. President, how you deliver long improvised speeches about which you have not had time to reflect." His reply was: "You are not paying me a compliment; it is criminal in a statesman to improvise speeches on public affairs. Those speeches I have been fifty years preparing." Daniel Webster's notable reply to Hayne was the result of years of study on the problem of State Rights. Professor Mowry once ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... Weimar, when a young man came in, dressed in a short, green shooting-jacket, booted and spurred, and having a pair of brilliant, black, Italian eyes. He in turn offered to read; but finding probably the poetry of the Musen-Almanach of that year rather too insipid for him, he soon began to improvise the wildest and most fantastic poems imaginable, and in all possible forms and measures, all the while pretending to read from the book. 'That is either Goethe or the Devil,' said good old father Gleim to Wieland, who sat near ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... be mute, my singing-emperor?" he demanded gently—"Canst thou not improvise a canticle of love even in the midst of thy ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... us long to improvise a stretcher, and, with the willing help of two men and of the landlady, in about three hours we had Halley in his room. But a hideous walk it was down the canon, every step we made wringing a groan from the poor fellow except when ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... the man who, to place his country at the height of other civilized nations, has known how to improvise, in less than three months, an astronomical commission, and send it to Japan to observe the transit of Venus, will he permit, I ask, the greatest discovery ever made in American archaeology, to ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.
... can make no allowance for change of circumstances, and we think we have a tolerably clear notion of the causes of General McClellan's disasters. He can compose a good campaign beforehand, but he cannot improvise one out of the events of the moment, as is the wont of great generals. Occasion seldom offers her forelock twice to the grasp of the same man, and yet General McClellan, by the admission of the Rebels themselves, had Richmond at his mercy ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... religious duties, and athirst for knowledge. His accomplishments were many; and when the guests assembled in the great hall to make the walls ring with their laughter over cups of mead and ale, he could take his turn with the harpers and minstrels to improvise one of those sturdy bold ballads that stir the blood to-day with their stately rhythms ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... had dispossessed any one. He would not willingly keep from his home a friendly and worthy black bear, but since it was the only home of the kind he needed that he could find, he must keep his place. The bear was not hunted as he was, and required less to give him comfort and shelter. He could improvise elsewhere a home that would suffice ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... answered, "I wonder, ... and yet I suppose you are right. Some devilish incident will twist things out of gear, and then the old Adam must improvise for safety and success. Yes, I suppose my one beautiful ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Keeper of the Seals sent to the Chamber for her husband; but precautions had been taken, and at that moment the Minister was on his legs addressing the Chamber. The lady racked her brains and replied to the note with such intellect as she could improvise. ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... responded to his touch with the sweet melody of the forest to the wind. He carried all the favorite airs of all the operas he had ever heard in his fingers' ends. He knew the popular songs of the day by heart, and, where memory failed, could improvise. He had a voice for the soft and deep chords of negro melodies I have never heard surpassed, and with all, he had a command of comedy and pathos which, up to this time, was little known beyond the circle in Denver over which he reigned as the Lord of Misrule. That night in ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... story, so I am not going to pretend to repeat the things they said, once they were released from dumb amazement. I should be compelled to improvise and substitute—which would remove much of the flavor. Let bare facts suffice, ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... been kind for several years, not a day passing without a gentle downpour, there had been in the past dry periods when even the hardiest vegetation all but perished. So it came about that the Marquesan was obliged to improvise a method of keeping breadfruit for a long time, and becoming habituated to sour food he learned to like it, as many Americans relish ill-smelling cheese and fish and meat, or drink with pleasure absinthe, ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... kinds, and a Gama el Fokara (assembly of the poor). Gama is the true word for Mosque—i.e., Meeting, which consists in a great circle of men seated thick on the ground, with two poets facing each other, who improvise religious verses. On this occasion the rule of the game was to end each stanza with a word having the sound of wahed (one), or el Had (the first). Thus one sung: 'Let a man take heed how he walks,' etc., etc.; and 'pray to God not to let him fall,' ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... and a 1-pounder gun, which the enemy had posted but 100 yards off, was silenced after the ninth round. What a curious instance of our Western ways this incident affords; the Chinese firing upon our own people with the latest artillery made by ourselves, while they are left to improvise a gun from a relic found ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... boiler, which consists of a large fiat-bottomed vessel fitted with a rack and a tight-fitting cover. A number of such devices are manufactured for canning by the cold-pack method, but it is possible to improvise one in the home. A wash boiler, a large pail, a large lard can, or, in fact, any large vessel with a flat bottom into which is fitted a rack of some kind to keep the jars 3/4 inch above the bottom can be used. Several layers of wire netting cut to correct size and fastened ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 5 • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... most charming fibsters, and at the same time the sincerest people on earth. And it's remarkable, that both they and the others—that is, both prostitutes and children—lie only to us—men—and grown-ups. Among themselves they don't lie—they only inspiredly improvise. But they lie to us because we ourselves demand this of them, because we clamber into their souls, altogether foreign to us, with our stupid tactics and questionings, because they regard us in secret as great fools and senseless ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... take us long to improvise a stretcher, and, with the willing help of two men and of the landlady, in about three hours we had Halley in his room. But a hideous walk it was down the canon, every step we made wringing a groan from the poor fellow except when he fainted ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... smiling, "that about describes it. And now I think it is about bed-time. Jim, my dear," she continued, as she took her bed-room candle, "as you have thought fit to improvise a ball, you had better take care that the young ladies have partners by asking three or four of the officers from Rockcliffe, if they will ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... the last two days no opportunity has offered. All is working smoothly here, and every one is taking the situation very philosophically. Stevens is in charge of the scientific staff and is now the senior officer ashore. Joyce is in charge of the equipment and has undertaken to improvise clothes out of what canvas can be found here. Wild is working with Joyce. He is a cheerful, willing soul. Nothing ever worries or upsets him, and he is ever singing or making some joke or performing some amusing prank. Richards has taken ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... best I could improvise with the means at hand, I occupied seven days—the first three of which were darkened by one of the most furious storms I ever saw. The vapor which supplied me with warmth saturated my clothing with its condensations. I was enveloped in a perpetual ...
— Thirty-Seven Days of Peril - from Scribner's Monthly Vol III Nov. 1871 • Truman Everts
... feminine La Bruyere, as Sainte-Beuve has styled her, we are introduced to the life at Sceaux. It was the habit of the guests to assemble at eight, listen to music or plays, improvise verses for popular airs, relate racy anecdotes, or amuse themselves with proverbs. "Write verses for me," said the insatiable duchess when ill; "I feel that verses only can give me relief." The quality does not seem to have been essential, provided they were sufficiently ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... withering look of contempt; and then, though the man was drunk and the night was dark, he waddled off, leaving Mr. Leather on his once white breeches' knees. If Jog had had reasonable time, say an hour or an hour and twenty minutes, to improvise it in, he would have said something uncommonly sharp; as it was he left him with the pertinent inquiry we have recorded—'What have you to do with Robins, the mole-catcher?' We need hardly say that this little incident did not at all ingratiate Mr. Sponge with his host, who re-entered ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... and playing himself? Herr Von Stein had never denied him. He grew courageous. A few chords and Franz forgot that his father would be expecting him; piece after piece was played till his memory could serve him no longer, and then he began to improvise. ...
— Scenes in Switzerland • American Tract Society
... the Great of Russia. Here Bach's principal rival was a French virtuoso, Marchand, who, an exile from Paris, had delighted the king by the lightness and brilliancy of his execution. They were both to improvise on the same theme. Marchand heard Bach's performance, and signalized his own inferiority by declining to play, and secretly leaving the city of Dresden. Augustus sent Bach a hundred louis d'or, but this splendid douceur never reached him, as it was appropriated ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... improvising upon the piano-forte, by depicting in music the characters of friends and acquaintances, and generally in such a manner that the company had no difficulty in guessing the person intended. On one of these occasions, Franz Ries was persuaded to take his violin and improvise an accompaniment to his friend's improvisation, which he did so successfully, that, long afterwards, he more than once ventured to attempt the same in public, with his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... the traveler, riding along his road at night, the deep regular rumbling of the drums of distant "bailes" comes with indescribable weirdness. In some dances the participants engage in a monotonous chant, in others there are pauses in which the young men must quickly improvise verses on some subject suggested by one of the lassies. In the cities the dances begin at ten o'clock at night and last until the wee hours of morning, but in the country they begin at almost any time and occasionally last two or three ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... million-and-one favorite melodies which nobody but that all-around musical amateur, the Auto-Comrade, can so exquisitely whistle, hum, strum, fiddle, blat, or roar. There is also a universe full of new ones for him to improvise. And he is the jolliest sort of fellow musician, because, when you play or sing a duet with him, you can combine with the exciting give-and-take and reciprocal stimulation of the duet, the god-like autocracy of the solo, its opportunity for wide, uninterrupted, uncoerced self-expression. ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... forms of the English Constitution, without having its internal essence, which constitutes the real value of its political institutions,—viz., Self-government. It is true that the political wisdom of nations does not improvise itself, nor reveal itself all at once in its fulness, as Minerva of old sprang from the head of Jupiter, clad in complete armour, but that it develops itself during their historic progress amidst vicissitude, and by turning to profit the lessons of trial ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... subject of this man Lambernier," whispered the notary to him, as he poured out a glass of wine. "Courage! you improvise better than Berryer! If you exert yourself, the public prosecutor will be beaten ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... of a wholesale discussion, and querying and exaggerating, agreeing and controverting, till the dishes she was washing would clash and clang excitedly in the general badinage. Loaded with a pyramid of glistening cups and saucers, she would improvise a gallant line of march from the kitchen table to the pantry, heading an imaginary procession, and whistling a fife-tune that would stir your blood. Then she would trippingly return, rippling her rosy fingers up and down the keys of an imaginary portable piano, or stammering flat-soled across ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... fact that "a music room ought to be out of doors;" and then as she made the further welcome discovery that the moon would shine into it, she vowed eagerly that there would be no lights at all in her music room at those times. Afterwards she told a funny story of how Schumann had been wont to improvise under such circumstances, until his next-door neighbor was so struck by the romance of it that he proceeded to imitate it, and to play somebody or other's technical studies whenever the moon rose; at which narrative Helen and the architect laughed very heartily, and Mr. Harrison ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... lay quietly sleeping. After various trials it was decided that the only way was for one of our party to be lowered over and let down by the rest. As I was much the lightest one, and as the supply of material that we had with us out of which to improvise a rope was very limited, I was the one selected to go down and put the snares in position. It was decided that we would not disturb the eaglets to-day, but would leave them alone for the present, for fear the old eagles ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... their insufficiency, were placed too far from the palace to be occupied by even a portion of the Emperor's service. Consequently there was great embarrassment in the city, and much difficulty was experienced in quartering the Emperor's horses; since to improvise stables in a few days, almost in a moment, was impossible, and to build carriage-houses in the midst of courts would have had a ludicrous effect. But fortunately this difficult situation was ended by one of the quartermasters of the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... that heroic defence from the lips of one who was concerned so intimately with it is one of my greatest desires. But I am a coward. I cannot face the extravaganza that Alphonse would improvise, neither dare I approach him for a mere haircut and so confess to having deserted his other ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 18, 1919 • Various
... home all the works of Handel and Sebastian Bach after I had played them through for him. Constanze fell in love with the fugues as soon as she had heard them; she doesn't want to hear anything but fugues, especially those of Handel and Bach. Having often heard me improvise fugues she asked me if I had never written any down, and when I said no, she gave me a good scolding, for not being willing to write the most beautiful things in music, and did not cease her begging until I had composed one for her, and so it came about. ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... How to use the stomach bath by three different methods. How to improvise the Turkish Bath in your own home, without apparatus. How to use the wet sheet pack. How to care ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... and Tai-y both smiled. "Who doesn't go in for these things for fun?" they asked. "Is it likely that we improvise verses in real earnest? Why, if any one treated our verses as genuine verses, and took them outside this garden, people would have such a hearty laugh at our expense that ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... at the king with astonishment. "I have not, sire," replied he; "but I will improvise one. I am too well acquainted with affairs to feel any embarrassment. I have only one question to ask; will your majesty ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... which their provisions have been carried. Such a packing box is easily made into a cupboard, and it is not difficult to improvise shelves, hinges, or even a rough ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... light fell on her face, their visitor saw that she belonged to the very class that she had been abusing in such unmeasured terms and so petrified was she with confusion at the faux pas she had committed, that she was entirely unable to improvise the slightest apology. ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... cheeses, constituting a load for one wagon. By uniting two such sections together, we could make a bridge of eighteen hundred feet, enough for any river we had to traverse; but habitually the leading brigade would, out of the abundant timber, improvise a bridge before the pontoon-train could come up, unless in the cases of rivers of considerable magnitude, such as the Ocmulgee, Oconee, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... scene. Christmas puddings came from England. The school at Mazingarbe made an excellent dining room for two of the companies and through the kindness of a Royal Engineer company in the village the officers were able to secure the necessary timber to improvise tables and chairs. The dinner was a great success and contributed not a little to the good feeling which existed between ...
— The Story of the "9th King's" in France • Enos Herbert Glynne Roberts
... fall and winter months. It had been all worked out and the actors drilled in their parts, when the Spirit of Summer, who had been chosen for the inoffensiveness of her extreme youth, was taken with mumps, and withdrawn by the doctor's orders. Mrs. Milray had now not only to improvise another Spirit of Summer, but had to choose her from a group of young ladies, with the chance of alienating and embittering those who were not chosen. In her calamity she asked her husband what she should do, with but the least ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... I was married? What the dev—And you're actually asking me to tell her so too? Mary, are you insane? Embarrassed? What if she is embarrassed? And what do I care if—What? Sweet and pretty? Mary, don't be an idiot. Am I to improvise a wife, in my own house, because a stray girl may object to visiting a bachelor? Not if I know it. Not much." The Governor bristled with indignation. "Confound the girl, I'll—" At this point Mary, though portly, vanished like a vision ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... Unfortunately there was no audience present to appreciate it here, and the prompter forgot to ring down the curtain just then, so that Patsy stood helpless, forced to go on hearing all that Marjorie and her leading man wished to improvise in ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... cowardice and shame. My subsequent fortune was various. Once, though I felt it to be a kind of imposture, I got a speech by heart, and doubtless it might have been a very pretty one, only I forgot every syllable at the moment of need, and had to improvise another as well as I could. I found it a better method to prearrange a few points in my mind, and trust to the spur of the occasion, and the kind aid of Providence, for enabling me to bring them to bear. The presence of any considerable proportion of personal friends generally dumbfounded ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... at varying distances are the batteries. The gunners affect orchards and copses as affording good cover for their guns, and if none are to be found they improvise them. Hop-poles trailed with hops or cut saplings will do very well. Usually there is a delectable garden, which is the peculiar pride of the men. Turf emplacements are constructed for the six guns, ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... to have bread, and it did not take long to improvise an old Dutch oven with the firebrick, and in this a fire was built, so that the bricks were heated up intensely, and the fire then withdrawn, and a cover put over the chimney. The heated brick, therefore, ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Conquest of the Savages • Roger Thompson Finlay
... the study of virtue and wisdom? And I will first show you what I conceive to be the nature of the task, and what sort of a discourse I desire to hear; and if I do this in a very inartistic and ridiculous manner, do not laugh at me, for I only venture to improvise before you because I am eager to hear your wisdom: and I must therefore ask you and your disciples to refrain from laughing. And now, O son of Axiochus, let me put a question to you: Do not all men desire happiness? ...
— Euthydemus • Plato
... that ain't the step we took at rehearsal no more'n nuthin'. If you're going to improvise a new cow duet, I wish you wouldn't take the fore-quarters by ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... utterly useless to think of scudding before the gale; our only hope of living through what was impending depended upon our ability to keep the boat riding bows-on to the sea, and to do this it became necessary for us to improvise a sea anchor again. This was easily done by lashing together six of our eight oars in a bundle, three of the blades at one end and three at the other, with the boat anchor lashed amidships to sink the oars somewhat in ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... of Nature, as a romantic love affair. When, in the last of his more important poems, Shelley returned to the struggle between the good and evil principles, it was in a different Spirit. The short drama of 'Hellas' (1821) was "a mere improvise," the boiling over of his sympathy with the Greeks, who were in revolt against the Turks. He wove into it, with all possible heightening of poetic imagery, the chief events of the period of revolution through which southern ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... mammoth floating hospitals, which are coming in from day to day with their precious cargoes. Without any previous notice, they anchor, and send to him for supplies, which it would be extremely difficult to improvise, even in our large cities, and quite impossible at Old Point. 'No bakeries, no stores, except small sutlers.' The bread had all to be baked; the boat rationed for two days; eight ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... correct solution was received, but an ingenious and neatly executed attempt by a man lying in a London infirmary was accompanied by the following note: "Having no compasses here, I was compelled to improvise a pair with the aid of a small penknife, a bit of firewood from a bundle, a piece of tin from a toy engine, a tin tack, and two portions of a hairpin, for points. They are a fairly serviceable pair of compasses, and I shall keep them as a ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... applause as followed was never heard before within the shell of that old theatre. With each succeeding couplet and refrain the uproar was renewed, until presently, when the performer, gathering courage from the favorable temper of his audience, ventured to improvise matter for his distiches from familiarly known local ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... had taken place: the German's face glowed with a kind of warmth and contentment, and was so smiling and radiant that I hardly recognised it. I could scarcely believe that he had been able to improvise this face, which was sensitive and trustful, out of the ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... not possible to improvise a navy after war breaks out. The ships must be built and the men trained long in advance. Some auxiliary vessels can be turned into makeshifts which will do in default of any better for the minor work, and a proportion of raw men can be mixed with the highly trained, ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... it—the glasses were too small, and the poets, the wits, the punsters, the jesters, preferred to drink their port out of tumblers. After dinner Hook gave one of his songs which satirized successively, and successfully, each person present. He was then challenged to improvise on any given subject, and by way of one as far distant from poetry as could be, cocoa-nut oil was fixed upon. Theodore accepted the challenge; and after a moment's consideration began his lay with a description of the Mauritius, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... once complimented thus: "It is marvelous, Mr. President, how you deliver long improvised speeches about which you have not had time to reflect." His reply was: "You are not paying me a compliment; it is criminal in a statesman to improvise speeches on public affairs. Those speeches I have been fifty years preparing." Daniel Webster's notable reply to Hayne was the result of years of study on the problem of State Rights. Professor Mowry once told the following story: "A few years ago ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... ever had that humble dwelling seen so abundant a meal as that which Bibi had managed to improvise for their young guest, and when it was over the honest Canadian produced the promised rifle and accoutrements, and his wife and Amoahmeh did their best to add to them such trifles as might be useful in a campaign. Then, after ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... led back to the instrument. The moon shone brightly in through the window and lit up his glorious rugged head and massive figure. "I will improvise a sonata to the moonlight!" looking up thoughtfully to the sky and stars—then his hands dropped on the keys, and he began playing a sad and infinitely lovely movement, which crept gently over the instrument ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... when many children have not commenced to learn their ABC's; he was a virtuoso before the time when most boys can be trusted with a blunt knife. Kissed and fondled by great beauties, from the age of five, it is small wonder that Mozart began to improvise upon the oldest theme in the world precociously. His first recorded love affair is found in his letters at the age of thirteen. He loved with the same radiant enthusiasm that he gave to his music, and while some of his flirtations ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... Turkish horsemen, the palace guards with long lances and glittering shields, the twelve riderless white horses with golden bridles, which were led along, and all the other pomp and parade!" Weeks would be required for arranging a pageant like this at the present time; but the Pope could improvise it in the twinkling of an eye, for the actors and their costumes were always ready. He set it in motion for the sole purpose of showing himself to the Romans, and in order that his majesty might lend additional brilliancy to ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... lukewarm, and all were slow. Even Massachusetts, usually the foremost, failed to get all her men into the field till the season was nearly ended. Having no military establishment, the colonies were forced to improvise a new army for every campaign. Each of them watched its neighbors, or, jealous lest it should do more than its just share, waited for them to begin. Each popular assembly acted under the eye of a frugal constituency, who, having little money, were as chary of it as their ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... words: wise, wiseacre, wisdom, wizard, witch, wit, unwitting, to wit, outwit, twit, witticism, witness, evidence, providence, invidious, advice, vision, visit, vista, visage, visualize, envisage, invisible, vis-a-vis, visor, revise, supervise, improvise, proviso, provision, view, review, survey, vie, envy, clairvoyance. Perhaps the last six should be disregarded as too exceptional in form to be clearly recognized. And certainly some words, as prudence from providentia, are so metamorphosed that they ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... Halle, Madame Goddard, or anybody else you ever listened to. I write merely to disabuse your mind of the common impression which we are all apt to form of these singular geniuses; and very strongly recommend you not only to hear him play, but privately test him (as I have done) in any way you like. Improvise to him as difficult or elaborate or out-of-the-way piece as you please, and he will instantly reproduce it. Now, this is no common gift; and therefore you and I, and all who know any thing of music, should use our best efforts to let the public know, that, so ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... for the harp," said Aurelia. "But if Mrs. Easely can remember some of the lines, and will be good enough to repeat them, I will improvise for it." ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis
... from the wood-house with an axe on his shoulder, "don rubber boots and wraps, and we'll improvise a male-sugar camp of the New England style a hundred years ago. We should make the most of a ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... 'you know what I did when I got there, I have no doubt. I had decided to take Manderson's story about the mysterious Harris and act it out on my own lines. It was a carefully prepared lie, better than anything I could improvise. I even went so far as to get through a trunk call to the hotel at Southampton from the library before starting, and ask if Harris was there. ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... myself, I can say that I felt "jolly queer." We had only, as it were, pitched the stage together, making it by placing one form above another. Fortunately the people present took the unlooked-for incident in good part, and with a little assistance we managed to improvise another stage, and upon this we went through a little ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... port turrets belched flame. "That leaves nineteen torpedoes," he said. "In Cth we're safe enough but we're helpless without a probe. Yet we can only get into attack position from Cth. That leaves us only one thing to do—improvise ...
— A Question of Courage • Jesse Franklin Bone
... brilliantly-lighted drawing room—where I deeply felt that my apparel was the shabbiest there, and for that reason I concealed myself behind the long curtains— Oehlenschl ger came to me and offered me his hand. I could have fallen before him on my knees. I again saw Weyse, and heard him improvise upon the piano. Wulff himself read aloud his translations of Byron; and Oehlenschl ger's young daughter Charlotte surprised me by her ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... at the Military Academy is doubtless well adapted to the art of civilized warfare, but can not familiarize them with the diversified details of border service; and they often, at the outset of their military career, find themselves compelled to improvise new expedients ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... at his watch. The afternoon had sped with magical rapidity. He reflected that not only must he dine, but he must think over and rehearse the evening's performance with Prepimpin's part cut out. He dared not improvise before the public. He rose ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... talk about it," Cyn said. "And now, we must improvise you a cup, plate, knife, fork, and spoon. I know you must be hungry after ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... we are never to fret, never to grumble, never to scold, and yet it being our duty in some way to make known and get rectified the faults of others, it remains to ask how; and on this head we will improvise a parable ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... stretch of imagination, in styling herself his aunt also, had hastily invented the Jagborough expedition in order to impress on Nicholas the delights that he had justly forfeited by his disgraceful conduct at the breakfast- table. It was her habit, whenever one of the children fell from grace, to improvise something of a festival nature from which the offender would be rigorously debarred; if all the children sinned collectively they were suddenly informed of a circus in a neighbouring town, a circus of unrivalled merit and uncounted elephants, ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... punish me for what you are pleased to call my falsehood, your majesty proves that I have spoken the truth," cried Voltaire, eagerly. "You wish to show me that the fruit of your muse ripens slowly, and you improvise a charming quatrain that Moliere himself would be ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... Paris the most beautiful capital of the world: I wish that in ten years it should number two millions of inhabitants." "But," replied his Minister of the Interior, "one cannot improvise population; ... as it is, Paris would scarcely support one million"; and he instanced the want of good drinking water. "What are your plans for giving water to Paris?" Chaptal gave two alternatives—artesian ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... pressed hard and even angrily for an immediate assault on the whole Prussian line. Not they. It was on paper that the assault should be at daybreak to-morrow. Such leaders as they were cannot IMPROVISE. ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... said Kenelm, modestly. "But if I, who never before strung two rhymes together, can improvise so readily in the style of the present day, why should not a practical rhymester like yourself dash off at a sitting a volume or so in the same style; disguising completely the verbal elegances borrowed, adding to the delicacies of the ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... from the very beginning. Thus I was constantly driven. New material was to occupy the place which had not yet been vacated by the old, and I began to grow obstinate. Thus they even drove me into hating music, which is now the delight and at the same time the support of my life. When I used to improvise on my violin at twilight in order to enjoy myself in my own way, they would take the instrument away from me, asserting that this ruined my fingering. They would also complain of the torture inflicted upon their ears and made ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... lady, what is it moveth thee to discover unto me that lovely face and those fair limbs, wont to be so jealously veiled and guarded? Tell me the truth of the matter, may I be thy ransom!" And he began to improvise,[FN263] ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... situation is full of hope, and grace, and tender sentiment. If I had in the least poetic gift, I know I could improvise under such an inspiration (each girl nudges her sweetheart) something worthy to—to—Is there no poet among us? [Each youth turns solemnly his back upon the other, and raises his hands in benediction over ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Mrs. Turner, and the pair set briskly homeward in neighborly kindness. Other matrons, not to be outdone, also disappeared from the assembly for a brief time; and soon thereafter William was called upon to improvise another table, till both were groaning with the ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... all the stages of the normal military career till they arrived at the Divisional Chateau. Should anyone desire to survey life from the altitude of an R.T.O. (Railway Transport, not Really Tantalising Officer, as supposed by some) it might be arranged for him, in the interests of realism, to improvise information as to trains for the benefit of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 8, 1919 • Various
... a desire to see Toni. Uncle Caragol would improvise something to eat while the captain was telling his mate all about his adventure at the bar. Besides, it seemed to him a fitting finale to his escapade to offer to any enemies that might be following him a favorable occasion ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... known to the mountaineers, is seldom used, and their poetry is, as a rule, nothing more than rhythmical or blank verse broken into irregular stanzas of from seven to eleven metrical feet. This kind of verse they improvise with great readiness and facility. It seems to be the form of expression which their stronger feelings naturally take. I have heard an Avarian mother chant amid her sobs an improvised but rhythmical lament over the body of her dead child. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... really been written for him by his father, since it was evident from the face of them that no boy of his age could have composed so well. To counteract these charges poems were brought to him upon which he had to improvise and fit the music to the words in the presence of the audience. In 1769 he went to Italy, where, being now thirteen years of age and correspondingly mature as compared with his early appearances, he made a most astonishing success. In Bologna and in Rome as well as in Venice he was examined ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... nothing but cars and stages at hand to carry us to our own doors. I see clearly there are great disadvantages in city life. If a friend and his wife drop in suddenly in the evening or to dine, it is monstrously inconvenient to have an oyster-shop round the corner whence to improvise a supper or a dinner. It would be so much better to have nothing but the village grocery a mile or two away. The advantages are conspicuous. I wonder the entire population of the city doesn't go ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... so I am not going to pretend to repeat the things they said, once they were released from dumb amazement. I should be compelled to improvise and substitute—which would remove much of the flavor. Let bare facts suffice, ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... from the north and below the city, it may have seemed to him that it would delay our progress; but as a large number of empty coal barges were lying at the town, it took our company of mechanics, under Captain Lane of the Eleventh Ohio, but a little while to improvise a good floating bridge, and part of the command passed through the town and camped beyond it. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. li. pt. i. p. 425.] One day was now given to the establishment of a depot ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... minstrels,—1, those who play such vulgar instruments as the flute and drum; 2, those who play on the ballafond, which is the marimba of Angola and South America, and on the harp; 3, those who sing the legends and battle-songs of their country, or who improvise satires or panegyrics. This last class are dreaded, though despised. They are richly rewarded in their lifetime, but after death they are not even given a decent burial. If they were buried in the ground, it would become barren; if in the river, the water would be poisoned, ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... Or, improvise a syringe by sliding a piece of glass rod (to serve as a piston) into the lumen of a slightly shorter length of glass tubing and secure in position by a band of rubber tubing. Sterilise by boiling. Withdraw the rod a few millimetres and deposit the piece of tissue within the orifice of the tube, ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... stoutly reinforced by his experience in what he called "the war of America the Unready." His first message to Congress was a long and exhaustive paper, dealing with many matters of importance. But almost one-fifth of it was devoted to the army and the navy. "It is not possible," he said, "to improvise a navy after war breaks out. The ships must be built and the men trained long in advance." He urged that Congress forthwith provide for several additional battleships and heavy armored cruisers, together with the proportionate ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... George, don't improvise. It looks too egotistical. It will provoke remark. Just stick to 'Coronation,' like the others. It is a good tune—you can't improve it any, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... grown shorter, colder, and drearier, and the discomforts of camp-life harder to endure. There were few tents even for the officers, and the men were compelled to improvise such shelter as circumstances permitted. Huts of stone, wood, and brush, and barricades against the wind, lined the hillside, and the region already was denuded of almost everything that would burn. Therefore, when December came, Zeke ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... students of all nations, and whose critical and rhetorical labours marked an epoch in the history of scholarship, was by temperament a poet, and a poet of the people. Nothing was easier for him than to throw aside his professor's mantle, and to improvise 'Ballate' for the girls to sing as they danced their 'Carola' upon the Piazza di Santa Trinita in summer evenings. The peculiarity of this lyric is that it starts with a couplet, which also serves as refrain, supplying the rhyme to each successive stanza. The ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... commercial city, that man "does not live by bread alone," that fun is better than furniture, and a private resource of nature more prolific of enjoyment than financial investments. It is rare comfort, here, in the land of bustle and sunshine, to sit in a tempered light and hear a man sing or improvise stories over his work, to behold once more vagaries of costume, to let the eye rest upon pictorial fragments of Italy,—the "old familiar faces" of Roman models, the endeared outlines of Apennine hills, the contadina bodice and the brigand hat, until these ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... Touareg women, we are told therein (208-10), are allowed to dispose of their hands and to eat with the men, certain dishes being reserved for them, others (including tea and coffee) for the men. In the evening the women assemble and improvise songs while the men sit around in their best attire. The women write mottoes on the men's shields, and the men carve their chosen one's name in the rocks and sing her praises. The situation has ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... a county show. We have improvised an army; we have conjured a navy out of nothing so rapidly that pines the jay screamed in last summer may be even now listening for the hum of the hostile shot from Sumter; why not give another rub at our Aladdin's lamp and improvise a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... boys and village loungers lined the roadway watching the corps of men who were working like beavers within the lot, urged on by a bawling, cursing voice which seemed to proceed from a stout, choleric man who bounded about, alternately waving his arms and cupping his hands to improvise a megaphone. ...
— Anything Once • Douglas Grant
... delicately tuned musical instrument. If you know the scales and the common chords, you can improvise nice little airs and charming variations. She's a sort of—well, a penny whistle, and the music you get depends not on her at all, ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... charm which does more for a woman than any amount of ordinary ability; and she had a passionate and great love for music. Kathleen's musical genius was already spoken of with much approbation by the rest of the school. The girls used to ask her to improvise. Kathleen could improvise in almost any style, in almost any fashion. She could make the piano sob with her heart-rendering notes; and again she could bring forth music clear and fairy-like. Again she would lead the tender and solemn strains of the march; and again she would ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... appeared, for his approach meant that she would be relieved from the three elder children. Waymark called sharply to his pupils to come and take their places, but without any attention on their part. Master Felix openly urged the rest to assume a defiant attitude, and began to improvise melodies on a trumpet formed by rolling ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... lost his wife at the age of fifty. But he had an only child, a girl who was called "Little Golden Daughter." She had a face of rare beauty and was the jewel of his love. She had been versed in the lore of books from her youth up, and could write, improvise poems and compose essays. She was also experienced in needlework, a skilled dancer and singer, and could play the flute and zither. The old beggar-king above all else wanted her to have a scholar for a husband. Yet because he was a beggar-king the distinguished families avoided ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... has been applied to the smooth brilliance of the Potocka valse. There runs a story regarding this composition that George Sand had a little dog that used to chase its own tail around in a circle, and that one evening, she said to Chopin, "If I had your talent, I would improvise a valse for that dog," whereupon the composer promptly seated himself at the pianoforte and dashed off this fascinating little improvisation. It is Parisian in its grace and coquetry and ends with a rapid run, the last note of which is like the rhythmic tap of the foot with which a dainty ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... The unlucky wife of the Keeper of the Seals sent to the Chamber for her husband; but precautions had been taken, and at that moment the Minister was on his legs addressing the Chamber. The lady racked her brains and replied to the note with such intellect as she could improvise. ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... the people of Lawrence little by little, and finally, becoming alarmed, they began to improvise means of defense. Two abortive imitations of the Missouri Blue Lodges, set on foot during the summer by the free-State men, provoked by the election invasion in March, furnished them a starting-point for military organization. A committee of safety, hurriedly ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... yourself too often to the influence of a talent that induces you to lavish powers and time, as it were, upon phantoms. Mastery over the forms of composition and a clear expression of your ideas can only be attained by constant writing. Write, therefore, more than you improvise. ...
— Advice to Young Musicians. Musikalische Haus- und Lebens-Regeln • Robert Schumann
... enough to deal with any small raid that happened to get through the meshes of our navy, and perhaps to police the empire. That was all, no more. But now we have to assist neighbors becoming the victims of a power with millions of warriors at its command, and we have to improvise a great army, and gallantly have our men flocked to the standard. [Cheers.] We have raised the largest voluntary army that has been enrolled in any country or any century—the largest voluntary army, and it is ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Having exhausted every imaginable variety of tone, he abruptly said, "Let us pray," and twisting his chair round, knelt before it. Every one knelt before the seat they had occupied, and listened for another half hour to a rant of miserable, low, familiar jargon, that he presumed to improvise to his Maker as a prayer. In this, however, the cottage apostle only followed the example set by every preacher throughout the Union, excepting those of the Episcopalian and Catholic congregations; THEY only do not deem themselves privileged to address the Deity in strains of crude ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... removal of exhausted troops from the battlefield. Against these natural limits to mobility are the compensating advantages of the power of infantry to move into and over almost any ground by day or by night, and the rapidity with which trained infantrymen can find or improvise cover. ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... haven't told him everything yet, since in that case I shall probably have lost the best part of it." Maggie went, she went—she felt herself going; she reminded herself of an actress who had been studying a part and rehearsing it, but who suddenly, on the stage, before the footlights, had begun to improvise, to speak lines not in the text. It was this very sense of the stage and the footlights that kept her up, made her rise higher: just as it was the sense of action that logically involved some platform—action quite positively ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... was a real trouble to him, and helped to spoil his enjoyable stay at the palace. He knew himself to be popular there and that his visit had given real pleasure. He had been asked to improvise upon the piano every evening, and had even sung once, saying gracefully to the Bishop's daughter, when she had concluded her very indifferent accompaniment to the song, 'An accompanist is born, not made!' He had preached one of his favourite ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... was equally apparent that no tents were going to be set up for us. Also it was quite possible that we should be exposed to another fearful storm, because the season was advancing. Consequently it was just as well that we should improvise some kind of shelter over our heads. The issue was where to discover the materials, since the authorities were not disposed to extend us ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... of "Hellas", written at the suggestion of the events of the moment, is a mere improvise, and derives its interest (should it be found to possess any) solely from the intense sympathy which the Author feels with ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... writer, at his request, wrote out a short address for the Major, and on going over the next morning, we met some four or five hundred miners at the grocery store, who had assembled to listen to the orders sent for their removal. There being no boards or boxes into which to improvise a stand for the speaker, a whisky-barrel was introduced, from the head of which, after apologizing to the miners for the disagreeable duty that had been placed upon the Major, and in consequence of his suffering from a bad cold, we had taken the stand to read to them his ...
— Autobiography of Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, or Black Hawk • Black Hawk
... lot," the Hawk cut in tersely. "Will you instruct your assistants to begin preparing as much as they can in the next hour? Yes. And your laboratory—clear it for the operations, and improvise five operating tables. Powerful lights, too, M. S. Yes—yes—right—all accessories. Have someone stand by your radio; I'll radio further details while we're ...
— The Passing of Ku Sui • Anthony Gilmore
... educational means, one which cannot be overlooked; Auer more interested in the interpretative, artistic educational end, which has always claimed his attention. Hubay personally was a grand seigneur, a multi-millionaire, and married to an Hungarian countess. He had a fine ear for phrasing, could improvise most interesting violin accompaniments to whatever his pupils played, and beside Rode, Kreutzer and Fiorillo I studied the concertos and other repertory works with him. Then there were the conservatory lessons! Attendance at a European conservatory ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... the welfare of his sheep, and even express a cordial hope that his house is in a good state of repair and his horses and cattle properly protected from any possible inclemency of weather. Furthermore, you must always adapt your greeting to time, place and circumstances, and be prepared to improvise a new, graceful and appropriate salutation to meet any extraordinary exigence. In the morning a mountaineer greets another with "May your morning be bright!" to which the prompt rejoinder is, "And may a sunny day never pass you by!" A guest he welcomes with "May your ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... the desperate attempt of a party of young clubmen from New York, who, inspired by patriotic and adventurous imaginations, slipped off in half a dozen motor-cars to Beacon Hill, and set to work with remarkable vigour to improvise a fort about the Doan swivel gun that had been placed there. They found it still in the hands of the disgusted gunners, who had been ordered to cease fire at the capitulation, and it was easy to infect these men with their own spirit. ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... definitely asked Dick to telephone before coming. Why hadn't he telephoned? Perhaps something had happened to prevent it, or perhaps an idea had come to him by which their plan could be bettered without a telephone message. In either case, she and Dick might have to improvise and deftly catch cues tossed to each other, as experienced actors sometimes do without the audience ever knowing that a hiatus in the play has been ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... Contrive to damn. In the midst of the hum They heard a loud and slashing thrum: 'Twas the king: and each his breath drew in Till you might have heard a falling pin. Some little excuse, at first, he made, While over the lute his fingers strayed:— "You know my way,—as the fancies come, I improvise."—There was ink on his thumb. That morning, alone, good hours he spent In writing despatches ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... V. imagine, fancy, conceive; idealize, realize; dream, dream of, dream up; give to airy nothing a local habitation and a name [Midsummer Night's Dream]. create, originate, devise, invent, coin, fabricate; improvise, strike out something new. set one's wits to work; strain one's invention, crack one's invention; rack one's brains, ransack one's brains, cudgel one's brains; excogitate^; brainstorm. give play, give the reins, give a loose to the imagination, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... for these trifles long endure. A good ballade is almost as rare as a good sonnet, but a middling ballade is almost as easily written as the majority of sonnets. Either form readily becomes mechanical, cheap and facile. I have heard Mr. George Meredith improvise a sonnet, a Petrarchian sonnet, obedient to the rules, without pen and paper. He spoke 'and the numbers came'; he sonneted as easily as a living poet, in his Eton days, improvised Latin elegiacs and ...
— Ballads in Blue China and Verses and Translations • Andrew Lang
... could not tear my eyes from those two living lights to which they were so mysteriously riveted. That was not all. By a more amazing phenomenon still, and contrary to all the principles of my whole life, I began to improvise. God alone knows if this was the result ...
— Balthasar - And Other Works - 1909 • Anatole France
... them. "She was in the last Russian ballet, and she is waiting now for the rest of the company to start again at Covent Garden. You see, it is Metzger who plays there. They improvise. Rather a ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... only conquered but kept the Peninsula. Suchet's sound judgment, his governing yet conciliating spirit, his military tact, and his bravery, had procured him astonishing success. "It is to be regretted," added he, "that a sovereign cannot improvise ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... passed a lonely childhood in a little English village. She would improvise warlike ballads for amusement, though her later works and her character are marked by gentleness of thought. She hoped to make a name by singing, but unfortunately lost her voice. Her family were all hostile to a musical ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... move with an eye on weather and a dozen other factors, he developed in uncanny foresight. Yet he had to improvise at a moment's notice. With life a continuous high-wire act, he trained every surviving fiber to precision, dexterity, and tenacity. Finally, he avoided help. Not pride, self-preservation; the compulsively helpful have rarely the wit to ask before ...
— A Matter of Proportion • Anne Walker
... A scout must know: The fireman's lift. How to drag an insensible man with ropes. How to improvise a stretcher. How to fling a life-line. The position of main arteries. How to stop bleeding from vein or artery, internal or external. How to improvise splints and to diagnose and bind fractured limb. The Schafer method of artificial respiration. ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... delayed me overlong, was but a moment in that day of exercise and agitation. To fit out a schooner for sea, and improvise a marriage between dawn and dusk, involves heroic effort. All day Jim and I ran, and tramped, and laughed, and came near crying, and fell in sudden anxious consultations, and were sped (with a prepared sarcasm on our lips) to some fallacious milliner, and made ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... may also improvise a net with the help of their blankets, and drag the river at suitable places. Farther down on the Rio Fuerte, I once saw them make a large and serviceable net by fastening sixteen blankets together lengthwise with a double row of wooden pins. Along the upper edge of this net they made ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... suis. Unde et quamplures, tam magnates, quam plebeos,[30] a gravibus juramentis, tum blande consulendo, tum dure corripiendo, compescuit. Quoniam abhominabilis erat eis[31] quisque jurans. Audiens autem rex quendam magnum dominum, sibi camerarium, ex abrupto et improvise graviter jurare, graviter increpavit eum, dicens: Prohdolor! vos dominus familiae multae dum juramenta sic editis contra Dei mandatum, pessimum exhibitis[32] exemplum servis et subditis vestris. ipsos enim similia ...
— Henry the Sixth - A Reprint of John Blacman's Memoir with Translation and Notes • John Blacman
... cheeks dealt envy to their mole; from out her smiling lips levee flashed white, gleaming like the chamomile[FN68]; and Kanmakan began to turn about her and devour her with his sight, for she was the moon of resplendent light. Then he took heart and giving his tongue a start began to improvise, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... not contain above seventy stock verses, but these perennial lines are a nucleus, round which the men improvise the topics of the day, giving, I know not for what reason, the preference to such as ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... moments was to behold pure sunshine; to hear her voice was to listen to the very essence of laughter and happiness. She had a marvelous power of telling stories, and when she was happy she told them with such verve that all people within earshot hung on her words. Then she could improvise, and dance, and take off almost any character; in short, she was the life of every party who ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... darkness and solitude and music"—of a wild Gaelic lament, with its insistent falling cadences. A story concerning his poetic precocity has been circulated, but is not worth repeating. Most children love jingling rhymes, and one need not be a born genius to improvise a rhyming couplet ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... keys on it, and play it at once with hardly a mistake. We find people to whom writing is so difficult that they prefer to sign their name with a mark, and beside them men who master systems of shorthand and improvise new systems of their own as easily as they learnt the alphabet. These contrasts are to be seen on all hands, and have nothing to do with variations in general intelligence, nor even in the specialized ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... You! You yourself bringing this blessing to my lips! In your childhood I cried 'viva' many times before your coach. And now you deign—in your voice—with your hand. Ha! I could improvise—The star stoops to ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... removed from Roulers, which is about twelve miles distant from Ypres, on December 8, 1914, from the vicinity of Ypres, while their own forces had been concentrated upon Dixmude, twelve miles to the north. This town had suffered severely before, but the allied forces using what shelter they could improvise, were doing considerable damage from this point. Therefore the Germans ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... is necessary to have tubes of the sizes to fit these passages at various developmental ages. Rupture or even over-distention of a bronchus or of the thoracic esophagus is almost invariably fatal. The armamentarium of the endoscopist must be complete, for it is rarely possible to substitute, or to improvise makeshifts, while the bronchoscope is in situ. Furthermore, the instruments must be of the proper model and well made; otherwise difficulties and dangers will attend attempts ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... they tried to dissuade her. Although she was obliged to almost improvise a lantern in many of its parts, it was but a few minutes before she was ready to set out. Realizing then that her mission was one of peril, and that she might not again look upon those dear faces, she kissed each of them affectionately, and ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... Stella long to improvise bandages from some of her own garments, which she tore into strips, and bound up the wound so that ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... this case—they hoped—all. The Fury of suicides who know they have botched up life for good. The Fury of cocksure men who realize they have been outsmarted by fate, the enemy, and themselves, and know that they will never be able to improvise a defense when arraigned before the high court of history—and whose unadmitted hope is that there will be no high court of history left to arraign them. More cobalt bombs were dropped during the Fury than in all the ...
— The Moon is Green • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... this. One evening at a dinner Mr. Blaine enlightened me. We sat together at table and suddenly he turned and said: "How are you getting on with your bill?" And my reply being rather halting, he continued, "You won't get a vote in either House," and he proceeded very humorously to improvise the average member's argument against it as a dangerous power, a perquisite to the great newspapers and an imposition upon the little ones. To my mind this was something more than the post-prandial levity it was meant ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... that certain orders of beings are able to improvise or to interchange organs, just as need calls. Thus a polyp, if hard put to it, may shift what little brain and stomach happen to be in his possession. You may say that he carries his heart in his hand. He can take his stomach, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... at so fearful a rate that he found himself compelled to pause long enough to improvise a tourniquet by knotting his handkerchief above the wound, tying it as tightly as he could with the left hand aided by his teeth. He stooped and felt on the ground in the darkness and rain, for a stick, by means of which to tighten it still more; for the bleeding, though ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... Bennet," the plump man said. "I wish to beg your forgiveness, Mr. Dennison, for the violence to which you were subjected. We found out about your invention only at the last moment and therefore had to improvise. The bullets were meant only to frighten and delay you. Murder was not ...
— Forever • Robert Sheckley
... fatal dismemberment of flourishing things which is accomplished every day, obscurely, in the human community, and which history has noted only once, because it occurred after the death of Alexander. Lieutenants are crowned kings; superintendents improvise manufacturers out of themselves. Envious rivalries arose. M. Madeleine's vast workshops were shut; his buildings fell to ruin, his workmen were scattered. Some of them quitted the country, others abandoned the trade. Thenceforth, everything was done on a small scale, instead of ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... as it would have been in the case of European troops, and the Nawab and his soldiers alike would have scouted the idea of obtaining supplies otherwise than from the country traversed, but weapons for the men and transport for the guns, and ammunition for both, were necessaries difficult to improvise on the spur of the moment. The Habshiabadis took the field at last, in a state that would have made a European commander tear his hair, and Gerrard hustled them on, blooding them by a smart little engagement ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... this play in the green-room of the Odeon, the company had been rather disenchanted as we know, because, after reading four acts admirably, Balzac was forced to improvise the unwritten fifth, and this he did so badly that Madame Dorval, the principal actress, refused to act. However, on the same day Lireux, the director of the Odeon, came to the Restaurant Risbeck, ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... interested in the interpretative, artistic educational end, which has always claimed his attention. Hubay personally was a grand seigneur, a multi-millionaire, and married to an Hungarian countess. He had a fine ear for phrasing, could improvise most interesting violin accompaniments to whatever his pupils played, and beside Rode, Kreutzer and Fiorillo I studied the concertos and other repertory works with him. Then there were the conservatory lessons! Attendance at a European ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... fondness for the ivory keys, and they responded to his touch with the sweet melody of the forest to the wind. He carried all the favorite airs of all the operas he had ever heard in his fingers' ends. He knew the popular songs of the day by heart, and, where memory failed, could improvise. He had a voice for the soft and deep chords of negro melodies I have never heard surpassed, and with all, he had a command of comedy and pathos which, up to this time, was little known beyond the circle in Denver over which he reigned ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... am cheered," he began, but the note of sarcasm in his voice was too apparent for him to permit himself to proceed. He caught up the lyre, and drawing up a diphros—a double seat of fine woods—rested against it and began to improvise with an assumption of carelessness. Ta-meri sank back in her chair and regarded him from under dreamy lids—her senses charmed, her light heart won by his comeliness and talent. Kenkenes became conscious of her inspection, at last, and looked up at her. His eyes ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... was determined to have bread, and it did not take long to improvise an old Dutch oven with the firebrick, and in this a fire was built, so that the bricks were heated up intensely, and the fire then withdrawn, and a cover put over the chimney. The heated brick, therefore, ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Conquest of the Savages • Roger Thompson Finlay
... middle of the seventeenth century. Then it declined for lack of competent actors. It was the realism of everyday life. It tended always back again to the mountebanks, jugglers, rope dancers, etc.[2141] The lazzi were "business" which gave the actors time to improvise. In the sixteenth century Italian comedians began to play at Paris in Italian. The Italian actresses undressed on the stage much and often, so that "Italian comedy" came to mean vulgar and licentious ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... the ship was torpedoed the radio was out of commission. The radio officer and radio electrician chief managed to improvise a temporary auxiliary antenna. The generators were out of commission for a short time after the explosion, the ship being in ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... catching and clamorous refrain. If these verses win favor, says Lyngbye, they are repeated from year to year, with slight additions or corrections, and become a permanent ballad. Bearing in mind the extraordinary readiness to improvise shown even in these days by peasants in every part of Europe, we thus gain some definite notion about the spontaneous and communal elements which went to the making of the best type of primitive verse; for these Faroe islanders were no savages, but simply ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... Now like rattling thunder, now like the gentle breathings of the flute, rolled this sweet and picturesque language of Italy from her lips—like music sounded those full, artistic rhymes, of which but few of the hearers had the least suspicion that they came from Tasso. To improvise in the Italian language is an easy and a grateful task! What wonder, then, that Corilla acquitted herself so charmingly? The audience paid no attention to the thoughts expressed; they asked not after the quintessence; they were satisfied with the agreeable sound, without ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... Media Nocte, and it is especially an honor to belong to it, for nobody is admitted who has not stood his probation—that is to say, shown that he has acquired considerable proficiency in some art, and excels in it. He, therefore, who can not sing or play on the lute, paint or improvise, speak eloquently, or by some gift contribute to the enjoyment of the company, can never arrive at the distinction of becoming a member of this order. When, therefore, it is whispered of a gentleman that he belongs to the order, he is supposed to ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... philosophers have come the inventors, who between them are the glory of mankind. Unamuno despises inventors, but in this case it is his misfortune. It is far easier for a nation which is destitute of a tradition of culture to improvise an histologist or a physicist, than a philosopher or a ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... hardly call it obstinacy or pertinacity) of temper, which can make no allowance for change of circumstances, and we think we have a tolerably clear notion of the causes of General McClellan's disasters. He can compose a good campaign beforehand, but he cannot improvise one out of the events of the moment, as is the wont of great generals. Occasion seldom offers her forelock twice to the grasp of the same man, and yet General McClellan, by the admission of the Rebels themselves, had Richmond at his mercy more ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... United States, and became a planter in Virginia. The elder Mr. Hughes and his children seem to have inherited the Welsh musical gift, for they were all accomplished musicians. While a mere child, David could improvise tunes in a remarkable manner, and when he grew up this talent attracted the notice of Herr Hast, an eminent German pianist in America, who procured for him the professorship of music in the College of Bardstown, Kentucky. ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... just indicated. As it matters comparatively little what is said to the parrot or the cat, or in one's sleep—because it cannot influence the action—it is possible that a gifted actor, carried away by the situation and the mood of the occasion, may improvise such matters better than they could be written by the author, who cannot figure out in advance how much may be said, and how long the talk may last, without waking the public out of ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... his play in the green-room of the Odeon to the assembled actors and actresses, and before a most critical audience had gone through the terrible strain of trying to improvise the fifth act, which was not yet written. He and Gozlan went straight from the hot atmosphere of the theatre to refresh themselves in the cool air of the Luxembourg Gardens. Here we should expect one of two things to happen. Either ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... silken thread to her web high up among the timbers of the ceiling. The organist informed me that he had noticed, time and again, that spiders were affected by music. Several days afterwards I went to the church for the special purpose of experiment; I seated myself at the organ and commenced to improvise on the swell organ with flute, viol d'amour, and tremulant stops out. In a few moments the spider let herself down from the ceiling and hung suspended before my eyes. So close was she that I could see her palpi vibrating ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... punsters, the jesters, preferred to drink their port out of tumblers. After dinner Hook gave one of his songs which satirized successively, and successfully, each person present. He was then challenged to improvise on any given subject, and by way of one as far distant from poetry as could be, cocoa-nut oil was fixed upon. Theodore accepted the challenge; and after a moment's consideration began his lay with a description of the Mauritius, which he knew so well, the negroes ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... discordant laughter, which was effectual in arousing all the inhabitants from their dreams. They awoke with the most immoderate desires to upset, make fun of, and laugh at all ruling authorities, to improvise couplets, and say rude things. One of these people, we can imagine it must have been Jaime Moro, called his servant directly he had jumped out of bed, and asked him with a smiling countenance if Don Nicanor, the bass of the cathedral, would lend him his instrument. The servant without replying, ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... aspirations. Like most of the Continental nations, we also have the external forms of the English Constitution, without having its internal essence, which constitutes the real value of its political institutions,—viz., Self-government. It is true that the political wisdom of nations does not improvise itself, nor reveal itself all at once in its fulness, as Minerva of old sprang from the head of Jupiter, clad in complete armour, but that it develops itself during their historic progress amidst vicissitude, and by ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... the Homeric poems, which are thought to have been composed about 1000 B.C. In these we find the minstrel everywhere a central figure, an honored guest, ready at call to entertain the company with some ballad of the ancient times, or to improvise a new one appropriate to the case in hand. The heroes themselves were not loth to take part in these exercises. Ulysses, the Odyssey tells us, occasionally took the lyre in his own hand and sang a rhapsody of his ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... always your million-and-one favorite melodies which nobody but that all-around musical amateur, the Auto-Comrade, can so exquisitely whistle, hum, strum, fiddle, blat, or roar. There is also a universe full of new ones for him to improvise. And he is the jolliest sort of fellow musician, because, when you play or sing a duet with him, you can combine with the exciting give-and-take and reciprocal stimulation of the duet, the god-like autocracy ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... invented the Jagborough expedition in order to impress on Nicholas the delights that he had justly forfeited by his disgraceful conduct at the breakfast- table. It was her habit, whenever one of the children fell from grace, to improvise something of a festival nature from which the offender would be rigorously debarred; if all the children sinned collectively they were suddenly informed of a circus in a neighbouring town, a circus of unrivalled ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... too insignificant!—Twenty years hence my name will be more difficult to identify than that of the Public Prosecutor whose axiom, written in your album, will designate him as an obscurer Montesquieu. And I should want at least twenty-four hours to improvise some sufficiently bitter reflections, for I could only ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... improvise. It looks too egotistical. It will provoke remark. Just stick to 'Coronation,' like the others. It is a good tune—you can't improve it any, just ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... But he had an only child, a girl who was called "Little Golden Daughter." She had a face of rare beauty and was the jewel of his love. She had been versed in the lore of books from her youth up, and could write, improvise poems and compose essays. She was also experienced in needlework, a skilled dancer and singer, and could play the flute and zither. The old beggar-king above all else wanted her to have a scholar for a husband. Yet because he was a beggar-king the distinguished families ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... the clerk of the weather will be polite enough to give moon and stars and soft southern breezes. Then cover the surface of the roof with rugs or else stretch a matting over the tin. Improvise couches upon boxes covered with rugs, or bring up a couple of cots ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... who had not provided himself with an explanation, and was puzzled to improvise one. "I discharged him,—that is to say, I let him go. I forgot to mention it. He ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... discussion, and querying and exaggerating, agreeing and controverting, till the dishes she was washing would clash and clang excitedly in the general badinage. Loaded with a pyramid of glistening cups and saucers, she would improvise a gallant line of march from the kitchen table to the pantry, heading an imaginary procession, and whistling a fife-tune that would stir your blood. Then she would trippingly return, rippling her rosy fingers up and down the keys of an imaginary portable piano, or stammering flat-soled ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... the art of civilized warfare, but can not familiarize them with the diversified details of border service; and they often, at the outset of their military career, find themselves compelled to improvise new ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... helped. Let us improvise some kind of stretcher, and get him on with us, men, for ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... of ten days. We had a visit from H.M.S. Scout about this time, and one day sat down sixteen to dinner in the mission-house, some of the officers having come up to spend the day. It is difficult to improvise a dinner in a country where no joints of meat are to be had, unless you kill an ox for the purpose. Sheep there are none. A capon or goose, or a sucking pig, are the only big dishes, and not always to be had. However, we did very well, and our visitors were delighted with Sarawak, and with the ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... doorstep of her father's house in George Street, Edinburgh (now the Northern Club), listening to the performance of a passing piper. There was another episode which he recalled with humorous satisfaction. Fired by his father's tales of the jungle, Yule (then about six years old) proceeded to improvise an elephant pit in the back garden, only too successfully, for soon, with mingled terror and delight, he saw his uncle John[9] fall headlong into the snare. He lost his mother before he was eight, and almost his only remembrance of her was the circumstance of her having given him a little ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... a twitter at my heart. To enter the city by daylight might be compared to marching on a battery; every face that I confronted would threaten me like the muzzle of a gun; and it came into my head suddenly with how much better a countenance I should be able to do it if I could but improvise a companion. Hard by Merchiston I was so fortunate as to observe a bulky gentleman in broadcloth and gaiters, stooping with his head almost between his knees, before a stone wall. Seizing occasion by the forelock, I drew up as I came alongside and inquired ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... accordion play an accompaniment. To the traveler, riding along his road at night, the deep regular rumbling of the drums of distant "bailes" comes with indescribable weirdness. In some dances the participants engage in a monotonous chant, in others there are pauses in which the young men must quickly improvise verses on some subject suggested by one of the lassies. In the cities the dances begin at ten o'clock at night and last until the wee hours of morning, but in the country they begin at almost any time and occasionally last two or three days—especially during the ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... description of the state of things in the Confederate internment camp at Andersonville during the American Civil War, which, after all, did not happen so very long ago. "Over 30,000 prisoners were cooped up in a narrow space; there was no shelter from the sun or cold but what the men could improvise for themselves; every possible disease was rampant; the prisoners were largely naked; the dead were pitched into a ditch and covered with quicklime; the smell of the dreadful stockade extended for two miles.... The state of affairs was known, or might have been known, at Richmond, for Colonel ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... "They just might! You're fast. You've been taught to improvise. And there's something eating you. You're edgy ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... does not contain above seventy stock verses, but these perennial lines are a nucleus, round which the men improvise the topics of the day, giving, I know not for what reason, the preference to such as verge ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... You yourself bringing this blessing to my lips! In your childhood I cried 'viva' many times before your coach. And now you deign—in your voice—with your hand. Ha! I could improvise—The star stoops ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... shooting-jacket, booted and spurred, and having a pair of brilliant, black, Italian eyes. He in turn offered to read; but finding probably the poetry of the Musen-Almanach of that year rather too insipid for him, he soon began to improvise the wildest and most fantastic poems imaginable, and in all possible forms and measures, all the while pretending to read from the book. 'That is either Goethe or the Devil,' said good old father Gleim to Wieland, who sat near him. To which the 'Great I of Osmannstadt' replied; 'It is ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... musicians, singing and playing together more or less at random, are too much carried away by their performance to conceive its effect; they cry far too loud and too unceasingly to listen. A contagious tradition carries them along and controls them, in a way, as they improvise; the assembly is hardly an audience; all are performers, and the crowd is only a stimulus that keeps every one dancing and howling in emulation. This unconsidered flow of early art remains present, more or less, to the end. Instead of vague custom we have schools, and instead of swaying multitudes ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... of Abul Kasin Mansur, born at Thus, in Khorasan, A. D. 920, reached Mahmoud of Ghaznin, who was searching for a poet to re-cast the annals of Persia. He called the poet to his court, and, on hearing him improvise, called him Firdusi (the paradisiacal). The poet was intrusted with the preparation of the Shah-Nameh, or Epic of Kings, for every one thousand distichs of which he was to receive a thousand pieces of gold. It had been the dream of the poet's life to build a bridge and ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... floated them, lashing them together with vines. Just before sunset my raft was complete and freighted with my outer clothing, boots and pistol. Having shipped the last article, I returned into the brake, seeking something from which to improvise a paddle. While peering about I heard a sharp metallic click—the cocking of a ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... use the stomach bath by three different methods. How to improvise the Turkish Bath in your own home, without apparatus. How to use the wet sheet pack. How to care for ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... that has been applied to the smooth brilliance of the Potocka valse. There runs a story regarding this composition that George Sand had a little dog that used to chase its own tail around in a circle, and that one evening, she said to Chopin, "If I had your talent, I would improvise a valse for that dog," whereupon the composer promptly seated himself at the pianoforte and dashed off this fascinating little improvisation. It is Parisian in its grace and coquetry and ends with a rapid run, the last note of which is like the rhythmic tap of the foot with ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... different colors, half of the bags, for instance, being red and the other half blue; or some of striped material and others of plain. This aids in distinguishing the bags that belong to opposing teams or groups of players. It is easy to improvise a substitute for bean bags under almost any conditions. The writer has known some very good substitutes to be made by placing dried leaves in a square of cloth, gathering up the corners and tying them with ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... the story of that heroic defence from the lips of one who was concerned so intimately with it is one of my greatest desires. But I am a coward. I cannot face the extravaganza that Alphonse would improvise, neither dare I approach him for a mere haircut and so confess to having deserted ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 18, 1919 • Various
... impreso. Impressionable impresebla. Impressive impresa. Imprison malliberigi. Improbable neversxajna. Improper nedeca. Impropriety nedececo. Impromptu senprepara. Improve plibonigi. Improvement plibonigo. Improvident malspxarema. Improvise improvizi. Imprudent nesingardema. Impudent senhonta. Impulse pusxo. Impure malpura. Impurity malpureco. Impute alkalkuli. In en. In front antauxe. In place of, to put anstatauxi. In that manner tiamaniere. Inability neebleco. Inaccessible neatingebla. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... grave reflective calm that probably masked a speculative unsettled temperament. Her pose, if one wished to be critical, was just a little too elaborately careless. She wore some excellently set rubies with that indefinable air of having more at home that is so difficult to improvise. Francesca was distinctly pleased ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... telephone before coming. Why hadn't he telephoned? Perhaps something had happened to prevent it, or perhaps an idea had come to him by which their plan could be bettered without a telephone message. In either case, she and Dick might have to improvise and deftly catch cues tossed to each other, as experienced actors sometimes do without the audience ever knowing that a hiatus in the ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... command of the sea is, after all, like military predominance on land, to be insured only by superiority of equipment in the hands of a certain type of man, a type of man that it becomes more and more impossible to improvise, that a country must live for through many years, and that no country on earth at present can be said to be doing its best possible ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... taste for these trifles long endure. A good ballade is almost as rare as a good sonnet, but a middling ballade is almost as easily written as the majority of sonnets. Either form readily becomes mechanical, cheap and facile. I have heard Mr. George Meredith improvise a sonnet, a Petrarchian sonnet, obedient to the rules, without pen and paper. He spoke 'and the numbers came'; he sonneted as easily as a living poet, in his Eton days, improvised Latin elegiacs and ...
— Ballads in Blue China and Verses and Translations • Andrew Lang
... Such a thunder of applause as followed was never heard before within the shell of that old theatre. With each succeeding couplet and refrain the uproar was renewed, until presently, when the performer, gathering courage from the favorable temper of his audience, ventured to improvise matter for his distiches from familiarly known local ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... listen to the very essence of laughter and happiness. She had a marvelous power of telling stories, and when she was happy she told them with such verve that all people within earshot hung on her words. Then she could improvise, and dance, and take off almost any character; in short, she was the life of every party who ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... as Sainte-Beuve has styled her, we are introduced to the life at Sceaux. It was the habit of the guests to assemble at eight, listen to music or plays, improvise verses for popular airs, relate racy anecdotes, or amuse themselves with proverbs. "Write verses for me," said the insatiable duchess when ill; "I feel that verses only can give me relief." The quality does not seem to have been essential, ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... to give up while a single hope remained. "I could improvise a key," he said, and with decision ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... bound to be prevalent amongst thousands exposed to hardships in a country where the water supply was indifferent, where sanitation was usually primitive amongst the inhabitants, and impossible to improvise hurriedly. But the purity of the air, the geniality of the temperature, the cool nights, the brilliant sunshine, and the hard dry soil were palliatives of evils inseparable from all campaigning. Otherwise, for regular ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... miles of wading the little party issued out upon the Platte River. By this time the wounded men were so exhausted that a halt was called to improvise a raft. On this the sufferers were placed, and three or four men detailed to shove it before them. In consideration of his youth, Will was urged to get upon the raft, but he declined, saying that he was not wounded, and that if the stream got too deep for him to wade, he ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... the living over in rhythmic form of the daily routine of her morning dressing. Her story remarks are either literal quotations or adaptations of her actual every day responses. The little verse refrains are the type of thing almost anyone can improvise. I have found that any simple statement about a familiar object or act told (or sung) with a kind of ceremonious attention and with an obvious and simple rhythm, enthralls a two-year-old. The little girl for whom this story was written ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... house is in a good state of repair and his horses and cattle properly protected from any possible inclemency of weather. Furthermore, you must always adapt your greeting to time, place and circumstances, and be prepared to improvise a new, graceful and appropriate salutation to meet any extraordinary exigence. In the morning a mountaineer greets another with "May your morning be bright!" to which the prompt rejoinder is, "And may a sunny ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... groaned. "What a pity!" After a moment he murmured, "I improvise a good deal." The instrument, perhaps for the first time in its life, began to vibrate and ring to something besides the claptrap music of the day. Once he had found a means of occupying himself, Pope surrendered to his impulse ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... had posted but 100 yards off, was silenced after the ninth round. What a curious instance of our Western ways this incident affords; the Chinese firing upon our own people with the latest artillery made by ourselves, while they are left to improvise a gun from a relic found ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... form of the same key-syllable. Consider these words: wise, wiseacre, wisdom, wizard, witch, wit, unwitting, to wit, outwit, twit, witticism, witness, evidence, providence, invidious, advice, vision, visit, vista, visage, visualize, envisage, invisible, vis-a-vis, visor, revise, supervise, improvise, proviso, provision, view, review, survey, vie, envy, clairvoyance. Perhaps the last six should be disregarded as too exceptional in form to be clearly recognized. And certainly some words, as prudence from providentia, are so metamorphosed that they should be excluded from practical ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... his watch. The afternoon had sped with magical rapidity. He reflected that not only must he dine, but he must think over and rehearse the evening's performance with Prepimpin's part cut out. He dared not improvise before the public. He rose ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... sparsely indicated by figures written above a bass. The recitative which separated one aria from another was improvised by the singer, and was accompanied on the harpsichord by the kapellmeister, who was naturally obliged to improvise his part on the spur of the moment, following the caprice of the singer. There was no creating an atmosphere for a tragic or dramatic situation by means of the accompaniment; as soon as the situation arrived, an aria ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... Tai-y both smiled. "Who doesn't go in for these things for fun?" they asked. "Is it likely that we improvise verses in real earnest? Why, if any one treated our verses as genuine verses, and took them outside this garden, people would have such a hearty laugh at our expense that their very teeth ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... have courage? You shall soon see. And you shall see, too, what a lawyer-like defence I am able to improvise. I wager that if I put the case before them, they will give ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... arranged for the harp," said Aurelia. "But if Mrs. Easely can remember some of the lines, and will be good enough to repeat them, I will improvise for it." ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis
... we have conjured a navy out of nothing so rapidly that pines the jay screamed in last summer may be even now listening for the hum of the hostile shot from Sumter; why not give another rub at our Aladdin's lamp and improvise a genius ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... discussion, the writer, at his request, wrote out a short address for the Major, and on going over the next morning, we met some four or five hundred miners at the grocery store, who had assembled to listen to the orders sent for their removal. There being no boards or boxes into which to improvise a stand for the speaker, a whisky-barrel was introduced, from the head of which, after apologizing to the miners for the disagreeable duty that had been placed upon the Major, and in consequence of his suffering from a bad cold, we had taken the stand to read to them his short address, and as most ...
— Autobiography of Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, or Black Hawk • Black Hawk
... not commenced to learn their ABC's; he was a virtuoso before the time when most boys can be trusted with a blunt knife. Kissed and fondled by great beauties, from the age of five, it is small wonder that Mozart began to improvise upon the oldest theme in the world precociously. His first recorded love affair is found in his letters at the age of thirteen. He loved with the same radiant enthusiasm that he gave to his music, and while some of his flirtations ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... me," said Kenelm, modestly. "But if I, who never before strung two rhymes together, can improvise so readily in the style of the present day, why should not a practical rhymester like yourself dash off at a sitting a volume or so in the same style; disguising completely the verbal elegances borrowed, adding to the delicacies of the rhyme by the frequent introduction of a ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Sunday, let me carry home all the works of Handel and Sebastian Bach after I had played them through for him. Constanze fell in love with the fugues as soon as she had heard them; she doesn't want to hear anything but fugues, especially those of Handel and Bach. Having often heard me improvise fugues she asked me if I had never written any down, and when I said no, she gave me a good scolding, for not being willing to write the most beautiful things in music, and did not cease her begging until I had composed one for her, and so it came ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... archers and Turkish horsemen, the palace guards with long lances and glittering shields, the twelve riderless white horses with golden bridles, which were led along, and all the other pomp and parade!" Weeks would be required for arranging a pageant like this at the present time; but the Pope could improvise it in the twinkling of an eye, for the actors and their costumes were always ready. He set it in motion for the sole purpose of showing himself to the Romans, and in order that his majesty might lend additional brilliancy to ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... on the grace of rain. Though the skies had been kind for several years, not a day passing without a gentle downpour, there had been in the past dry periods when even the hardiest vegetation all but perished. So it came about that the Marquesan was obliged to improvise a method of keeping breadfruit for a long time, and becoming habituated to sour food he learned to like it, as many Americans relish ill-smelling cheese and fish and meat, or drink with pleasure absinthe, bitters, ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... assistants. It is therefore a valuable document, showing Donatello's system as regards his own preliminary studies and the amount of finishing he would leave to pupils. We see his astonishing plastic facility, and the ease with which he could improvise by a few curves, depressions and prominences so complex a theme as the Flagellation, or Christ on the Cross. It is a ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... remembered what they and many other vague pacifists had been solemnly proclaiming. There was the Senator, for instance, who had denied that we needed a Navy, because, if the emergency came, he said, we could improvise one, and "build a battleship in every creek." There were also the spread eagle Americans, the swaggerers and braggarts, who amused themselves in tail-twisting and insulting other nations so long as they could do this with impunity; ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... and stroll in a leisurely way along the Embankment, peacefully smoking a cigar. The chance came to him one sultry day in June. There was no case for him to master, nothing proceeding in which he was specially interested, and he did not feel disposed to sit down and improvise a case for himself, as he used to do in his earlier days. He was minded to be idle; and we may accompany him in his westward walk along the river side to Hungerford Bridge, and up ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... had an army which was just enough to deal with any small raid that happened to get through the meshes of our navy, and perhaps to police the empire. That was all, no more. But now we have to assist neighbors becoming the victims of a power with millions of warriors at its command, and we have to improvise a great army, and gallantly have our men flocked to the standard. [Cheers.] We have raised the largest voluntary army that has been enrolled in any country or any century—the largest voluntary army, and it is going ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... she had manufactured for the occasion. Selden evinced an extraordinary interest in her household arrangements: complimented her on the ingenuity with which she had utilized every inch of her small quarters, asked how her servant managed about afternoons out, learned that one may improvise delicious dinners in a chafing-dish, and uttered thoughtful generalizations on the burden of ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... hearers, a bright violet or an audacious scarlet gown annoyed his taste; if the reflection of a ruby or a diamond vexed his eye, he would choose that instant to improvise a rustic idyl or to ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... me," replied Corinne, "I will be the same to him as to everybody else; if he desire to hear me, I will improvise before him; in fact, I will appear to him as I am, not doubting that he will perceive as much dignity of soul in this simple and natural behaviour, as if I were to put on an air of restraint which would only be affected." "Yes, Corinne," replied Oswald, "you are right. Ah! how much ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... of hatred, selfishness, and anger as much as of passion. Because I found you beautiful one night, on this sofa, I was assailed by a cloud of violent thoughts. I had come from the Albergo, where I had heard Miss Bell's cook improvise magnificently twelve hundred verses on Spring. I was inundated by a celestial joy which the sight of you made me lose. It must be that a profound truth is enclosed in the curse of Eve. For, near you, I felt reckless and wicked. I had ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... must improvise, using it as a theme. When all is said and done, you know far more than Giotto about Saint Peter. Holy blue! if you bring that back to Paris as a veritable likeness of the Chief Apostle you will be placed on the Index ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... a rude question," said his host, laughing. "But I will improvise a piece of music for you." He took his violin, and stood up before the broken pier-glass. Then he laid the bow over the strings and struck a chord. "What is that?" he ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... liveliness peculiar to the native of the faubourgs, all the impudence of the street arab, and a veritable talent of mimicry. She was a good housewife, active, industrious and most clever in turning everything to account. With a mere nothing she could improvise a dress or a hat and give it a certain style. She was always most skilful with her fingers, a typical Parisian work-girl, a daughter of the street and a child of the people. In our times she would ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... are always making fun of the rhetoricians, Socrates; this time, however, I am inclined to think that the speaker who is chosen will not have much to say, for he has been called upon to speak at a moment's notice, and he will be compelled almost to improvise. ...
— Menexenus • Plato
... he would take his seat with his guitar, improvise love-ditties to admiring groups of majos and majas, or prompt with his music the ever-ready dance. He was thus engaged one evening when he beheld a padre of the church advancing, at whose approach every one touched the hat. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... that it was not precisely the greatest among them who were most prominent as mystagogues of Science with the big S, and it may certainly be said that when the mystagogues, the Cliffords, Huxleys, and the rest, undertook to improvise a theory of first principles, their achievement was little better than infantile. They took it on trust from Hume that the whole of knowledge is built up of sensations, actual or 'revived', and quite missed Kant's point that their empiricism left the formal constituent in ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... been divided among powerful nations. In Italy all roads now lead to Milan, the city of industry and commerce, and Rome is but a town of passage. And so the most valiant efforts have failed to rouse it from its invincible slumber. The capital which the newcomers sought to improvise with such extreme haste has remained unfinished, and has almost ruined the nation. The Government, legislators, and functionaries only camp there, fleeing directly the warm weather sets in so as to escape the pernicious climate. The ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... and they continued to improvise. After some five minutes of hopeless floundering, the prompter got them back on the track again, and the act proceeded, with the audience happily ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster
... and at the same time the sincerest people on earth. And it's remarkable, that both they and the others—that is, both prostitutes and children—lie only to us—men—and grown-ups. Among themselves they don't lie—they only inspiredly improvise. But they lie to us because we ourselves demand this of them, because we clamber into their souls, altogether foreign to us, with our stupid tactics and questionings, because they regard us in secret ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... thing for a scout always to carry a Red Cross First Aid Outfit, or some similar outfit, for with this he is ready to take care of almost any injury; without it he will find it very difficult to improvise anything to cover a wound with safety to the injured person. If no prepared dressing is procurable, boil a towel if possible for fifteen minutes, squeeze the water out of it without touching the inner surface, and apply that ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... and below the city, it may have seemed to him that it would delay our progress; but as a large number of empty coal barges were lying at the town, it took our company of mechanics, under Captain Lane of the Eleventh Ohio, but a little while to improvise a good floating bridge, and part of the command passed through the town and camped beyond it. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. li. pt. i. p. 425.] One day was now given to the establishment of a depot of supplies ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... characteristic of the Sonata-Form is the second part which is known as the Development Section; for, as we shall soon explain, the structure as a whole is tripartite. In this portion of the movement the composer has an opportunity to improvise, as it were, with his material, using one theme or both as already presented. Dry and labored development sections may, of course, be found in certain Sonatas and Symphonies, but in the great works of such masters as Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikowsky and d'Indy ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... marvellous, to give greater effect to the doctrine, and be couched in poetic language, the especial delight of people in the earlier ages of their history. Thus the writings of Caedmon are explained: he was a poor serving-brother in the monastery of Whitby, who was, or feigned to be, unable to improvise Scripture stories and legends of the saints as his brethren did, and had recourse to a vision ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... landing under fire will be the most critical as well as the most vital of the whole operations. If the Admiralty will improvise and send us out post haste 20 to 30 large lighters difficulty and duration of this phase will be cut down to at least one half. The lighters should each be capable of conveying 400 to 500 men or 30 to 40 horses. They should be protected by ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... and this quickly and continuously. The battle ceasing, their labors continue. While other officers are sleeping, renewing their strength for further efforts, the medical are still toiling. They have to improvise hospitals from the rudest materials, are obliged to 'make bricks without straw,' to surmount seeming impossibilities. The work is unending both by day and night, the anxiety is constant, and the strain upon both the physical and mental faculties unceasing. Thus, ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... so prominent in daydreams, can be detected also in many sleep dreams. There are dreams in {503} which we do big things—tell excruciatingly funny jokes, which turn out when recalled next day to be utterly flat; or improvise the most beautiful music, which we never can recall with any precision, but which probably amounted to nothing; or play the best sort of baseball. The gliding or flying dream, which many people have had, reminds one of the numerous toys and sports in which defiance of gravity is the ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... ha-a-and, and kiss 'er snow-white ha-and," howled the quartet inharmoniously, at least two of them off key; for Tex Martin had joined the concert and was performing with a bull bellow that could be heard across a section. Then Bud began suddenly to improvise, and his voice rose valiantly that his words might carry their meaning to the ears of Johnny Jewel, who had stalked back across the corral and was striving now to catch the horse he had let go, while his one champion, ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... the palace. There was already disorganization everywhere. The planetary government was in process of destroying all the machinery by which Kandar had been governed, as if to make the Mekinese improvise a government anew. They would make many blunders, of course, which would be resented by their new subjects. There would be much fumbling, which would keep the victims of their conquest from regarding them with respect. ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... these barrels exists at the South in luxuriant abundance, they are all procured from the North, and the closing of the Southern ports has now entirely cut off the supply; for while the turpentine farmer may improvise coopers, he can by no process give the oak timber the seasoning which is needed to render the barrel spirit-tight. Hence it is certain that a large portion of the last crop of turpentine must have gone to waste. When it is remembered ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... you see and smell it," said the Harvester. "I am an expert cook. It's my chiefest accomplishment. You should taste the dishes I improvise. But there won't be much to-night, because I want you to see the moon ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... the ports of the Confederacy. A blockading vessel need not be of great strength or powerful armament. All that is necessary is that she should be swift, and carry a gun heavy enough to overawe any merchantman that might attempt to run the blockade. And as such vessels were easy to improvise out of tug-boats, ferry-boats, yachts, and other small craft, it came about that by the last of 1861, the people of the seaport towns of the South, looking seaward from their deserted wharves, could see two or three Federal ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... Julia, "I never heard of anything so delightful! Why, we shall be able to slip down at night and hear him improvise! What ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... do not possess, and misconceives the nature of socialism, which is exclusively critical. M. Blanc, therefore, has given us the spectacle of a vivid imagination ready to confront an impossibility; he has believed in the divination of genius; but he must have perceived that science does not improvise itself, and that, be one's name Adolphe Boyer, Louis Blanc, or J. J. Rousseau, provided there is nothing in experience, there is nothing in the ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... disarranged if there came a single unexpected delay. A conseil de guerre was held, every one talking at once, and it was decided that the driver should unhitch the horses, and that each lady should hold two of them, while the men were to look about to find timber enough to improvise an inclined plane on both sides of this enormous tree-trunk, so that the coach could be hauled up on one side and dragged down on the other. The gentlemen managed to get the carriage over, then they led the horses over, and lastly we ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... a dream," he began to improvise. "Because I was awake. And I heard a terrible plump and I said 'what can that be?' and then I was frightened and. ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... and teach the four divisions of poetry or philosophy, 'and each division of them,' continues the authority quoted, 'is the chief teaching of three years of hard work.' The third qualification, or Dichedal, is explained, 'that he begins at once the head of his poem,' in short, to improvise extempore in correct verse. 'To the Ollamh,' says the ancient authority quoted in this passage in the Book of Lecain,' belong synchronisms, together with the laegha laidhibh, or illuminating poems [incantations], and to him belong the pedigrees and etymologies of names, that is, he has ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... Friday, June 22nd—for since then we have had rain every night, and a fair amount in the daytime as well, and when it rains out here there is no compromise about it. Without tents we have had a "dooce" of a time. Of course, we have to improvise shelters with our blankets. Our place is known as "The Moated Grange,"—a trench having been dug round it for reasons not wholly connected with Jupiter Pluvius. Others are, or would be, known to the postman, ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... for what you are pleased to call my falsehood, your majesty proves that I have spoken the truth," cried Voltaire, eagerly. "You wish to show me that the fruit of your muse ripens slowly, and you improvise a charming quatrain that Moliere himself would be ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... never ceased to exist. This was no new nation struggling for its birth, but an Old nation, as old as any of those who had assumed the responsibility of planning her future. The Belgian statesmen of 1830 had nothing to improvise. They had merely to pick up the threads broken through the vicissitudes of European struggle. Their new Constitution was based on the old Joyous Entry of Brabant, which Joseph II had vainly attempted to abolish, and whose memory forty ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... clearly there are great disadvantages in city life. If a friend and his wife drop in suddenly in the evening or to dine, it is monstrously inconvenient to have an oyster-shop round the corner whence to improvise a supper or a dinner. It would be so much better to have nothing but the village grocery a mile or two away. The advantages are conspicuous. I wonder the entire population of the city doesn't go ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... and Peter the Great of Russia. Here Bach's principal rival was a French virtuoso, Marchand, who, an exile from Paris, had delighted the king by the lightness and brilliancy of his execution. They were both to improvise on the same theme. Marchand heard Bach's performance, and signalized his own inferiority by declining to play, and secretly leaving the city of Dresden. Augustus sent Bach a hundred louis d'or, but this splendid douceur never reached him, as it was appropriated ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... possible of the enemy, and in this case—they hoped—all. The Fury of suicides who know they have botched up life for good. The Fury of cocksure men who realize they have been outsmarted by fate, the enemy, and themselves, and know that they will never be able to improvise a defense when arraigned before the high court of history—and whose unadmitted hope is that there will be no high court of history left to arraign them. More cobalt bombs were dropped during the Fury than in all the ...
— The Moon is Green • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... to the pianoforte by the ladies. Angrily he tears the second violin part of one of the Pleyel quartets from the music-stand where it still lay open, throws it upon the rack of the pianoforte, and begins to improvise. We had never heard him extemporize more brilliantly, with more originality or more ...
— Beethoven: the Man and the Artist - As Revealed in his own Words • Ludwig van Beethoven
... he told them. "She was in the last Russian ballet, and she is waiting now for the rest of the company to start again at Covent Garden. You see, it is Metzger who plays there. They improvise. Rather a wonderful performance, ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... book were in accord as to the tune, but Captain Eben and the various members of the congregation seemed to have a desire to improvise. They sang with spirit, however, and the rhythmic pat of feet grew louder and louder. Here and there men and women were swaying and rocking their bodies in time to the music. The chorus for each verse was louder than the ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... complicated as it would have been in the case of European troops, and the Nawab and his soldiers alike would have scouted the idea of obtaining supplies otherwise than from the country traversed, but weapons for the men and transport for the guns, and ammunition for both, were necessaries difficult to improvise on the spur of the moment. The Habshiabadis took the field at last, in a state that would have made a European commander tear his hair, and Gerrard hustled them on, blooding them by a smart little engagement with ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... to the study of virtue and wisdom? And I will first show you what I conceive to be the nature of the task, and what sort of a discourse I desire to hear; and if I do this in a very inartistic and ridiculous manner, do not laugh at me, for I only venture to improvise before you because I am eager to hear your wisdom: and I must therefore ask you and your disciples to refrain from laughing. And now, O son of Axiochus, let me put a question to you: Do not all men desire happiness? And yet, perhaps, this is one ...
— Euthydemus • Plato
... ivory, and imagine some rosy flecks here and there on her. Imagine her robed in the garments that Godiva wore, that is, nothing but her hair of flowing sunbeams, and so on, and so on." Frederick began to improvise poetry. ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... it was utterly useless to think of scudding before the gale; our only hope of living through what was impending depended upon our ability to keep the boat riding bows-on to the sea, and to do this it became necessary for us to improvise a sea anchor again. This was easily done by lashing together six of our eight oars in a bundle, three of the blades at one end and three at the other, with the boat anchor lashed amidships to sink the oars somewhat ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... critical and rhetorical labours marked an epoch in the history of scholarship, was by temperament a poet, and a poet of the people. Nothing was easier for him than to throw aside his professor's mantle, and to improvise 'Ballate' for the girls to sing as they danced their 'Carola' upon the Piazza di Santa Trinita in summer evenings. The peculiarity of this lyric is that it starts with a couplet, which also serves as refrain, supplying the rhyme to each successive stanza. The stanza itself is identical with ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... to place his country at the height of other civilized nations, has known how to improvise, in less than three months, an astronomical commission, and send it to Japan to observe the transit of Venus, will he permit, I ask, the greatest discovery ever made in American archaeology, to remain lost ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.
... in a London newspaper, in competition, no correct solution was received, but an ingenious and neatly executed attempt by a man lying in a London infirmary was accompanied by the following note: "Having no compasses here, I was compelled to improvise a pair with the aid of a small penknife, a bit of firewood from a bundle, a piece of tin from a toy engine, a tin tack, and two portions of a hairpin, for points. They are a fairly serviceable pair of compasses, and I shall keep them as a memento of ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... alone," that fun is better than furniture, and a private resource of nature more prolific of enjoyment than financial investments. It is rare comfort, here, in the land of bustle and sunshine, to sit in a tempered light and hear a man sing or improvise stories over his work, to behold once more vagaries of costume, to let the eye rest upon pictorial fragments of Italy,—the "old familiar faces" of Roman models, the endeared outlines of Apennine hills, the contadina bodice and the brigand hat, until these objects revive ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... alone by the mere failure to prevent a few million chimneys from belching soot on the great city and choking all the activities of the vastest focus of activity in the world. Find the official whose inefficiency is responsible for this neglect, improvise a court to try him, and with all the deliberate solemnity and pageantry you can devise put him to death in the presence of all officialdom. And then picture the marvellous efficiency of his successor! In a few ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... king with astonishment. "I have not, sire," replied he; "but I will improvise one. I am too well acquainted with affairs to feel any embarrassment. I have only one question to ask; will your ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... tiresome," said Harry, returning to his usual caressing manner. "Don't take any notice of it. It's—the weather, I think, or want of exercise. I'll go and improvise a little." ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... again from the very beginning. Thus I was constantly driven. New material was to occupy the place which had not yet been vacated by the old, and I began to grow obstinate. Thus they even drove me into hating music, which is now the delight and at the same time the support of my life. When I used to improvise on my violin at twilight in order to enjoy myself in my own way, they would take the instrument away from me, asserting that this ruined my fingering. They would also complain of the torture inflicted upon their ears and made me wait for the lesson, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... destruction at my hands." Then the youth came forward and took the mare and her appointments. Now the damsel was standing by the young Sayyid, and she winked at him with her eye as one saying, "Do thou choose me and leave all the rest;" whereupon he began to improvise the following couplets, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... her I was married? What the dev—And you're actually asking me to tell her so too? Mary, are you insane? Embarrassed? What if she is embarrassed? And what do I care if—What? Sweet and pretty? Mary, don't be an idiot. Am I to improvise a wife, in my own house, because a stray girl may object to visiting a bachelor? Not if I know it. Not much." The Governor bristled with indignation. "Confound the girl, I'll—" At this point Mary, though portly, vanished like a vision of the night, and there stood in the doorway a smiling ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... been able to perceive the difference between good and bad. She used to make Jean-Christophe play through strange programmes, in which dull rhapsodies stood side by side with masterpieces. But her greatest pleasure was to make him improvise, and she used to provide him with heartbreakingly ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... a real trouble to him, and helped to spoil his enjoyable stay at the palace. He knew himself to be popular there and that his visit had given real pleasure. He had been asked to improvise upon the piano every evening, and had even sung once, saying gracefully to the Bishop's daughter, when she had concluded her very indifferent accompaniment to the song, 'An accompanist is born, not made!' He had preached one of his favourite sermons on Sunday, which ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... or crop eared?" and said he, "O my lady, what is it moveth thee to discover unto me that lovely face and those fair limbs, wont to be so jealously veiled and guarded? Tell me the truth of the matter, may I be thy ransom!" And he began to improvise,[FN263] ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... that case I shall probably have lost the best part of it." Maggie went, she went—she felt herself going; she reminded herself of an actress who had been studying a part and rehearsing it, but who suddenly, on the stage, before the footlights, had begun to improvise, to speak lines not in the text. It was this very sense of the stage and the footlights that kept her up, made her rise higher: just as it was the sense of action that logically involved some platform—action quite positively for the first time in her life, ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... family and others, amongst whom I have pleasant recollections of a certain Herr Kuhne, the head of a private school, and his wife. I contributed so greatly to the success of their little soirees, and was always so willing to improvise dances on the piano for them to dance to, that I soon ran the risk of enjoying an ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... are still very extensively used in the South. If their weight is no objection to your plans, I should advise you to have a Dutch oven. They are not expensive if you can find one to buy. If you cannot find one for sale, see if you cannot improvise one in some way by getting a heavy cover for a deep frying-pan. It would be well to try such an improvisation at home before starting, and learn if it will bake or burn, ...
— How to Camp Out • John M. Gould
... however, of abandoning yourself too often to the influence of a talent that induces you to lavish powers and time, as it were, upon phantoms. Mastery over the forms of composition and a clear expression of your ideas can only be attained by constant writing. Write, therefore, more than you improvise. ...
— Advice to Young Musicians. Musikalische Haus- und Lebens-Regeln • Robert Schumann
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