|
|
|
More "Overture" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Roselands with the simple purpose of making friends with the man she loves, then, sir, that man would be a heartless churl indeed if he were not touched and gratified, and did not accept with eagerness such an overture. But, sir, but! There is more, I think, in your visit to-night than meets the eye. You demand that I shall become my party's candidate for the governorship. I answer it is not now possible. You insist ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... been the face of an angel.'' In these Liebig concerts we then heard, for the first time, the music of a new composer,—one Wagner,—and agreed that while it was all very strange, there was really something in the overture ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... every thing which might provoke France to war; that we had given her insults which no nation ought to have borne; and yet she would not declare war. The conjecture as to the executive is, that they received Talleyrand's letter before or about the meeting of Congress: that not meaning to meet the overture effectually, they kept it secret, and let all the war measures go on; but that just before the separation of the Senate, the President, not thinking he could justify the concealing such an overture, nor indeed that it could be concealed, made ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... the ostensible authorization of Congress. Neither this minister nor his colleague is prepared for a decision which goes infinitely beyond anything they are about to ask us. Begin by making the overture without any subterfuge. You will acquaint me, day by day, hour by hour, of your progress. The cabinet of London is informed of the measures adopted at Washington, but it can have no suspicion of those I am now taking. Observe the greatest ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... table, at your elbow. Very many of the Sonnets I do not care for: mostly because of the Subject: but there is pretty sure to be some beautiful line or expression in all; and all pure, tender, noble, and—original. Old Spedding supplies a beautiful Prose Overture to this delightful Volume: never was Critic more one with his Subject—or, Object, is it? Frederick Tennyson, my old friend, ought to have done something to live along with his Brothers: all who will live, I believe, of their Generation: and he perhaps would, if he ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... to the overture to Tannhauser, there came back to her the memory of that night. Ever through the mad Satanic discords she could hear, now faint, now conquering, the Pilgrims' onward march. So through the jangled discords of the world ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... profess to know me so well," answered the marquise, with another effort, as unsuccessful as the former, to free the bridle of her horse, "you should know how a woman like me would receive such an overture; say to yourself what I might say to you, and above all, what I might say to ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE GANGES—1657 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... support him against the Grand Seignior, at the very moment when he was assuring the Egyptians that he would support the Grand Seignior against the beys. But Djezzar, confiding in his own strength and in the protection of the English, who had anticipated Bonaparte, was deaf to every overture, and would not even receive Beauvoisin, who was sent to him on the 22d of August. A second envoy was beheaded at Acre. The occupations of Bonaparte and the necessity of obtaining a more solid footing in Egypt ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, v3 • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... it peals With grass or heather beneath our heels,— For bells are Music's laughter!— But a London peal, well mingled, be sure, With vulgar noises and voices impure,— With a harsh and discordant overture To the Harmony meant to ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... to inform him that his curiosity induced him to travel further. With this view he made a contract with a negro merchant, named Loumein-Yoa, who understood the language of the Mandingoes, to serve him as an interpreter and guide on a pacific expedition and overture. Having passed the river Gambia, when the heat compelled him to avail himself of the cooling shade of the forest, he suspended his arms upon a tree, to rest himself. They consisted of a sabre, with a handle of ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... small for this undertaking, we leased the Temperance Hall, largest in the city, and built our own stage. The programme was soon ready and contained the following, which was purely Shakespearean. An orchestra of thirty pieces played the overture and accompanied the several numbers. The Rialto, Bargain, and Trial scenes from the Merchant of Venice, four glees, a reading, and Locke's music to Macbeth's witches in character. Sergeant-Instructor Smith and his brother conducted the programme. No ladies took part. The characters ...
— A Soldier's Life - Being the Personal Reminiscences of Edwin G. Rundle • Edwin G. Rundle
... so unconventional. A dedication would be found convincing, I believe. 'Dedicated to' (let me see) 'to William Ewart Gladstone, by his obedient servant the composer.' And now some music: I had better avoid the overture; it seems to present difficulties. Let's give an air for the tenor: key—O, something modern!—seven sharps." And he made a business-like signature across the staves, and then paused and browsed for a while on the handle of his pen. Melody, with no better inspiration than a sheet of paper, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... will be the soloist at the concert this evening of the Philharmonic Society. He will play the Tschaikovsky Violin Concerto, Opus 35, and the remainder of the program will consist of Dvorak's Symphony, Aus der Neuen Welt, and the ever-popular Meistersinger Overture. ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass
... from Freischutz played by my sisters. Yet my passion for it gradually grew so strong that I can remember taking a particular fancy for a young man called Spiess, chiefly because he could play the overture to Freischutz, which I used to ask him to do whenever I met him. It was chiefly the introduction to this overture which at last led me to attempt, without ever having received any instruction on the piano, to ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... melodrama, "Die Rache wartet," (Vengeance waits,) by Willibald Alexis, the scenes of which are laid in Poland at the time of Napoleon's fatal Russian expedition. "This background was the theme of the music, which consisted of little more than the overture and entr'actes, but was held by musicians of note to be both grand and profound. The character of the campaign of 1812, especially, was given in the overture with terrible truth of expression. Still, however, the work did not succeed." 3. "Undine's Greeting," text by Fouqu, with a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... was just about to speak, when, there was a sudden clap as of thunder, and she leaped up in her seat. But it was only the beginning of the overture, and she sat down laughing. There was a tender passage in the music; and after it was over she was very quiet for a while, and then whispered to Polly that she hoped little Johnnie wasn't worse to-night, and ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... her gaze roved about the familiar room with a veiled affection for everything she saw. "The world is empty. I have begun to hate the fools who applaud me. I hate the evil smells which hang about the theater. I hate the overture and the man with ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... the maestro from his post at the head of the orchestra, where the musicians sat awaiting him, seemed to confirm a rumour that was now circling among the audience, warning all to prepare for a disappointment. His baton was brought in and laid on the book of the new overture. When at last he was seen bearing onward through the music-stands, a low murmur ran round. Rocco paid no heed to it. His demeanour produced such satisfaction in the breast of Antonio-Pericles that he ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Eugene Hale, his most intimate friend and strongest supporter, to succeed Mr. Hamlin in the Senate. President Hayes was willing to appoint Mr. Hale to a Cabinet office. But Mr. Hale, I think very wisely, declined the overture, as he had before declined the tender of a seat in the Cabinet from President Grant. He would have made an excellent Cabinet officer. But he was specially fitted for the more agreeable and permanent public service of Senator. I do not ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... Territory, at the meeting held at South McAlester, Oct. 22-25, 1896, in response to an overture for division from the Presbytery of Choctaw, established the new Presbytery by the ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... country from war. Hamilton listened to them with no attempt to conceal his impatience. He pointed out that if Talleyrand had made up his mind that it was best to avoid a war, he would have made a second and regular overture, which could have been accepted without humiliation to the country, and the severance of the ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... The overture was practically an admission of his own responsibility in the matter, but the astronomer was only impressed by the fact that for some reason the bishop had ceased to regard him with disfavour. Could it be that he had discovered Felicity's secret at last? A study of the haggard record in the old man's ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... practice is, indeed, a not unhealthy pastime, and a feather on the top of the head is a pleasing appendage; but while learning the stops and fingering of the sweet instrument, does no one ever calculate the cost of an overture? What melody does Tityrus meditate on his tenderly spiral pipe? The leaden seed of it, broadcast, true conical "Dents de Lion" seed—needing less allowance for the wind than is usual with that kind of herb—what crop are you ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... expected to sing chromatic passages like the violin and the clarinet. As the point is of some interest, I should like to bring it before the reader with some examples. The essential character of the horns is nowhere more truly conveyed than in the soft passage near the beginning of the overture to Der Freischuetz, and it is the contrast between the two nature scales on the C horn and the F horn which gives the character to this lovely idyll. The trumpets are capable of even less variety of expression than the horns, as their individuality is even more strongly marked. How entirely ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... at the Cascade restaurant, and, the entire evening, whilst we smoked and the orchestra played melancholy waltzes, we talked only of crimes and thefts, and dark and frightful intrigues. That is always a poor overture to a ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... just touching the crystal. Still there was no sound in the ear phones, and the boys looked at one another in bitter disappointment. Bob moved the antenna slider slowly along the tuning coil, and suddenly, faint, but very clear, the boys heard the opening chords of an overture played by a famous orchestra nearly a hundred miles away! Sweet and resonant the distant music rose and fell, growing in tone and volume as Bob manipulated the contacts along the coil. The boys sat spellbound listening to this ...
— The Radio Boys' First Wireless - Or Winning the Ferberton Prize • Allen Chapman
... it is thought, and left his widow stricken with a lifelong grief, his family suddenly overwhelmed with sorrow and solitude. I think I cannot convey the sadness of this more fully than by simply saying it. Yet sombre as the event is, it seems a fit overture to the opening life of this spirit so nobly sad whom we are about to study. The tradition seems to have become established that Captain Nathaniel was inclined to melancholy, and very reticent; also, that though he was an admirable shipmaster, ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... his watch. It was already ten minutes past nine, and although he was standing on the precise spot indicated, there was no one about who in the least resembled the young woman of whom he was in search. The overture to the ballet was being played, a good many people were strolling about, or seated at the small round tables, but they were all of the usual class, the ladies ornate and obvious, and all having the air of habitues. In vain Wrayson scanned the faces ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... was now entirely assembled on the stage. The sound of the rapidly-filling house reached us, softened through the thick baize curtain, a dull, continuous droning, as of water pouring into some huge cistern. Suddenly there fell upon our ears a startling crash; the overture had commenced. The stage manager—more suggestive of a sheep-dog than ever, but lacking the calm dignity, the self-possession born of conscious capability distinctive of his prototype; a fussy, argumentative sheep-dog—rushed into the midst of us and ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... American Colonization Society, down to the present time, the free people of color have publicly and repeatedly expressed their opposition to it. They indignantly reject every overture for their expatriation. It has been industriously circulated by the advocates of colonization, that I have caused this hostility to the African scheme in the bosoms of the blacks; and that, until the Liberator was established, they were friendly ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... 1716. In one of these he says: "The business of this is to invite you to a concert of music, which I have found in a neighbouring wood. It begins precisely at six in the evening, and consists of a blackbird, a thrush, a robin redbreast and a bullfinch. There is a lark that, by way of overture, sings and mounts until she is almost out of hearing ... and the whole is concluded ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton
... palace he produced a serenata (i.e. an allegorical cantata) called Il Trionfa del Tempo e del Disinganno, which he remodelled fifty years afterwards as The Triumph of Time and Truth. The libretto was by Cardinal Pamphilij. It was the overture to this work which caused so much difficulty to Corelli. Handel, irritated at his lack of understanding, snatched the violin from his hand and played the passage himself, to show how it should be executed; Corelli, gentlest of souls, took no offence, ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent
... rushed in on General Maceo and shot him down unarmed. It is said that his friends recovered his body and buried it in a secret place unknown to the Spaniards, who were anxious to obtain it for exhibition as a trophy of war in Havana. Maceo was equal to Toussaint L'Overture of San Domingo. His public life was consecrated to liberty; he knew no vice nor mean action; he would not permit any around him. When he landed in Cuba from Porto Rico he was told there were no arms. He replied, "I will get them with my machete," and he left five thousand to the ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson
... Sherman had sent both to Grant and to the Secretary of War copies of Johnston's overture and his own answer. He added that he should "be careful not to complicate any points of civil policy;" that he had invited Governor Vance to return to Raleigh with the civil officers of the State, and that ex-Governor Graham, Messrs. Badger, Moore, Holden, and others all agreed ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... This overture was received with a general shout of applause, which altogether drowned the voice of the dissidents, if any there were amongst the Alsatian senate who could have resisted a proposal so popular. The words of, kind heart! noble gentleman! generous ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... was only the prologue, the overture. If one might be permitted to speak scientifically, it was only the tuning of the instruments. The opera was to come,—the Flying Dutchman of ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the orchestra stalls were Beauchamp and Debray, whose attention was divided between the stage and the arrivals of splendidly attired elegantes in the different loges, during the overture. All the elite of Paris seemed on ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... writes Lady Morgan,' our music-teacher complained to my father of our idleness as he sat beside us at the piano, and we stumbled through the overture to Artaxerxes. His answer to her complaint was simple and graphic—for, drawing up the sleeve of a handsome surtout, he showed the threadbare sleeve of the black coat beneath, and said, touching the whitened seams, "I should not be driven to the subterfuge of wearing ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... Tennyson or Mendelssohn being regarded as serious figures in art at all. Yet I honestly believe that poems like 'Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal,' or 'Come down, O Maid,' have a high and permanent beauty about them; or, again, the overture to the Midsummer Night's Dream. I can't believe that it isn't a thing full of loveliness and delight. I can't for the life of me see what happens to cause such things to be forgotten. Tennyson and Mendelssohn seem to me to have been penetrated with a sense of beauty, and to ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... seen,' she said, 'or else they'll be swarming round directly, you know.' She made him sit down beside her with his back to the house so that the box seemed to be empty. The orchestra played the overture from the Marriage of Figaro. The curtain ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... can give only the briefest description of the general structure of the work. The founding of Christianity, as illustrated in four principal scenes of the life of St. Peter, supplies the material for the dramatic development of the subject. The overture, beginning with an adagio movement in B-flat minor, gives expression to the vague yearnings of that time of doubt and hesitancy when the "oracles were dumb," and the dawning of a new era of stronger and diviner ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... rose, and the ear can not but enjoy the sweet song. And this youth stood forth clothed with such rare attraction that it is said Christ cast one long lingering look of affection upon him; then widening the circle of friendship, he offered the young ruler a place therein. It was an overture such as Socrates made to the boy Plato; it was a proffer such as Michael Angelo made to the poor young artist who knocked at his door. Recalling the day when he met Goethe, Schiller was accustomed ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... ones—at once. When it was all over he explained at some length that he did not wish ever to be taken out of an opponent's double. I expect this was another convention he was going to tell me about when he was interrupted in the overture to the rubber. Anyway he hadn't told me, and I at some slight cost—five hundred—had nobly carried out ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 29th, 1920 • Various
... old fellow who sold hot chestnuts at football games—"a nickel a bush"—a rare contraction meant to denote a bushel—in reality fifteen nuts and fifteen worms. Does George Felsburg still play the overture at Poli's, reading his newspaper the while, and do comic actors still jest with him ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... and private. The night of performance arrived; the guests assembled; the great dramatic experiment stood on its trial. Magdalen had made the most of her opportunities; she had learned all that the manager could teach her in the time. Miss Garth left her when the overture began, sitting apart in a corner behind the scenes, serious and silent, with her smelling-bottle in one hand, and her book in the other, resolutely training herself for the coming ordeal, to ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... ill-acted tragedy, founded on Voltaire's Mahomed. During the representation, the Portuguese ladies and gentlemen seemed determined to forget the stage altogether, and to laugh, eat sweetmeats, and drink coffee, as if at home. When the musicians, however, began to play the overture to the ballet, every eye and voice was directed to the stage, and a loud call for the national hymn followed, and not till it had been played again and again, was the ballet suffered to proceed. During the bustle occasioned by this, a captain ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... six o'clock, after stopping barely an hour with him, and as soon as her carriage had driven off he dressed and went to the opera. During the overture, he saw the Princess enter her box and looking dazzlingly beautiful; she was wearing the same green velvet cloak, trimmed with ermine, that he had had in his hands a short time before, but almost immediately she let it fall from her shoulders, and showed a bust which ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... the chateau—had evidently taken great pains with his dress (a bright pink satin cravat was rather striking) and thanked the butler most gratefully every time he handed him a dish—"Je vous remercie beaucoup, Monsieur." We had our two grand pianos and were going to play the overture of Tannhaeuser, one of the simplest and most melodious of Wagner's compositions. The performers were Francis and I, Mlle. Dubois and the organist. It was a little difficult to arrange who he should play with. He was very nervous at the idea of playing with Mlle. ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... For I can't expect a PENSION to keep dinner hot for me till nearly three o'clock—can I? Morning rehearsals are a mistake. What?—you were there, too? Really?—after a night in the train? Well, you didn't get much, did you, for your energy? A dull aria, an overture that 'belongs in the theatre,' as they say here, an indifferently played symphony that one has heard at least a dozen times. And for us poor pianists, not a fresh dish this season. Nothing but yesterday's remains heated ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... patriarch of Alexandria was watching from his refuge in the desert, and this was the time he chose for an overture of friendship to his old conservative enemies. If he was slow to see his opportunity, at least he used it nobly. The Eastern church has no more honoured name than that of Athanasius, yet even Athanasius rises above himself in ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... my train provides for me is doubly entertaining if it be but the overture to greater delights. If some magic property which the train possesses—whether it be the motion or the clankety-clank—makes me happy even when I am only thinking about a cow, is it any wonder that I am happy in thinking ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... days to Christmas. Our last Christmas we spent on the Modder. I remember it well; a wet night, and all night long we sat on a steep kopje watching the lights of a Boer laager and expecting to be attacked. Methuen's little campaign strikes one now as a sort of prelude, or overture, to the main show; but how very much surprised we should have been that November morning when we marched from Orange River Camp if you had told us we should ever be looked at in that light. Ten thousand men was a big army in ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... closely we study past creations, the more impressive and significant do the synthetic types, presenting features of the higher classes under the guise of the lower ones, become. They hold the promise of the future. As the opening overture of an opera contains all the musical elements to be therein developed, so this living prelude of the Creative work comprises all the organic elements to be successively developed in the course of time. When Cuvier first saw the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... presence. Buck stalked into the open, half crouching, body gathered compactly together, tail straight and stiff, feet falling with unwonted care. Every movement advertised commingled threatening and overture of friendliness. It was the menacing truce that marks the meeting of wild beasts that prey. But the wolf fled at sight of him. He followed, with wild leapings, in a frenzy to overtake. He ran him into a blind channel, in the bed of the creek where a timber jam barred ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... The entire overture, long as it was, was played to a dark house with the curtain down. It was exquisite; it was delicious. But straightway thereafter, or course, came the singing, and it does seem to me that nothing can make a Wagner opera absolutely perfect and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... England and America, while telegrams from Booth, McCullough, Lawrence Barrett, Irving, Ellen Terry, Christine Nilsson, and Lillie Langtry, bade her be of good courage, and wished her success. The overture smote like a dirge on her ear, and when the callboy came to announce that the moment of her entrance was at hand, it reminded her of nothing so much as the feeling of mourners when the sable mute appears at the door, as ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... which has taken imagination into its service. In like manner By the Fireside, A Serenade at the Villa, and Two in the Campagna, include certain studies of nature and its moods, sometimes with a curiously minute observation of details; and these serve as the overture to some intense moment of joy or pain, or form the orchestration which sustains or reinforces a ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... sisters and his brother Paul occupying leading social positions. He was heir-apparent to a great estate. He was greeted with the applause of England from the outset of his career; "awoke famous," after the production of the "Midsummer Overture," while almost a boy; never had a piece fall short of triumphant success; in fact, so commanding prestige that he could find not one who would rationally blame or criticize him,—a "most wearying" thing, he writes, that every ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... to lend me the score of the Overture in E flat, which I will return as soon as the performance is over. I also beg he will be so good as to send me Kirnberger's work to supply the place of mine, as I am at this moment giving lessons in counterpoint, and ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... when the newly risen sun throws abroad his light, giving token of the majestic glories of noon-day, while the earth exhales a dewy freshness and the air is enchanted by the songs of birds, just wakened from their nests. It recalls the overture of a grand musical drama introducing the joyous melodies, the wailing minors, the noble chords and sublime symphonies ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... he made allusion to him, and Diogenes met that overture graciously, half-way. During the administration of the restoratives he had clearly been in two minds whether to fly at the Captain or to offer him his friendship; and he had expressed that conflict of feeling by alternate waggings of his tail, and displays of his teeth, with now and ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... Peshawur, a province of Afghanistan, and Dost Mahomed, both in rage and terror, began to look around him for a foreign alliance. His grand aim was to secure the friendship of the British; but this was scornfully refused. The governor-general, with exquisite irony, replied to his overture: 'My friend, you are aware that it is not the practice of the British government to interfere with the affairs of other independent states!' and a British envoy to Cabool, while refusing everything that was important for him to ask, kindly cautioned him to abstain ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various
... electrician, with each hand on portions of the big switchboard, threw on the border and bunch lights, making the great stage almost as light as day. Then, out in front, Dorothy heard the orchestra as it struck into the overture, and hastening away, she seated herself in her dressing-room to await her ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond
... else. He had even championed his goddess against Lucia, when she pronounced that Wagner was totally lacking in knowledge of dramatic effects. To be sure she had never seen any Wagner opera, but she had heard the overture to Tristram performed at the Queen's Hall, and if that was ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... made this overture, the potingers[163] most unnaturally and wickedly made him a poisonable potion stuffed wt sulfre, quick silver, a vicked thing they cal l'eau forte, and diverse others burning corrasive ingredients to drink. He being confident in his antidote, he would drink it and apply his ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... and the whisper, the jangling rattle of the piano-organ, the long-continued scream of the butcher as he dabbled in the blood, the lewd litany of the singers, these seemed to be resolved into an infernal overture, loud with the expectation of lust and death. And how the spectacle was set in the cloud of dark night, a phantom play acted on that fiery stage, beneath those hideous brassy lamps, very slowly swinging in a violent blast. As all the medley ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... one blessed thought surviving; The heart's sure fulcrum in the saddest strait— An overture to this unequal striving— A hope, a home, a last and blest arriving! Bear up, my heart, ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... great states between which it had the misfortune of lying. Hoping to free his country, he sent ambassadors to Uaphris, who were to conclude a treaty and demand the assistance of a powerful contingent, composed of both foot and horse. Uaphris received the overture favorably; and Zedekiah at once revolted from Babylon, and made preparations to defend himself with vigor. It was not long before the Babylonians arrived. Determined to crush the daring state, which, weak as it was, had yet ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... see in this overture my sincere desire to contribute efficaciously, for the second time, to a general pacification, by an advance frankly made and free of those formalities which, necessary perhaps to disguise the dependence of feeble ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... soldier of fortune, and practiced war as an art, and delighted in it like Alexander or Charles XII. He readily responded to the overture of the Tarentine Ambassador, and sent over a general with three thousand men to secure a footing, and soon followed with twenty thousand foot, five thousand horse, and a number of elephants. Among his ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... treaty of the United States with Prussia, which was negotiated by that commission, affords a signal illustration of those principles. The act of Congress of March 3rd, 1815, adopted immediately after the return of a general peace, was a new overture to foreign nations to establish our commercial relations with them on the basis of free and equal reciprocity. That principle has pervaded all the acts of Congress and all the negotiations of the Executive on ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... the Parisian breeding of Mademoiselle Viefville to preserve her gravity during this overture, though she kept her bright animated, French-looking eyes, roaming over the assembly, with an air of delight that, as Mr. Bragg would say, made her very popular. No one else in the party from the Wigwam, Captain Truck excepted, dared look up, but each ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... ready to embrace every overture for a new enterprise; especially if attended with an offer of money, of which he was very greedy, very prodigal, and very indigent. Richard Pace, formerly secretary to Cardinal Bambridge, and now secretary of state, was despatched to the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... five pounds more steam"; and he began humming the first bars of "Said the young Obadiah to the old Obadiah," which, as you may have noticed, is a pet tune among engines not built for high speed. Racing-liners with twin-screws sing "The Turkish Patrol" and the overture to the "Bronze Horse," and "Madame Angot," till something goes wrong, and then they render Gounod's "Funeral March of ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... sat in silence through an overture. Grant was delighting himself simply in her presence, and guessed that for her part she could not retract the confession her love had wrung from ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... talk is not to be had for the asking. Humours must first be accorded in a kind of overture or prologue; hour, company and circumstance be suited; and then, at a fit juncture, the subject, the quarry of two heated minds, springs up like a deer out of the wood. Not that the talker has any of the hunter's pride, though he has all and ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... between them, as two washerwomen might a basket of dirty clothes. I must confess that I was a great deal mortified at seeing my command treated thus slightingly, which mortification was not a little increased by an overture that they kindly made to me, saying, that if I were at all tired, they would, with all the pleasure in the world, carry me in it. ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... overture was continued; then the band stopped and looked around with an air of triumph, while Joe uttered two or three more howls by way of effect, and to show that he could have kept it up longer had ...
— Mr. Stubbs's Brother - A Sequel to 'Toby Tyler' • James Otis
... rolling boom of tumultuous traffic. At intervals across the upland of roofs there had drifted to him the far-blown chime of bells and the slower music of clocks striking. It was like an orchestra scraping its chairs and tuning up before crashing into the overture of the ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... you, has a sister touching whom I have orders to speak to you if you will be pleased to hearken." It was to Charles V.'s eldest sister, Eleanor, widow of Manuel the Fortunate, King of Portugal, that allusion was made. This overture led to nothing at the time; but the next year, in 1522, war was declared between Francis I. and Charles V.; the rupture between Francis I. and the Duke of Bourbon took place; the Bourbon lawsuit was begun; and the duke's mother-in-law, Anne of France, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... chair, pulled forward the velvet drapery so as to shut out the view of the house, and fixed his eyes upon the heads of the musicians in the orchestra. The overture was nearly over. The curtain would very soon go up. Then he observed that Powell still stood near him. The man was strangely officious to-day, he thought. Could that be connected in any way with ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... perfectly civilly the Superintendent received the overture. "It was quite evident, Miss Malgregor, that you were not altogether responsible at the moment," ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... GERMANY.—Near the close of August, musical and Dramatic ceremonies in inauguration of the statue of Herder took place at Weimar. On the 24th was represented at the theater the "Prometheus Unbound," with overture and choruses by M. Liszt. On the 25th, after the inauguration of the statue, Handel's "Messiah" was performed in the Cathedral, where Herder used to preach, and where he lies buried. On the 28th, was given at the theater the ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... where insolence reigns at its height. All occupations have ceased; at the moment of the performance the town has the aspect of a desert. All the passions, all the solicitudes, all the life, of a whole population, is concentrated at the theatre. The overture commences; so intense is the attention, that the buzzing of a fly could be heard. On its conclusion, the most tremendous uproar ensues. It is either applauded to the clouds, or hissed, or rather howled at, without mercy. In an Italian theatre, they shout, they scream, they stamp, they ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... in the life of our nation and our Empire does this tremendous ceremony inaugurate? The question is inevitable. There is nothing in all the social existence of men so full of challenge as the crowning of a king. It is the end of the overture; the curtain rises. This is ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... applied for aid. Her ambassador arrived at Goa, "bearing a fragment of wood belonging to the true cross on which Christ died," which relic had been sent as a token of friendship to her brother Emanuel by the empress of AEthiopia. The overture was followed by the arrival at Masawwah of an embassy from the king of Portugal. Too proud, however, to await foreign aid, David at the age of sixteen took the field in person ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... to pace the room nervously, listening for he knew not what. His mind was filled with vague imaginings; when at last came an overture to the grim test ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... jurisdiction, to summon to obedience the inhabitants there and at Saco and Cape Porpoise, in the Lygonian patent, and the conditions made resistance unlikely. Disregarding the Rigby claims,[40] the settlers in southern Maine accepted the overture of the Massachusetts commissioners. Accordingly, Welles, Saco, and Cape Porpoise followed the example of Kittery and Gorgeana, and came under the ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... signs and sounds gave me to understand that, if it pleased me, he would dress first and then leave me to dress afterwards, leaving the whole apartment to myself. Thinks I, Queequeg, under the circumstances, this is a very civilized overture; but, the truth is, these savages have an innate sense of delicacy, say what you will; it is marvellous how essentially polite they are. I pay this particular compliment to Queequeg, because he treated me with so much civility ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... look round at that deep-drawn sigh of the man's; she did not lift her head even when he cleared his throat: but I was intent upon him, for I thought that these sounds preluded an overture (I am not sure of the figure) to my acquaintance, and in fact he actually asked, "Do you know ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... decayed upon the ear, until it died away in distant sound, as if a flight of angels had raised the song in their ascent to heaven. Yet the chords hardly ceased to vibrate after the expiration of this overture, which ushered in a composition in the same pathetic style; and this again was succeeded by a third, almost without pause or intermission, as if the artist's hand had been indefatigable, and the theme never ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... slightly farcical. Every tack you make lands you in a different port—with a woman waiting in every one of them." The first notes of the overture ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Duke admitted him. There was but one idea in his head as to what was coming. His son had taken this way of making some communication to him respecting his political creed. Some overture or some demand was to be preferred through Tregear. If so, it was proof of a certain anxiety as to the matter on his son's part which was not displeasing to him. But he was not left long in this mistake after Tregear had entered the room. ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... remained silent. Watson held on and waited. Patsy, after various vain efforts to inflict damage, made an overture. ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... Alas! we see plainly the other end of the great church, but with secret disappointment, because we imagined there would be but a dim immensity of space. For the first time we behold Niagara, and resentfully we ask, "Is that all?" The illimitable expectation is too bewildering an overture. So the eyes with which the Easy Chair saw were touched with glamour. The ears with which it heard were full of eloquence beyond that of mortal lips. And there was the orator just beginning to speak. It was not fair; ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... strange, if not quite new, That from the first of Cantos up to this I 've not begun what we have to go through. These first twelve books are merely flourishes, Preludios, trying just a string or two Upon my lyre, or making the pegs sure; And when so, you shall have the overture. ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... Francis will rage; then seeing me impregnably intrenched, will make the best of the marriage, especially as the groom is of royal blood. Next, an alliance with the French king against the emperor. Why not; was not Francis once ready to treat even with Solyman to defeat Charles, an overture which shocked Christendom? And while Charles' energies are bent to the task of protecting his country from the Turks, a new leader appears; a devil-may-care ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... are a great people. If I could tell you the secrets of her eyes as she looks at me—but no, you are dry as dust, a creature of prose! And there will be an orchestra, too, for Pesach Weingott has promised to play the overture on his fiddle. How he stirs the soul! It is like ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... attache of the establishment. Once, after she had grown into magnificent young womanhood, he very angrily refused an earnest supplication for an introduction from the manager, himself. On the nights when she came to the theatre he took her to the box, before the overture began, and she sat there, quite alone, until he went to her after the ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... this note—I could not discreetly, although I tried to do so several times. I could not conquer sufficiently my deep disgust of his insupportable behavior to respond kindly, at that time, to any overture of Mr. Bainrothe's, nor did I wish to write one rude word to him in connection with so delicate a subject as ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... on the way in," answered Billy, accepting noncommittally the meat and the overture for peace. "They'll be here in ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... hurried footsteps. Was there an accident, some untoward misfortune? Silence again. The conductor was at his post. Everything seemed ready at last.... They did not begin! What was happening? He boiled over with impatience. Then the bell rang. His heart thumped away. The orchestra began the overture, and for a few hours Jean-Christophe would swim in happiness, troubled only by the idea that it must soon come to ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... gambling, drinking, and other dissipations; and the aggregate of discomforts, of every sort and kind; with cures for all these evils; and to end finally by a grand climax of supplication, invocation, imprecation, resignation, and beatification, in the regular crash of a stout-expiring overture. ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... that they would keep their instruments ready tuned, and strike off at once. This would be an accommodation to many well-meaning persons who frequent the theatre, who, not being blest with the ear of St. Cecilia, mistake the tuning for the overture, and think the latter concluded before ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... any overture or hope of peace, he would be more erect and vigorous, and exceedingly solicitous to press anything which he thought might promote it; and sitting among his friends, often, after a deep silence, and frequent sighs, ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... advanced, were found to be full of dead; while in some lay men, women, and children in the last stage of famine. And yet, weakened and suffering as they were, the Aztecs maintained their resolution, rejecting every overture ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... politest people in Europe. The women were not impregnable; but the terms and manner of compliance were as decent as those in marriage among us, and according to their notions, the agreement was as innocent. When any of our people made an overture to any of their young women, he was given to understand that the consent of her friends was necessary, and by the influence of a proper present it was generally obtained; but when these preliminaries were settled, it was also necessary ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... generals ob Gideon and David, and de brack man know as much 'bout war as dey did; p'raps," he added, with a quiet humor, "de brack aint equal to de white. I knows most ob de great men, like Washington and John and James and Paul, and dem ole fellers war white, but dar war Two Sand (Tousaint L'Overture), de Brack Douglass, and de Nigga ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... virtuoso, will be the soloist at the concert this evening of the Philharmonic Society. He will play the Tschaikovsky Violin Concerto, Opus 35, and the remainder of the program will consist of Dvorak's Symphony, Aus der Neuen Welt, and the ever-popular Meistersinger Overture. ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass
... Upon this overture we ventured to request that he would come in and suffer us to shut the door, which we also locked. Next we produced the official paper nominating his son to a small place in the customs,—not yielding much, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... should have started up with light grace, and without overturning my glass or stumbling over the bench, but in a curved posture, moving one step and a half forward, I should have answered: 'Give me leave, Mademoiselle! it is the overture of the Donauweibchen;' or, 'It is just going to strike six.' Could any mortal in the world have taken it ill of me? No! I say; the girls would have looked over, smiling so roguishly, as they always do when I pluck up heart to show them that I too understand the light ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... the best music at the theatre, which was managed with the same precision, and maintained by the Government with the same generosity, as in the days of King George. No one was allowed to enter after the overture had begun, and ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... younger brother of a titled family, who is forcing his way through the well-united phalanx of vulgar faces that guard the entrance to Fop's Alley; or, if he should be in a state of single blessedness, inclines his head a little forward to cast round an inquiring glance, a sort of preliminary overture, to some fascinating daughter of fashion, whose attention he wishes to engage for an amorous interchange of significant looks and melting expressions during the last act of the opera. For the first, he would not be thought so outre as ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... of Jules Laforgue recalls to me his description of the orchestra in Salome, the fourth of the Moralites legendaires. Sur un mode allegre et fataliste, un orchestre aux instruments d'ivoire improvisait une petite overture unanime. That his syllables are of ivory I feel, and improvised, but his themes are pluralistic, the immedicable and colossal ennui of life the chiefest. Woman—the "Eternal Madame," as Baudelaire calls her—is a being both magical and mediocre; she is ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... all thought him wrong; and in consequence a coolness rose between them and him. He felt thoroughly miserable, and did not know where to turn; yet none the less he ostentatiously abstained from making the slightest overture to Walter; and whereas the two boys might have enjoyed together many happy hours, they felt a continual embarrassment at being obliged to meet each other very frequently in awkward silence, and apparent unconsciousness ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... be desired that they would keep their instruments ready tuned, and strike off at once. This would be an accommodation to many well-meaning persons who frequent the theatre, who, not being blest with the ear of St. Cecilia, mistake the tuning for the overture, and think the latter concluded before it ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... you to keep on your table, at your elbow. Very many of the Sonnets I do not care for: mostly because of the Subject: but there is pretty sure to be some beautiful line or expression in all; and all pure, tender, noble, and—original. Old Spedding supplies a beautiful Prose Overture to this delightful Volume: never was Critic more one with his Subject—or, Object, is it? Frederick Tennyson, my old friend, ought to have done something to live along with his Brothers: all who ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... How beautiful she looked! Her hair had fallen down, the officers threw her flowers. She clutched them to her heart. She put back her hair, and smiled all round. Her eyes met Pen's. Down went the curtain again: and she was gone. Not one note could he hear of the overture which the brass band of the dragoons blew by ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... be only the preliminary overture to the desperate engagement; and it seems to me that several days might be spent in manoeuvring into position before the shock of arms occurs, which will lay so many heads low ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... one of his officers. There was a red draw curtain, footlights made with candles and biscuit tins, and so strung on a wire that at a pull, between the acts, they could be turned on the spectators. A programme had been printed on the camp mimeograph, the camp orchestra was tuning up, and a special overture had been composed by a young gentleman with the beautiful name ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... pages or so of preface—or perhaps overture would be the better word, since in it a group of literary men, while contributing recondite recipes, flourish trumpets in every key—to his huge volume he says, "I wish to be read by people of the world, ...
— Culture and Cooking - Art in the Kitchen • Catherine Owen
... Jolyon's eyes deepened; he paid his guinea. They had not forgotten him. He marched in, to the sounds of the overture, like an ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... but this, I believe, is the only cloud that has darkened his horizon, or disturbed the tranquil current of his life. His consecration, with its attendant fatigues, must have been to him a wearisome overture to a pleasant drama, a hard stepping-stone to glory. As to the rest, he is very unostentatious, and his conversation is far from austere. On the contrary, he is one of the best-tempered and most cheerful old men in society that it is ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... him; and the noises, the shriek and the whisper, the jangling rattle of the piano-organ, the long-continued scream of the butcher as he dabbled in the blood, the lewd litany of the singers, these seemed to be resolved into an infernal overture, loud with the expectation of lust and death. And how the spectacle was set in the cloud of dark night, a phantom play acted on that fiery stage, beneath those hideous brassy lamps, very slowly swinging in a violent ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... Cadore, and declared that "the decrees of Berlin and Milan were the fundamental laws of the empire." American vessels had been seized and held by France even after the president's proclamation, and every overture on the part of the American minister at Paris toward the re-establishment of friendly relations between the two countries was viewed with indifference and utterly failed. The country was slowly but surely drifting toward a war, which no exertions on the part of the administration ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... commanded Colonel Carter, and the left-hand gun barked out an overture, killing one sepoy. The rest made off in ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... they sat, with half-closed eyes, watching the smoke curling in snowy wreaths from their pipes, and varying their employment now and then with a pull at the tin pots, which seemed to afford them extreme satisfaction. In this manner we lay till the moon waned; and the owl having finished his overture, we rolled ourselves in our blankets, and watched the twinkling star, till sleep closed ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... relentless enemy. The correspondence which has come to light in recent times, shows the importance which he attached to Tyrconnell's proposition—an importance still further enhanced by the direct but unsuccessful overture made to the earl by William himself, on landing in England, and before embarking in the actual ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... at least by correspondence, and also desired to learn whether he must forever give up all idea of some day seeing her. Not without emotion he awaited the answer... the answer came at last. Tatyana responded cordially to his overture. "If you are disposed to pay us a visit," she finished up, "we hope you will come; you know the saying, 'even the sick are ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... purposely silent while awaiting a sign from her, she had read his heart from the first. His every look and tone for years had been an unconscious act of wooing, and so when she brought matters to a point as she did, 'twas on her part not so much an overture as a consent. As for marriage proposal in general, all men with whom I have discussed it have confessed their own scenes thereof to have been, in the mere words, quite simple and unpoetical, whether enacted in confusion or in confidence; and to have been such as would not read ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... have recommended, and Congress should have adopted, by so large a majority, this very system, by which slavery might soon disappear, at least from the border States. In making an appropriation for gradual emancipation and colonization, so much of the overture as embraced colonization might and should be extended to the North, as well as the South, so as, with their consent, to colonize beyond our limits the free ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... account of what had passed. A short time ago Palmerston spoke to his son, John Wortley, and expressed a desire that some compromise could be effected between the Government and the Opposition leaders, which John imparted to Lord Harrowby and his father. The overture was so well received by them that Stanley went to Sandon, Lord Harrowby's place in Staffordshire, in his way to Ireland, with Lord Grey's consent, to talk it over with Lord Sandon. After this Lord ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... calashes; all the inns are filled to excess, where insolence reigns at its height. All occupations have ceased; at the moment of the performance the town has the aspect of a desert. All the passions, all the solicitudes, all the life, of a whole population, is concentrated at the theatre. The overture commences; so intense is the attention, that the buzzing of a fly could be heard. On its conclusion, the most tremendous uproar ensues. It is either applauded to the clouds, or hissed, or rather howled ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... study the musical construction of the overture with which the music-drama opens, as it is well known that Wagner in his Preludes prepares the spectator's mind for the impressions that are to follow. Several of the leading motives appear in this Vorspiel and ...
— Bluebeard • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... an indirect request to me to aid him in deposing General O'Higgins, I did not even reply to it. On the 20th of September he made the following direct overture to me to join ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... which gradually decayed upon the ear, until it died away in distant sound, as if a flight of angels had raised the song in their ascent to heaven. Yet the chords hardly ceased to vibrate after the expiration of this overture, which ushered in a composition in the same pathetic style; and this again was succeeded by a third, almost without pause or intermission, as if the artist's hand had been indefatigable, and the ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... After a lively overture by piano, violin, and harp, the three Misses Hunt, in Japanese costume, gave a prettily kittenish rendering of "Three Little Maids from School," selection from one of those Gilbert and Sullivan operettas latterly enchanting both England and America. The ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... a spell which banished fatigue. The main point was that the actors BELIEVED in what they represented; there was nothing in it like that vague, wearisome exhibition of "religiosity'' which, in spite of its wonderful overture, gave me, some years afterward, a painful ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... it be so to call a man a villain, it can be no less to shew him you suppose him one. Indeed, it may be wondered how any man can arrive at the boldness, I may say impudence, of first making such an overture to another; surely it is seldom done, unless to those who have previously betrayed some symptoms of their own baseness. If I have therefore shewn you any such, these insults are more pardonable; but I assure ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... To this overture Moggridge made no reply. Mr Beveridge laughed and continued lightly, "I had no idea you were so fond of exercise. I'd have given you a lead all round the park ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston
... stage the first person she saw was Montgomery, the very one she wished most to avoid. After having conducted the overture he had come up to find out the reason of the 'wait.' Dick was rushing about, declaring that if this ever occurred again half a-crown would be stopped ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... picked out an instrumental piece which we had not played all the evening. It was the finale of the overture to "Faust"; a selection, by the way, which was a great favourite of Harry's and is one of mine. Ariadne listened in silence ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... application. So with the other general feature in verse 12. A true wife is a fountain of good, and good only, all the days of her life—ay, and beyond them too, when her remembrance shines like the calm west after a cloudless sunset. This being, as it were, the overture, next follows the main ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... purse or his influence. Lord Buntingford was asked, and he and his family were good old Whigs. But he was nephew to Lord Alfred Grendall, first cousin to Miles Grendall, and abstained on behalf of his relatives. An overture was made to Sir Damask Monogram, who certainly could afford the contest. But Sir Damask did not see his way. Melmotte was a working bee, while he was a drone,—and he did not wish to have the difference pointed out by Mr Melmotte's supporters. Moreover, he preferred ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... we crept to the kitchen range; and we hibernated there, more or less, while the cold spell lasted. It was warm by the fifteenth, but on that day, in the hours of early dawn, we were awakened by a Wagnerian overture in the steam radiators. It became an anvil chorus ere long and there was no more sleep. By breakfast time we had all the things open that we could get open to let in fresh air and we were shouting to each other ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine
... assailing him from a different side, broached the precise story to which, in the case of Agrippa or Albertus Magnus, the Syndic was prepared to give credence, he had certainly received the overture with suspicion if not with contempt. He had certainly been very far from staking good florins upon it. But when the experimenter in the midst of the apparatus of science, and surrounded by things which imposed on the vulgar, denied their value, and laughed at the legends of wealth and ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... extent. But this obligation did not preclude me either from adopting such means of success as were best calculated to hasten a favourable result, or from accepting that result in a conciliatory though effective shape. By availing myself of an overture to communicate directly with the Sultan, I succeeded in obtaining all that was necessary, and in receiving His Highness' acknowledgments for the consideration I had ...
— Correspondence Relating to Executions in Turkey for Apostacy from Islamism • Various
... sit down at the prompt table there and make notes," directed Handy, "of our lay-out. We open with a grand overture by the Handel and Hayden Philharmonic Society; and as a matter of course, on account of their patriotic kindness in volunteering for the celebration of the anniversary of the foundation of Gotown, they will have an encore and will then play a medley of national American airs, 'Yankee Doodle,' ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... musicians, in order to keep together, agreed at length to follow the slight indications of time which the concertmeister (first violin-player) gave them; and not to attend to Beethoven's conducting-stick. Moreover, it should be observed, that conducting a symphony, an overture, or any other composition whose movements remain continual, vary little, and contain few nice gradations, is child's play in comparison with conducting an opera, or like work, where there are recitatives, airs, and numerous orchestral designs preceded ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... Piedmont, if Philip, on his side, would repeat the desertion of Crepy, and having brought England into the war, would leave her to endure her own losses, or avenge them by her single strength. With this secret meaning on the part of France, an overture for a peace was commenced in the autumn of 1558, through the mediation of the Duchess of Lorraine. An armistice was agreed upon, and the first conference was held at the abbey of Cercamp, where Arundel, Wotton, and Thirlby attended as the representatives ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... married. I was best man, and realized what a menstruum is music—what curious trafficking it causes, what opposites it intertwines. And the overture being finished the real curtain arose, as it does on all ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... Pope, that the present crisis should be utilized to settle for ever the constitutional difficulties between Upper and Lower Canada. He assured them of his willingness to co-operate for this end. Macdonald quickly responded to the overture, and the next day he and Galt met Brown in the St Louis Hotel, Quebec. It is worthy of note that at this interview Macdonald and Galt proposed, as a remedy for existing ills, a federal union of all the British North-American provinces. Brown, on the other ...
— The Day of Sir John Macdonald - A Chronicle of the First Prime Minister of the Dominion • Joseph Pope
... importance?—To myself, surely, were I to encourage his application: of the least to you. Nevertheless, if you do not, by your strange politics, unite that man and me as joint sufferers in one cause, you shall find me as much resolved to renounce him, as I am to refuse the other. I have made an overture to this purpose: I hope you will not give me reason to confirm my apprehensions, that it will be owing to you if it ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... singing "O Promise Me;" the professor was trying to kick the globes off the chandelier; Mrs. Bostwick had switched her recitation to "The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck," and Bessie had stolen into the parlor and was pounding out the overture from the "Flying Dutchman." ...
— American Fairy Tales • L. Frank Baum
... loosely. Her making this slight overture was enough to restore his sense of superiority; his resolve grew less unsteady. "It's the first time," he went on, "that we've really had the chance to judge how we actually feel toward each other—that's what's ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... this the first night of the Thessalonian play. It was already long past time for the performance to begin. The orchestra finished the overture and waited a few minutes; then began another selection. They played this through, and there was still no indication of the curtain going up. They played a third piece. The house became restless and began to clap for the appearance of the performers. No sign from the stage. ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... orders for the detention of the date-boats and other vessels which arrived off Aden, hoping to starve the Sultan into submission, by thus at once stopping his provisions, and cutting off his receipt of port dues. The blockade does not seem to have been very effectual: and an overture from the Futhali chief to aid with his tribe in an attack on the Abdallis, was of course declined by ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... increasing power, sought his friendship. He addressed a kind letter to him, and proposed that he should enter the service of Shah Tamasp, and aid that Prince in expelling the Afghans from Persia. Nadir pretended to listen to this overture, and earnestly desired that the King should grant him a pardon for his past offences. This was easily obtained; and he went to Khelat to receive it. He appears to have always deemed the Governor of that place as the chief obstacle to his rise; and at this moment he laid a ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... which assisted greatly in the uproar; while at the same time both men and women sang, shouted, and shrieked, until we, who stood at a little distance off, could scarcely hear each other's voices. The barbarous overture being brought to a conclusion, the king, who had been seated amongst his wives, rose, and springing into the centre of the circle, began snapping his fingers, twisting and turning in all sorts of attitudes, leaping from the ground, kicking up one ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... spoke, as Frederick very well knew. The young men had been boys together, and as Reuben was two years the elder, he assumed a tone in speaking which Frederick now keenly resented. But it was no time to repel an overture of help, and he sullenly forced himself to accept Reuben's good offices. The great clotted periwig was with some difficulty got off, and then it was possible to remove the worst of the tar from face and eyes. Frederick at last could ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... misunderstanding? Was it true, on one side, that formal notice had a few days ago been given to our Government by the United States to terminate the Reciprocity Treaty? and was it true that that notice had been entirely unaccompanied by any overture or suggestion for a re- discussion of the question? On the other and more friendly side, was it true that the vexatious passport system had been abrogated? and, above all, was it also true that the Government of Washington had expressed to Her Majesty's Government their intention to revoke ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... not close friends at all, and the latter was surprised at the overture. But she hospitably swept part of the lunch aside to make room for the visitors and offered them a couple ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... pounds more steam;" and he began humming the first bars of "Said the young Obadiah to the old Obadiah," which, as you must have noticed, is a pet tune among engines not made for high speed. Racing liners with twin screws sing "The Turkish Patrol" and the overture to the "Bronze Horse" and "Madame Angot," till something goes wrong, and then they give Gounod's "Funeral March of a ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... train, which swept and swirled in many bewildering folds as she slowly turned, courtesied, tripped forward and retreated, with such bending and twisting as would turn a ballet-master mad with envy. In all the movement of the overture the two dancers merely touched the tips of each other's fingers, and when the solemn measure came to a close the President slid across the floor in one graceful, immense pirouette, handing the lady who ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... screen, now extended all across the room; an attuning scream of the clarionet, moan of the violin, and grunt of the bassoon, faintly foretold the coming storm, which in a few seconds burst upon the ears in the most furious form of the "overture to Zampa" by the regimental band; this continued, with variations, but scarcely a lull, for ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... rustling of ladies' silks, and of cavaliers' velvets, and the grateful spectators took their seats, while the emperor, with a look of extreme satisfaction, opened the score of the Porno d'Oro, laid it on the ledge of the box, and began to hum the overture. ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... way in," answered Billy, accepting noncommittally the meat and the overture for peace. "They'll be here in less than ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... of his program. Are the somewhat picturesque episodes of "Harold in Italy," whatever their virtues, and they are many, more than vaguely related to the Byronism that ostensibly elemented them? The surprisingly conventional overture to "King Lear" makes one feel as though Berlioz had sat through a performance of one of Shakespeare's comedies under the impression that he was assisting at the tragedy, so unrelated to its subject is the music. And where, on the other hand, Berlioz did succeed in being regardful ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... tinkling bit of womanhood, a silly doll that says "Don't" when you squeeze it,—he actually mistook her for a goddess.' Ah! reader, don't you wish you could make such a splendid mistake? I do. I'd give anything to be once more sitting before the footlights for the first time, with the wonderful overture just beginning to ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... pursued, and how firmly it was maintained. When the Dutch established their trading settlements on the Hudson River, one of their first proceedings was to send an embassy to the Five Nations, with proposals for a treaty. The overture was promptly accepted. A strict alliance was formed, and was ratified in the usual manner by an exchange of wampum belts. When the English took the place of the Dutch, the treaty was renewed with them, and was confirmed in the ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... doubted. She possessed the faculty of telling interesting stories and novelettes, and with this apparently inexhaustible fund of invention she would amuse him between his periods of work. The description that we have of the composition of the great "Don Giovanni" overture gives a pleasing illustration of this phase of the family life. Owing to rehearsals and other work, the day before the performance arrived with no overture yet written. In the evening, according to his custom, ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... himself, much to his disgust; but that was the only time, for ever afterwards no sooner did the sheep-dipper and his weird-looking apparatus appear at night, in readiness for the performance on the morrow, than Viper remembered his undignified experience, and, before even the overture of the play commenced, vanished for the day. Nobody saw him go, or knew where he went, but it was useless to call or whistle, he was nowhere ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... conduct is not open to a trivial demur. He made his preparations for vindicating the laws in such a spirit of energy, as though he had resolved upon allowing no escape for the enemy; he opened a locus penitentiae, noiseless and indulgent to the feelings of the offenders, with so constant an overture of placability as if he had resolved upon letting them all escape. The kindness of the manner was as perfect as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... enemies, to royalists; as if those worn-out creatures had hearts, as if they could comprehend the struggle that took place in my mind between duty, and generosity to the fallen, before I could make the first overture to their acquaintance; as if they could understand the politeness of the heart, or anything nobler than curving and ducking and heartless etiquette. This is the last notice I will ever take of that old woman, unless ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... get out of the chaise; he said he would get out, and he did get out, and I took him into our bar parlour; when he got there I said, I am led to suppose, that you are the bearer of some very good news to this country;"—a very natural overture to conversation on the part of an innkeeper, and to extract a little intelligence from him; "he said, he was, that the business was all done—that the thing was settled; I asked him, if I might be allowed to ask him what was the nature of his dispatches? he said, he is dead; ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... beginning. After this overture the stings and slurs came thick and fast. It seemed to the dismayed Vice-President that every one in New York took delight in recalling to publicity some detail discreditable to his Bostonian discovery. From all over the East he began to receive applications for agencies from men whom even ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... freighting team, and were not leaders. But putting my own heavy oxen behind, my wild steers in the middle, and my horse in the lead, I made out a good freighting team. But I had to pass through Atchison. The business men of the place had already made this overture to me. They had said: "You can come to Atchison during the day time and we will guarantee that you shall not be molested, but we would rather you should not be here in the night. The South Carolinians are here, ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... I would be the first to speak. I—you know I think everything of you, Madeline." He went toward her in a futile way, with outstretched hand, but Madeline's eyes were down, and apparently she did not see the friendly overture. His face looked pale, strained and old as he stood for a moment before her, and the others ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... costly than other forms of play might be. Rifle practice is, indeed, a not unhealthy pastime, and a feather on the top of the head is a pleasing appendage; but while learning the stops and fingering of the sweet instrument, does no one ever calculate the cost of an overture? What melody does Tityrus meditate on his tenderly spiral pipe? The leaden seed of it, broadcast, true conical "Dents de Lion" seed—needing less allowance for the wind than is usual with that kind of herb—what crop ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... life of our nation and our Empire does this tremendous ceremony inaugurate? The question is inevitable. There is nothing in all the social existence of men so full of challenge as the crowning of a king. It is the end of the overture; the curtain rises. This is a new ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... and orange draperies, and loaded with gold and tinsel, and sparkling stones and spangles, all doubled in splendour by the reflection of a mirror in the background. The figures, set in motion by the same machinery which grinds the incomprehensible overture, perform a drama equally incomprehensible. At the left-hand corner is Daniel in the lion's den, the lion opening his mouth in six-eight time, and an angel with outspread wings, but securely transfixed through the loins by a revolving brass pivot, shutting it ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... Mahomed. During the representation, the Portuguese ladies and gentlemen seemed determined to forget the stage altogether, and to laugh, eat sweetmeats, and drink coffee, as if at home. When the musicians, however, began to play the overture to the ballet, every eye and voice was directed to the stage, and a loud call for the national hymn followed, and not till it had been played again and again, was the ballet suffered to proceed. During the bustle occasioned by this, a captain in the army was arrested and ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... slowly toward the door as the chatter becomes a babel and the practising preliminary to the overture issues in long pious groans ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... most unpretentious description. But his recitative is always solid and dignified, and often impassioned and pathetic. Music, too, owes him a great debt for his invention of what is known as the French form of overture, consisting of a prelude, fugue, and dance movement, which was afterwards carried to the highest conceivable ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... struck the desk sharply with a baton. It was the maestro! There was instant silence. He looked to the right; looked to the left; raised his baton; and lo! full, rich, sweet, melodious, blending in perfect harmony, sounded the opening chords of the overture!' ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... liberty to the officers. Although the detention of the Young Otter, and the cause of his being detained, had been made known to the Angry Snake, weeks passed away, and yet there appeared no intention on the part of the chief to redeem his young warrior by producing Percival. Every day an overture on his part was expected, but none came, and those who were in the secret were in a continual state of suspense and anxiety. One thing had been ascertained, which was that the Indian fired at by John had been killed, and this ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... passport for a person vested with full powers for that purpose. He named M. Maret as the proposed plenipotentiary of France; but the present state of affairs did not permit the British government to accede to such an overture, and no notice was taken of the application. On the contrary, a treaty, about this time, was concluded with the King of Sardinia, by which England bound herself to furnish a subsidy of L200,000 annually, to be paid three months in advance; and not to conclude peace with ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... evil, but no good could possibly result to either party. The savages however felt confident that success would again attend their arms, and deriving additional incentives to war from their proximity to the British fort, recently erected at the foot of the rapids, declined the overture for peace, and seemed ardently to desire the battle, which they knew must ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... they took a hearty Glass or two to the King, Queen, Duke, &c. And then the mighty Cake, teeming with the Fate of this extraordinary Personage, was brought in, the Musicians playing an Overture at the Entrance of the Alimental Oracle; which was then cut and consulted, and the royal Bean and Pea fell to those to whom Sir Philip had design'd 'em. 'Twas then the Knight began a merry Bumper, with three Huzza's, and, Long live King Would-be! to Goodland, who echo'd ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... in England to-day), I am reminded that the Promenade Concerts begin in August. You go to them. You smoke your cigar or cigarette (and I regret to say that you strike your matches during the soft bars of the "Lohengrin" overture), and you enjoy the music. But you say you cannot play the piano or the fiddle, or even the banjo; that ...
— How to Live on 24 Hours a Day • Arnold Bennett
... principal personage with whom I had to deal from the very outset of my mission. He was the object of my first overture. As soon as I arrived, I proceeded to the Convent, as his official residence is called, in full uniform, with all the captains belonging to my squadron. He received me with a politeness that bordered on the ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... O myriad sweet voices of the rain! How welcome is its delicate overture At evening, when the glowing-moistur'd west Seals all things with cool promise ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... from which she was no sooner recovered, than Mrs Tabitha began a lecture upon patience; which her brother interrupted with a most significant grin, 'True, sister, God increase my patience and your discretion. I wonder (added he) what sort of sonata we are to expect from this overture, in which the devil, that presides over horrid sounds, hath given us such variations of discord — The trampling of porters, the creaking and crashing of trunks, the snarling of curs, the scolding ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... trumpets that announce the Moor, No blast that makes the hero's welcome sure,— A single fiddle in the overture! ...
— East and West - Poems • Bret Harte
... another dust-cloud of the sultry sameness. She had been expecting a woman, a tempest choral with sky and mountain and valley-hollows, as the overture to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... then seeing me impregnably intrenched, will make the best of the marriage, especially as the groom is of royal blood. Next, an alliance with the French king against the emperor. Why not; was not Francis once ready to treat even with Solyman to defeat Charles, an overture which shocked Christendom? And while Charles' energies are bent to the task of protecting his country from the Turks, a new leader appears; a ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... with the large stage in front, so brightly illuminated with variegated lamps, and pots of burning fat, is 'Richardson's,' where you have a melodrama (with three murders and a ghost), a pantomime, a comic song, an overture, and some incidental music, all done in ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... Alexander's overture was unheeded at Vienna, at least for the moment, because Metternich was in Paris wooing Napoleon's good will. Simultaneously and openly, therefore, the fencing between Paris and St. Petersburg went on. A rejoinder to the counter-project was laid ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... arbiter. That body having considered the award as not obligatory and advised me to open a further negotiation, the proposition was immediately made to the British Government, but the circumstances to which I have alluded have hitherto prevented any answer being given to the overture. Early attention, however, has been promised to the subject, and every effort on my part will be made for a satisfactory settlement of this question, interesting to the Union generally, and particularly so to one ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson
... never hear Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture" without thinking of General de Flahault. The present Lord Lansdowne is ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... into partnership in the running of the Politics Class a strongly Conservative master. Such an arrangement would have been admirable had the genuine educational spirit been there. It was not. The overture was a failure and only added to our difficulties. To some men it seemed better to root out the Liberal masters as "traitors" than to ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell
... first in the orchestra stalls were Beauchamp and Debray, whose attention was divided between the stage and the arrivals of splendidly attired elegantes in the different loges, during the overture. All the elite of Paris seemed on the ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... charge of the fiddlers. The good women laughed for joy; the men winked at each other and popped their fists; it was like the charge of the Old Guard at Waterloo, or a battle with a den of snakes. Upon the completion of the grand overture of the fiddlers the brilliant programme of the "exhibition," which usually lasted all day, opened with "Mary had a little lamb;" and it gathered fury until it reached Patrick Henry's "Give me liberty or give me death!!!" The programme ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... enjoy such feelings, possess such virtues and speak them in such terms?" From what we have heard and seen, we entertain little doubt that there are men capable of asking such a question; but we know no way of answering it but by asking in return why an Esquimaux Indian should not compose an overture equal to any of Handel's, or a Dutch boor dance a pas seul as well as Vestris, or a minuet as well as ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... the Duke admitted him. There was but one idea in his head as to what was coming. His son had taken this way of making some communication to him respecting his political creed. Some overture or some demand was to be preferred through Tregear. If so, it was proof of a certain anxiety as to the matter on his son's part which was not displeasing to him. But he was not left long in this mistake after Tregear had entered the room. "Sir," ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... was sent to England at this time by the Emperor Nicholas to make the first overtures for the intervention of the Great Powers in the quarrel between the Sultan and the Pasha of Egypt. This overture was rejected by the Cabinet in 1839, but accepted on the Baron's return to England in the following year, and it led to the celebrated treaty of the 15th July, 1840, and the quarrel with France, the true object of Nicholas having been the severance of the Western Powers. M. de Brunnow remained ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... inquiries of matrimony, which would seem to indicate that I have no plan on the subject. Such is the fact. You are or were my projector in this line. If perchance I should have one, it will be executed before you will hear of the design. Yet I ought not to conceal that I have had a most amiable overture from a lady "who is always employed in something useful." She was, you know, a few months past, engaged to another; that other is suspended, if not quite dismissed. If I should meet her, and she should ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... his brothers, and several other Shawanoes of his own age, proposed to bet with him, that they could each kill as many deer, in the space of three days, as he could. Tecumseh promptly accepted the overture. The parties took to the woods, and at the end of the stipulated time, returned with the evidences of their success. None of the party, except Tecumseh, had more than twelve deer skins; he brought in upwards ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... minutes the overture was continued; then the band stopped and looked around with an air of triumph, while Joe uttered two or three more howls by way of effect, and to show that he could have kept it up ...
— Mr. Stubbs's Brother - A Sequel to 'Toby Tyler' • James Otis
... answered, that it will be personally agreeable to him, but that he could not accept it as yet, because he has allies whose concurrence is necessary. Dr Franklin is requested to acquaint Congress of this overture and the answer, and to engage them to send their instructions to their Plenipotentiaries. It is supposed that Congress will ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... by the devil, and not to be convinced, till too late, I replied to his peaceful overture by the most insulting irony: "You were not afraid to fire at a poor boy in the water," said I, "though you do not like to stand a shot in return. Come, come, take your ground, be a man, stand ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... second season, a reaction set in. The public was clamorous for a new work from him; he was tired of being lionized by people who called his beloved overture pretty. The madness of the spring was upon him, the spirit of work had seized him, and the middle of May found him and his long-suffering piano installed in the "north chamber" of the ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... all company in which there was no hopes of coming at the object of my longings, and used to shut myself up, to indulge in solitude some tender meditation on the pleasure I strongly perceived the overture of, in feeling and examining what nature assured me must be the chosen avenue, the gates for unknown bliss to enter at, ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... Massachusetts, her face and figure would have ornamented any light-opera stage. I never looked at her but I thought so; and her cuffs and apron merely accentuated the delusion. Such ankles are seldom seen when the curtain rises after the overture. Odd that frivolous thoughts could flit through an intellect dedicated ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... America. He had not powers, but he would have taken upon himself to join with us if we would have begun by recognizing the Spanish-American States. This we could not do, and so we went on alone. But I have no doubt that his report to his government of this sounding, which he probably represented as an overture, had a great share in producing the explicit declarations of the President."—Canning to ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... now struck up the overture. It was a skilfully arranged medley of well-known popular war-songs, interlarded with the Dessauer and Hohenfriedberger march, as if the enthusiasm of the audience were to be carried to the highest pitch by brilliant reminiscences of the heroic deeds ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... libertine will think he has a right to insult her with his licentious passion; and should the unhappy creature shrink from the insolent overture, he will sneeringly taunt her with pretence ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... of the National Association, duly discussed, and so far as one of the parties could do, accepted; that is, the National Society pledged itself to be merged into a Union Association, provided the American would make the same surrender at its first Anniversary. But as this overture for peace was rejected, the mission of the Union Society ended, leaving the National free to reassert itself and go forward with its catholic platform and persistent demands for "National protection for United States citizens," while the American devoted ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... means that it is a mistake for an officer, on taking a new post, to order sweeping changes affecting other men, in the belief that this will give him a reputation for action and firmness. The studying of the situation is the overture to the steadying of it. The story is told of Gen. Curtis E. LeMay of the Air Force. Taking over the 21st Bomber Command in the Marianas, he faced the worried staff officers of his predecessor and said quietly, "You're all staying put. I assume you know your jobs ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... was ready to embrace every overture for a new enterprise; especially if attended with an offer of money, of which he was very greedy, very prodigal, and very indigent. Richard Pace, formerly secretary to Cardinal Bambridge, and now secretary of state, was despatched to the court of Vienna, and had a commission to propose some considerable ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... distinct overture, a disclosure of the man's innermost mind. Jorgenson, of course, had met it with a profound silence. His task was not diplomacy but the care ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... enquiry. The Committee were therefore not unwilling to accede to the wishes of the two august visitors, and a letter was soon sent to New Zealand, asking the archdeacon to overlook the past, and to take once more his honoured place on the staff of the mission. Henry Williams accepted the overture—tardy as it was—and from his residence at Pakaraka continued to carry on his old work during the remainder ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... opportunity of revenge. 2. Music to the melodrama, "Die Rache wartet," (Vengeance waits,) by Willibald Alexis, the scenes of which are laid in Poland at the time of Napoleon's fatal Russian expedition. "This background was the theme of the music, which consisted of little more than the overture and entr'actes, but was held by musicians of note to be both grand and profound. The character of the campaign of 1812, especially, was given in the overture with terrible truth of expression. Still, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... her staccato notes and semi-professional minauderies, is not exactly a queen of song. Nor does it give one any exquisite delight to hear Sir Raucisonous Trombone give tongue in a French romance. The talented band of the Piccadilly Troubadours, floundering through the overture to Zampa, hardly satisfies a refined musical ear. But, however indifferent in a musical point of view, from the point of view of the fair projector the thing is a success. It serves as a trap to catch duchesses, a device for ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... the gate before the courthouse. Here, too, however, the crowd was densest, having gathered at the spot as if the roar of powder from the camp was an overture to Weir's arrest and appearance. It had proved a prelude to his appearance, at any rate. The crowd perceived him with Madden and it believed him a prisoner even if not handcuffed and marched with a ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... were for the defence of the Golden Gate. Any one of these mines was capable of destroying a dozen battleships, and there were over a hundred mines. The destruction was terrific, but it was only Gluck's overture. He played his flashes down the Mare Island shore, blowing up five torpedo boats, the torpedo station, and the great magazine at the eastern end of the island. Returning westward again, and scooping ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... last-mentioned instrument he has few equals, while for it he has arranged and composed a great deal of music. He has also composed many fine pieces for orchestras and for the piano. When only about twenty years of age, he composed a grand overture called "The Pilgrim." He enjoys an enviable reputation in New York as a teacher of music, and is very remarkable for the enthusiastic, devoted attention he gives to the study of the art. As Mr. Douglass is but thirty years old,—having ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... very short, the singers in the opera having time to repose themselves and change their costume, when necessary, while the dancers are executing their pirouettes and exhibiting their graceful steps. The overture to the second act began; and, at the first sound of the leader's bow across his violin, Franz observed the sleeper slowly arise and approach the Greek girl, who turned around to say a few words to him, and then, leaning forward again on the railing of her box, she became ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... heaved, and she was just about to speak, when, there was a sudden clap as of thunder, and she leaped up in her seat. But it was only the beginning of the overture, and she sat down laughing. There was a tender passage in the music; and after it was over she was very quiet for a while, and then whispered to Polly that she hoped little Johnnie wasn't worse to-night, and it seemed wicked to enjoy one's self when ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... not to be had for the asking. Humours must first be accorded in a kind of overture or prologue; hour, company and circumstance be suited; and then, at a fit juncture, the subject, the quarry of two heated minds, springs up like a deer out of the wood. Not that the talker has any of ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... is uneasy about her. Shall I play to you a little, Mr. Sefton? It is getting too dark to read." Bessie made this overture as a sort of amends to Richard, and the friendly little ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... was giving way to such thoughts as these, and vainly endeavouring to make up his mind as to what he would do, that Martin made his offer to Anty. To tell the truth, it was Martin's sister Meg who had made the first overture; and, as Anty had not rejected it with any great disdain, but had rather shown a disposition to talk about it as a thing just possible, Martin had repeated it in person, and had reiterated it, till Anty had at last taught herself to look upon it as ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... bought, they might as well be used. So that evening, as they sat in the theater listening to the lively overture, even Miss Lydia was minded to relegate their troubles, for the hour, to second place. The Major, in spotless linen, with his extraordinary coat showing only where it was closely buttoned, and his white hair smoothly roached, looked really fine and distinguished. The curtain went ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... descent from Humphrey Duke of Gloucester (with whom, indeed, I have no doubt, in spite of chronology, that she very often dined), was commissioned to inquire of me diplomatically, and without committing Abbey Hill too much by the overture, whether I would take a large and antiquated mansion, in which abbots were said to have lived many centuries ago, and which was still popularly styled Abbots' House, situated on the verge of the Hill, as in that case the "Hill" ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... scream marked the overture—a scream of fear and of pain, which dropped to a groan, and moaned out into the silence of which it ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... to a friend for not coming to visit her, Margaret tells of the "sweet pure air of our Virginia mountains," of the morning "overture of the birds," "such as all the Parodis and Linds and Albonis in the world could never equal." She tantalizes her friend with a glowing picture of a gallop "over misty hills, down into little green shaded glens, under overhanging ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... a profound political pamphlet under the guise of a brilliant novel may find it in "Sibyl, or The Two Nations." The gay overture of "The Eve of the Derby," at a London club, with which the curtain rises, contrasts with the evening amusements of the proletaire in the gin-palaces of Manchester in a more than operatic effectiveness, and yet falls rather below than rises ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... they were in the box when the overture began. The opera was Verdi—Aida. If it is impossible to be in an important box at the opera without experiencing the strange intoxication of social pre-eminence, it is just as impossible to be there without some feeling of horror at the sight ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... say nothing of the plays, and the projects for plays, with which, for some time past, he had seen his daily post-bag distended. He had made out, on looking at these things, no difference at all from one to the other. Here, however, was something more—something that made his fellow-guest's overture independently interesting and, as he might imagine, important. He smiled, he was friendly and vague; said "A work of fiction, I suppose?" and that he didn't pretend ever to pronounce, that he in fact quite hated, always, to have to, not ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... time," she said swiftly. "Why, the theatre's all full by now. The people are all in. They're tuning up for the overture. Look at it!" She pointed a wavering finger ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... to life, an overture in which the theme of the impending work is exquisitely hinted at, but which remains nevertheless only a symbol and a promise. What is to follow, if all goes well, begins presently to appear. Passion settles down into possession, courtship into partnership, pleasure into habit. ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... answer to their Commissioners at London. The Assemblies Letter to the Kirks in the Netherlands. Ordinance concerning Bursars. Ordinance for up lifting and imploying Penalties contained in Acts of Parliament, upon pious uses. An Overture concerning Promises of Marriage made by Minors, to those with whom they have committed Fornication. Act concerning dissenting voices in Presbyteries and Synods. Act concerning the Election of a Moderator in Provinciall Assemblies. Act for ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... had never yet quite abandoned the hope that Ralph who was not the heir might yet possess the place; and when he heard of his nephew's doings, heard falsehood as well as truth, from day to day he built up new hopes. He had not expected any such overture as that which had come from Sir Thomas; but if, as he did expect, Ralph the heir should go to the Jews, why should not the Squire purchase the Jews' interest in his own estate? Or, if Ralph the heir should, more wisely, deal with some great money-lending office, why should not he redeem ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... considerable difficulty in making the overture to the two ladies,—or rather in making it to the elder lady; for the suggestion, if made to the daughter, must of course come to her from her mother. It had been decided at last that the Lady Anna could not be invited to the rectory till it had been positively ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... which was intended. Accordingly, he now made up his mind to ascertain the truth for himself—to which end he found himself speedily knocking at the door of Hazon's room, the while marvelling at his own unwonted perturbation lest his overture should be ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... now transformed into a rustic theater. One big door was open, and seats, arranged lengthwise, faced the red table-cloths which formed the curtain. A row of lamps made very good foot-lights, and an invisible band performed a Wagner-like overture on combs, tin trumpets, drums, and pipes, with ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... 1. Overture—Le Caid Ambroise Thomas 2. Waltz—Ruby Royal Louis Gregh 3. Selection—War Songs Arr. by George Purdy Introducing the following selections: Kingdom Coming, When This Cruel War Is Over, Babylon Is Fallen, [Transcriber's note: Unreadable text], The ...
— Shenandoah - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Bronson Howard
... both these worlds in him; he is the man of thought and the man of action. Hitherto in his career the stress has been upon the former; henceforth it is to be upon the latter. In this Book, which is the overture marking the change in the key-note of the poem, we have three distinct facts brought out prominently and through them we can grasp the general structure. There is, first, the departure of Ulysses from Phaeacia and arrival at Ithaca; secondly, when this is finished, there is ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... Maceo and shot him down unarmed. It is said that his friends recovered his body and buried it in a secret place unknown to the Spaniards, who were anxious to obtain it for exhibition as a trophy of war in Havana. Maceo was equal to Toussaint L'Overture of San Domingo. His public life was consecrated to liberty; he knew no vice nor mean action; he would not permit any around him. When he landed in Cuba from Porto Rico he was told there were no arms. He replied, "I will get them with my machete," and he left five thousand to ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson
... not to be able to be present at the welcome of the American Peace Society to the delegation of more than two hundred members of the British Parliament who favor international arbitration. Few events have more profoundly impressed me than the presentation of this peaceful overture to the President of the United States. It seems to me that every true patriot who seeks the best interests of his country and every believer in the gospel of Christ must respond to the admirable address of Sir Lyon Playfair and that ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... perfectly right, my worthy friend," replied Aramis, constantly consulting with his looks the countenance of Biscarrat, who was silent and constrained. "You wish, M. de Biscarrat, to say something to us, to make us some overture, and you dare not—is not ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... of their Noble Mightinesses for the Department of War, who, in virtue of the commissarial resolutions of the 9th of May, 1781, the 16th of January, and the 20th of March, of the present year, 1782, have examined the resolution of their High Mightinesses of the 4th of May, 1781, containing an overture, that the President of the Assembly of their High Mightinesses had made, 'that a person, styling himself J. Adams, had been with him, and had given him to understand that he had received letters of credence for their High Mightinesses from the United States ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... tremor went through her. Had he wanted her so very badly after all? Not once since their wedding-day had he made any friendly overture or responded to any overture of hers. They were as completely strangers now as they had been on the day ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... themselves. All sentiment was extracted, as quite out of place, and sublimity was made to give way to a more temperate and stoical standard. In due time the Rationalists effected their purpose. Secular music was introduced into the sanctuary; an operatic overture generally welcomed the people into church, and a march or a waltz dismissed them. Sacred music was no longer cultivated as an element of devotion. The oratorios and cantata of the theatre and beer-garden were the Sabbath accompaniments of the sermon. ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... there, with an expression so devilish on his face that Barndale regarded him with amazement. Demetri Agryopoulo, salaried hanger-on to the Persian embassy, was glaring like a roused wild beast at these two shadowy figures in the shadow of the orchestra. The band was crashing away at the overture to 'Tannhaeuser,' the people were laughing and chattering as they circled, and not an eye but Barndale's regarded this drama in the corner. The Greek's hand was in his bosom, where it clutched something with ...
— An Old Meerschaum - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... indeed it was rather the languor of waiting for what was going to happen than the weariness of experience gone by. She was weary, not because of the past, but because the fairy theatre of life still kept its curtain down, and forced her to play over and over again the impatient overture of ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... to-night to Roselands with the simple purpose of making friends with the man she loves, then, sir, that man would be a heartless churl indeed if he were not touched and gratified, and did not accept with eagerness such an overture. But, sir, but! There is more, I think, in your visit to-night than meets the eye. You demand that I shall become my party's candidate for the governorship. I answer it is not now possible. You insist that I shall busy myself with improvements here at Roselands, and to ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... best of his chamber-music pieces, fourteen pianoforte sonatas, among them the "Pastorale" and the "Appassionata," and his only opera "Fidelio." This opera, which was first named "Leonore," with an overture that was afterward abandoned, had its first public performance in Vienna just before Napoleon's entry into the capital in 1805. After three representations it was withdrawn. Nearly ten years later, ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... smiled grimly. She understood this as an overture for peace, knowing her young mistress was never so thoughtful and conciliatory as just after being most unreasonable and peremptory. She rightly conjectured that the girl was already ashamed of her sharpness, and wished ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... negotiations. He had taken a mortal dislike to Riccabocca; he was very much frightened by him—and the spectacles, the pipe, the cloak, the long hair, and the red umbrella; and said so sturdily, in reply to every overture, "Please, sir, I'd rather not; I'd rather stay along with mother"—that Riccabocca was forced to suspend all further experiments in his Machiavellian diplomacy. He was not at all cast down, however, by his first failure; on the contrary, he was one of those men whom opposition ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... day they suddenly stopped to listen, for they heard distant music. "That must be the ending of an overture," said the Dog. "I should judge by the sound we were now about three miles from the ...
— A Book of Cheerful Cats and Other Animated Animals • J. G. Francis
... voortrekker[Afrikaans]. prelude, preamble, preface, prologue, foreword, avant-propos[Fr], protasis[obs3], proemium[obs3], prolusion[obs3], proem, prolepsis[Gram], prolegomena, prefix, introduction; heading, frontispiece, groundwork; preparation &c. 673; overture, exordium[Lat], symphony; premises. prefigurement &c. 511; omen &c. 512. Adj. precursory; prelusive, prelusory, preludious[obs3]; proemial[obs3], introductory, prefatory, prodromous[obs3], inaugural, preliminary; precedent &c. (prior) 116. Phr. "a precedent embalms ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... find a more perfect morning than this in early March. The sun was heralded over the hills in a blaze of glory; meadow larks strung like beads on a telegraph wire were calling their cheery notes, and robins were singing their overture to the morning sun. ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... "Tannhaeuser," and the "Schildbuerger." His "Phantasus" (1812) contained original tales conceived in the same spirit. Scherer says that Tieck uttered the manifesto of German romanticism in the following lines from the overture of his "Kaiser Octavianus": ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... playing?' I should have started up with light grace, and without overturning my glass or stumbling over the bench, but in a curved posture, moving one step and a half forward, I should have answered: 'Give me leave, Mademoiselle! it is the overture of the Donauweibchen;' or, 'It is just going to strike six.' Could any mortal in the world have taken it ill of me? No! I say; the girls would have looked over, smiling so roguishly, as they always do when I pluck up heart to show them ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... indeed, that she, the grand-daughter of Henry the Great, Mademoiselle d'Eu, Mademoiselle de Dombes, Mademoiselle d'Orleans, Mademoiselle the King's first cousin, the Mademoiselle destined to the throne, should ask the King's permission to marry a Gascon cadet. Louis, as the sequel to an overture made to him by several nobles collectively, friends of Lauzun, with M. de Montausier at their head, granted his permission. But when the question arose, thanks to the blind vanity of Lauzun, of their union being celebrated at the Louvre and ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... presented to Lord Grenville; but its inutility, or danger, in the proud and exacting mood then prevalent at Paris, is obvious. The confidential reports sent by "M. S." from Paris to Lord Grenville do not refer to any such overture to the Cabinet.[153] ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... the devil, and not to be convinced, till too late, I replied to his peaceful overture by the most insulting irony: "You were not afraid to fire at a poor boy in the water," said I, "though you do not like to stand a shot in return. Come, come, take your ground, be a man, stand up, ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... she could not ride away from the party, after Mrs. Maxwell assailed her with a motive for her conduct, Joanna could not repel his overture. It was incredibly trying to her. He saw how differently she was affected from her sisters. He was aware of another influence. He felt very uncomfortable. Why, the very flesh of his arm, which she touched lightly enough, crept, when the superstition of the old ordeal of the bier flashed upon ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... beset the doors of the theatre. A flashing of silks, satins, brocades, tulle and jewelry, distinguished the throng pressing eagerly into the lobbies, and seeking with more confusion than grace seats in the dress circle. The orchestra has played an overture, and the house presents a lively picture of bright-colored robes. Mr. Snivel's handsome figure is seen looming out of a private box in the left-hand procenium, behind the curtain of which, and on the opposite side, a mysterious ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... had arrived at the gate before the courthouse. Here, too, however, the crowd was densest, having gathered at the spot as if the roar of powder from the camp was an overture to Weir's arrest and appearance. It had proved a prelude to his appearance, at any rate. The crowd perceived him with Madden and it believed him a prisoner even if not handcuffed and marched with a ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... I no longer sigh the nights alone. But should the fair, affected, vain, or nice, Scream with the fears inspired by frogs or mice; Cry, 'Save us, Heaven! a spectre, not a man!' Her hartshorn snatch or interpose her fan: If I my tender overture repeat; Oh! may my vows her kind reception meet! May she new graces on my form bestow, And with tall honours ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... the affirmative, wondering if this were a friendly overture. He had noticed that Mr Smith's eyes had a sort of inward look as though he had disliked or disdained his surroundings. The captain's wife had disappeared then down the companion stairs. Mr Smith said ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... was not long before my father had as many scholars as he could find time to attend. And when they assembled at my father's to make little concerts, I was frequently called to join the second violin in an overture, for my father found pleasure in giving me sometimes a lesson before the instruments were laid by, after practising with DIETRICH, for I never was missing at those hours, sitting in a corner with my knitting and ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... elbow. Very many of the Sonnets I do not care for: mostly because of the Subject: but there is pretty sure to be some beautiful line or expression in all; and all pure, tender, noble, and—original. Old Spedding supplies a beautiful Prose Overture to this delightful Volume: never was Critic more one with his Subject—or, Object, is it? Frederick Tennyson, my old friend, ought to have done something to live along with his Brothers: all who will live, I believe, of their Generation: and he perhaps would, if he ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... nods and facetious remarks to their friends in the audience (familiarities from which a paid orchestra would have been totally cut off), the musicians dashed into a new overture, composed by Signor Mancussi, also "expressly ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... one laying hold of the bow, and the other the stern, they swung it between them, as two washerwomen might a basket of dirty clothes. I must confess that I was a great deal mortified at seeing my command treated thus slightingly, which mortification was not a little increased by an overture that they kindly made to me, saying, that if I were at all tired, they would, with all the pleasure in the world, carry me in ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... the overture, up went the curtain. If it was a play, and the play was in German or Russian or Italian, I had but to touch Mary's little finger to understand it all—a true but incomprehensible thing. For well as I might understand, I could not have spoken ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... the award as not obligatory and advised me to open a further negotiation, the proposition was immediately made to the British Government, but the circumstances to which I have alluded have hitherto prevented any answer being given to the overture. Early attention, however, has been promised to the subject, and every effort on my part will be made for a satisfactory settlement of this question, interesting to the Union generally, and particularly so to one ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson
... siege of which had already reached near twice the duration of that of Troy. To supply the deficiencies of the Turkish marine, which had been almost ruined by the repeated naval victories of the Venetians, an overture was made to the English ambassador, Lord Winchilsea, for permission to hire the services of a number of British vessels; but this strange request being evaded, the expedition was postponed for a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... evidently taken great pains with his dress (a bright pink satin cravat was rather striking) and thanked the butler most gratefully every time he handed him a dish—"Je vous remercie beaucoup, Monsieur." We had our two grand pianos and were going to play the overture of Tannhaeuser, one of the simplest and most melodious of Wagner's compositions. The performers were Francis and I, Mlle. Dubois and the organist. It was a little difficult to arrange who he should play with. He was very nervous at the idea of playing with Mlle. Dubois—rather frightened ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... vindicating the laws in such a spirit of energy, as though he had resolved upon allowing no escape for the enemy; he opened a locus penitentiae, noiseless and indulgent to the feelings of the offenders, with so constant an overture of placability as if he had resolved upon letting them all escape. The kindness of the manner was as perfect as the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... was infamous and extraordinary. No reasonings can explain it. It was both ridiculous and provoking. At first, he employed himself in fomenting quarrels, and devising schemes to embark the sultan in his cause. Vizier after vizier was flattered and assailed. He rejected every overture for his peaceable return. He lingered five years in endless intrigues and negotiations, in order to realize the great dream of his life—the dethronement of the czar. He lived recklessly on the bounty of the sultan, taking no hints that even imperial hospitality ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... Parisian breeding of Mademoiselle Viefville to preserve her gravity during this overture, though she kept her bright animated, French-looking eyes, roaming over the assembly, with an air of delight that, as Mr. Bragg would say, made her very popular. No one else in the party from the Wigwam, Captain Truck excepted, dared look up, but each kept his or her eyes riveted on the floor, ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... Monteverde. Charm in exploring resources of instrumentation. Operatic overture. Forge of genius. Dance of obscure origin. Craving for individual expression. Touch of authority by Corelli. Cardinal Ottoboni's palace. Symphony, a sonata for orchestra. Purcell, Scarlatti, Sammartini and the Bachs. Monophonic style. Contrasting movements. ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... to marry, and the emperor, my master, who is very fond of you, has a sister touching whom I have orders to speak to you if you will be pleased to hearken." It was to Charles V.'s eldest sister, Eleanor, widow of Manuel the Fortunate, King of Portugal, that allusion was made. This overture led to nothing at the time; but the next year, in 1522, war was declared between Francis I. and Charles V.; the rupture between Francis I. and the Duke of Bourbon took place; the Bourbon lawsuit was begun; and the duke's mother-in-law, Anne of France, daughter of Louis XI., more concerned for the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... and kind; with cures for all these evils; and to end finally by a grand climax of supplication, invocation, imprecation, resignation, and beatification, in the regular crash of a stout-expiring overture. ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... often looked at it when he was not too busy with something else. He had even championed his goddess against Lucia, when she pronounced that Wagner was totally lacking in knowledge of dramatic effects. To be sure she had never seen any Wagner opera, but she had heard the overture to Tristram performed at the Queen's Hall, and ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... seen, it is probable you have been equally favored, Miss Melville, since you were together," said Ernest, in the same cold undertone. The orchestra was playing a magnificent overture, there was laughter and merriment around us, so the conversation in ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... the best of the marriage, especially as the groom is of royal blood. Next, an alliance with the French king against the emperor. Why not; was not Francis once ready to treat even with Solyman to defeat Charles, an overture which shocked Christendom? And while Charles' energies are bent to the task of protecting his country from the Turks, a new leader appears; ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... telephone number without being measured for his wedding coat. On the Continent of Europe, and especially in the Latin countries, where class barriers are more formidable, the situation differs materially, and to the disadvantage of the girl. If she makes an overture, it is an invitation to disaster; her hope of lawful marriage by such means is almost nil. In consequence, the prudent and decent girl avoids such overtures, and they must be made by third parties or by the man ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... an overture by Elgar, and the full solemn sonorous music had drawn to its properly majestic close. Beside me sat an artist friend who is a lover of music, and regularly attends these Promenade Concerts. He removed the cigarette from his lips and chuckled softly to himself for some moments. Then he replaced ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... artillery to join Sir John. About eight o'clock, when within about three miles of Ghuzni, we heard the first symptoms that the game of war was beginning: our batteries were firing on the place, and the garrison were returning it with good effect; it served as a sort of overture to the opera in which we knew ...
— Campaign of the Indus • T.W.E. Holdsworth
... Marie Antoinette admired them or not, she had far too proper a sense of dignity to allow herself to be entrapped into the acceptance of an obligation by one whom she so deservedly despised. She replied coldly that she had jewels enough, and did not desire to increase the number. But the overture thus made by Madame du Barri could not be kept secret, and more than one of her partisans followed the hint afforded by her example, and showed a desire to make their peace with their future queen. The Duc d'Aiguillon ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... Afghanistan, and Dost Mahomed, both in rage and terror, began to look around him for a foreign alliance. His grand aim was to secure the friendship of the British; but this was scornfully refused. The governor-general, with exquisite irony, replied to his overture: 'My friend, you are aware that it is not the practice of the British government to interfere with the affairs of other independent states!' and a British envoy to Cabool, while refusing everything that was important for him to ask, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various
... developed Sonata-allegro form is the design in which the classic overture and the first movement of the symphony, sonata and concerto are usually framed. The student must be careful not to confound this musical form with the complete sonata of three or four movements. It is not to be called the "sonata form," but the "sonata-allegro form." ...
— Lessons in Music Form - A Manual of Analysis of All the Structural Factors and - Designs Employed in Musical Composition • Percy Goetschius
... poured forth with rapidity and yet with distinctness, rather astonished the girls. They were afraid they had lost Mrs. Ellsworthy for their friend, and they, every one of them, hailed this overture of kindness with delight. Innocent Primrose never even suspected that a pound a week for the lodging and maintenance of three girls was at all unusually cheap. She little guessed that Mrs. Ellsworthy had written to her special friend, Mrs. Moore, telling ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... To show forth the mind of the Master, who guides With baton unerring Time's mixture of tides, The good with the evil, the blessing and bane, The Amazon rushing far into the main, Until, from this skill'd combination of notes, Bound earth to the heavens His overture floats!" ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... had been over; the Allied planes had retaliated. Houses, emptied like cart-loads of bricks into the street, were significant of the ruin that was pending. Any moment the orchestra of destruction might break into its overture. Without cessation one could hear a distant booming. The fiddlers ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... she never afterward remembered. It was all merely a succession of delicious sensations for the palate, for the eye, for the ear when the excellent orchestra was playing some gay overture from one of the newer musical ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... fowl going through a quickset hedge, and Mr Saltzburg, brandishing his baton as if he were conducting an unseen orchestra, plunged through the scenery at the left upper entrance and charged excitedly down the stage. Having taken his musicians twice through the overture, he had for ten minutes been sitting in silence, waiting for the curtain to go up. At last, his emotional nature cracking under the strain of this suspense, he had left his conductor's chair and plunged down under the stage by way of the musician's ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... were disposed over a hundred mines. These mines were for the defence of the Golden Gate. Any one of these mines was capable of destroying a dozen battleships, and there were over a hundred mines. The destruction was terrific, but it was only Gluck's overture. He played his flashes down the Mare Island shore, blowing up five torpedo boats, the torpedo station, and the great magazine at the eastern end of the island. Returning westward again, and scooping in occasional isolated magazines on the high ground back from the ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... newspapers were full of the war from the moment of its breaking out. The arrangements for special correspondents and news from the front were more complete than they had ever been before, and as the astounding drama swiftly advanced from the trivial overture at Saarbruck to the overwhelming catastrophe at Sedan, the civilised world had eyes and ears for nothing else. Barely seven weeks elapsed between the declaration of war and the surrender of the Emperor and the fall of his empire. During those seven weeks, public opinion in this ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... junction of the Miami and Le Glaize rivers, he, in August, 1794, went down the Miami River, with about one thousand men, until he came close to a British post, at the foot of the rapids of the river. Here he sent a last overture to the Indians, promising peace if they would lay down their arms. Upon their rejecting this, he, on August 20th, moved to the head of the rapids, and attacked them with such vigor, using again his favorite weapon, the bayonet, that their ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... waits,) by Willibald Alexis, the scenes of which are laid in Poland at the time of Napoleon's fatal Russian expedition. "This background was the theme of the music, which consisted of little more than the overture and entr'actes, but was held by musicians of note to be both grand and profound. The character of the campaign of 1812, especially, was given in the overture with terrible truth of expression. Still, however, the work did not succeed." 3. "Undine's Greeting," ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... photograph to Freshmen, but has he no successor? How about the old fellow who sold hot chestnuts at football games—"a nickel a bush"—a rare contraction meant to denote a bushel—in reality fifteen nuts and fifteen worms. Does George Felsburg still play the overture at Poli's, reading his newspaper the while, and do comic actors still jest ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... ample funds by the munificence of citizens who remained, and sent forward to Virginia, to make their breasts a shield for the proud old "Mother of Presidents." The battle of Bethel was regarded as part of an overture to the opera of Blood, yclept "Subjugation," and people watched in silence for the crimson curtain to rise on the banks of the Potomac. Russell Aubrey had succeeded in raising a fine full company for the war, as contra-distinguished from twelve-months ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... permission. {27} For almost simultaneously came the news of a Bulgarian loan contracted in the Austro-German market—an event which made him abandon all hopes of conciliating Bulgaria and profiting by the British overture. During the months when the revival of the Balkan League was perhaps still practicable, he had combated the only expedient which might have given it a chance of realization: by the time he became a convert, it was ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... tenor came who could be counted on to make a sensation with his high notes in the familiar trio of men, Auber's opera, its inspiration as a type, had had so few representations that it had passed out of memory except for its overture. But the history of "La Muette" is full of anomalies. Its story is Neapolitan and there is Neapolitan color in its music; but it is nothing if not French. It inspired Rossini to write "William Tell" and Meyerbeer to write "Les Huguenots" for the French stage, and ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... loaded with gold and tinsel, and sparkling stones and spangles, all doubled in splendour by the reflection of a mirror in the background. The figures, set in motion by the same machinery which grinds the incomprehensible overture, perform a drama equally incomprehensible. At the left-hand corner is Daniel in the lion's den, the lion opening his mouth in six-eight time, and an angel with outspread wings, but securely transfixed through the loins by a revolving brass pivot, shutting it again to the same lively movement. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... people as a means of provisional or potential coercion in the proper case arising. One traitor cannot exist as a public and demonstrative character without many minor traitors to back him. To Great Britain it ought to cost no visible effort, resolutely and instantly to trample out every overture of insubordination as quietly, peacefully, effectually, as the meeting of conspirators at Clontarf on the 8th day of October 1843. Ireland is notoriously, by position and by imaginary grievances—grievances ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... I see it is time for us to withdraw; the Actors are preparing to begin. Play away the Overture. ...
— The Beggar's Opera • John Gay
... man takes a fancy to any one [of the young women,] it is not considered as absolutely necessary, that he should make an overture to the girl herself. The first object is to agree with the parents, concerning the recompense to be given them for the loss of the company and services of their daughter. The value of two slaves is a common price, unless the girl is thought very handsome; in which case, the parents will raise ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... heavy artillery may be only the preliminary overture to the desperate engagement; and it seems to me that several days might be spent in manoeuvring into position before the shock of arms occurs, which will lay so many heads low in ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... the Dessalines School in the 1700 block on 12th Street, North, Mississippi colonists are in preponderant majority. The towns represented here are located in the northeastern part of that State. In the vicinity of the L'Overture School are distinct colonies from west Tennessee and Alabama. On Lawton Avenue, another popular street, Mississippians also are in majority. What makes migration to St. Louis from these States easy is probably its convenient location and direct railway communication with them. ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott
... I know how abruptly this chosen calm of my life was to be broken nor how these same studies were to be turned in a new and strange direction. But if on this night which was to witness the overture of a horrible drama, I had not hitherto experienced any premonition of the coming of those dark forces which were to change the whole tenor of my existence, suddenly, now, in sight of the elm tree which stood before my cottage ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... nature, cannot be doubted. She possessed the faculty of telling interesting stories and novelettes, and with this apparently inexhaustible fund of invention she would amuse him between his periods of work. The description that we have of the composition of the great "Don Giovanni" overture gives a pleasing illustration of this phase of the family life. Owing to rehearsals and other work, the day before the performance arrived with no overture yet written. In the evening, according to his custom, Mozart began the task by sketching out the themes and a general plan of construction for ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... from his box on the roof of the Grand Stand, Mr. Isidore gave the signal for which the orchestra waited. With a loud outburst of horns and trumpets and a deep rolling of drums the overture began. ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Mother Superior, alas! would be sure to make inquiries as to the friends whom she had visited—the magic violin of M. Szmera played its first notes, accompanied by Madame Odinska on the piano, and by a delicious little flute. They played an overture, the dreamy sweetness of which extorted cries of admiration ...
— Jacqueline, v3 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... the Balkan complications of the last ten years, which form the overture to the present war, the Jewish organisations in Western Europe and America—chiefly the London Jewish Conjoint Committee—lost no opportunity of keeping the grievances of the Rumanian Jews before the Great Powers and of maintaining the liberties ...
— Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question • Lucien Wolf
... your ear. I bring no overture of war, no taxation of homage: I hold the olive in my hand; my words are as full ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... misquote his author's meaning while he is picking off his outside sentences. He may make as great a blunder as that simple prince who praised the conductor of his orchestra for the piece just before the overture; the musician was too good a courtier to tell him that it was only the tuning ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the supervisor answered sharply. He recognized the overture for what it was, felt relieved that he wouldn't have any more insubordination, was willing to let bygones be bygones—after a suitable period of punishment. "What's been happening?" he asked with a curiosity that got the better of ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... and looking at the friendly propounder, 'that's nae bad overture, as they say in the General Assembly. I have heard waur motions than ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... Once, after she had grown into magnificent young womanhood, he very angrily refused an earnest supplication for an introduction from the manager, himself. On the nights when she came to the theatre he took her to the box, before the overture began, and she sat there, quite alone, until he went to her after the audience had been ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... last word—word of words in the epiphany of life and love. The scent of the flowers, the booty of the bee, the primal drip of spring waters, the overture of the lark, the twist of lemon peel on the cocktail of creation—such is the bride. Holy is the wife; revered the mother; galliptious is the summer girl—but the bride is the certified check among the wedding presents that the gods send in when man ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... city, the mayor took possession, and sallied forth to meet the commander of the National forces for the purpose of surrendering the town, making terms for the protection of property, etc. Sherman paid no attention at all to the overture, but pushed forward and took the town without making any conditions whatever with its citizens. He then, however, co-operated with the mayor in extinguishing the flames and providing for the people who were rendered destitute by this destruction of their homes. When he left there ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... of the glaciers shaped itself suddenly into an organ, and there was one whose face I well knew sitting at the keyboard, smiling and pluming himself like a bird as he thundered forth a giant fugue by way of overture. I heard the great pedal notes in the bass stalk majestically up and down, like the rays of the Aurora that go about upon the face of the heavens off the coast of Labrador. Then presently the people rose and sang the chorus "Venus ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... would not get out of the chaise; he said he would get out, and he did get out, and I took him into our bar parlour; when he got there I said, I am led to suppose, that you are the bearer of some very good news to this country;"—a very natural overture to conversation on the part of an innkeeper, and to extract a little intelligence from him; "he said, he was, that the business was all done—that the thing was settled; I asked him, if I might be allowed to ask him what was the nature of ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... indicates peace, and as an emblem was given to Judith when she restored peace to the Israelites by the death of Holofernes.[3] Shakespeare, in "Twelfth Night" (Act i. sc. 5), makes Viola say:—"I bring no overture of war, no taxation of homage; I hold the olive in my hand; my words are as full of peace as of matter." Similarly, the palm, which, as the symbol of victory, was carried before the conqueror in triumphal processions, is generally regarded as denoting victory. Thus, palm-branches were scattered ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... 1800 and 1815 he composed the first six of his great symphonies, the music to "Egmont," the best of his chamber-music pieces, fourteen pianoforte sonatas, among them the "Pastorale" and the "Appassionata," and his only opera "Fidelio." This opera, which was first named "Leonore," with an overture that was afterward abandoned, had its first public performance in Vienna just before Napoleon's entry into the capital in 1805. After three representations it was withdrawn. Nearly ten years later, after complete revision by Beethoven, "Fidelio" achieved its first great success. The great ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... dominion they aimed at, a dominion as universal as that of Rome; and so intoxicated were they with that vast ambition that under all their present distress and danger they haughtily rejected every overture for a treaty or a cessation of arms; that the war was a just and necessary measure, advised by the Parliament itself from the conviction that, at any rate, Delenda est Carthago—such a government'must be destroyed; and that therefore the King may well say it was their ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... are expected to sing chromatic passages like the violin and the clarinet. As the point is of some interest, I should like to bring it before the reader with some examples. The essential character of the horns is nowhere more truly conveyed than in the soft passage near the beginning of the overture to Der Freischuetz, and it is the contrast between the two nature scales on the C horn and the F horn which gives the character to this lovely idyll. The trumpets are capable of even less variety of expression than the horns, as their ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... returned by the Duke of Argyle to Lord Mar's overture was this: that "he had no sufficient powers to treat with the Earl of Mar and his Council as a body, but that he would ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... every effort he made to stop. After returning to Vienna he obtained another libretto from Da Ponte, that of "Don Giovanni," which was produced at Prague, October 29, 1787. It is told, as a characteristic incident of Mozart's method of working, that the overture of this opera had not been written until the night before the performance. At every suggestion Mozart answered, tapping his forehead, "I have it all here." But not a line had been written. Late at night he set about writing it. ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... date, Wagner was revealed to me in "Lohengrin." I had heard at the Academy of Music in New York, little or nothing by him when the overture to "Lohengrin" thrilled me as a new revelation. Here was a genius, indeed, differing from all before, a new ladder upon which to climb upward—like ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... or less) to the words, "Heil Dir Im Siegel Kranz," and the Swiss to "Rufst Du mein Vaterland." It was sung in Sweden, also, and till 1833 it was in public use in Russia commonly enough to give it a national character. Von Weber introduced it in his "Jubel" overture, and Beethoven, in 1814, copied it in C Major and wrote piano variations on it. It has been ascribed to Henry Purcell (1696), to Lulli, a French composer (1670), to Dr. John Bull (1619), and to Thomas Ravenscroft ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... Harmer who spoke, as Frederick very well knew. The young men had been boys together, and as Reuben was two years the elder, he assumed a tone in speaking which Frederick now keenly resented. But it was no time to repel an overture of help, and he sullenly forced himself to accept Reuben's good offices. The great clotted periwig was with some difficulty got off, and then it was possible to remove the worst of the tar from face and eyes. Frederick at last could see clearly and breathe freely, but presented so ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... was much agitated on the reception of this letter. Though he every day declared his determination to have nothing to do with the Princes, yet he hesitated whether or no he should reply to this overture. The numerous affairs which then occupied his mind favoured this hesitation. Josephine and Hortense conjured him to hold out hope to the King, as by so doing he would in no way pledge himself, and would gain time to ascertain ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... set a gouty father to sleep, and a capriccio may operate successfully on the nerves of a valetudinary mother. A slight indisposition may be removed by a single air, while a more obstinate case may require an overture or a concerto. The tastes of the patient should ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... sent both to Grant and to the Secretary of War copies of Johnston's overture and his own answer. He added that he should "be careful not to complicate any points of civil policy;" that he had invited Governor Vance to return to Raleigh with the civil officers of the State, and that ex-Governor Graham, ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... perspicuity, perspicacity permeate, pervade permit, allow perseverance, persistence pertain, appertain pictorial, picturesque pitiable, pitiful pity, sympathy pleasant, pleasing politician, statesman practicable, practical precipitous, precipitate precision, preciseness prejudice, bias prelude, overture pride, vanity principal, principle process, procedure procure, secure professor, teacher progress, progression propitious, auspicious proposal, proposition tradition, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... influence. Lord Buntingford was asked, and he and his family were good old Whigs. But he was nephew to Lord Alfred Grendall, first cousin to Miles Grendall, and abstained on behalf of his relatives. An overture was made to Sir Damask Monogram, who certainly could afford the contest. But Sir Damask did not see his way. Melmotte was a working bee, while he was a drone,—and he did not wish to have the difference pointed out by Mr Melmotte's supporters. Moreover, ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... of the emperor's mouth-piece. And now was heard a rustling of ladies' silks, and of cavaliers' velvets, and the grateful spectators took their seats, while the emperor, with a look of extreme satisfaction, opened the score of the Porno d'Oro, laid it on the ledge of the box, and began to hum the overture. ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... Vane. "Can't they even leave a hospital alone?" The next minute any lingering hope was destroyed. Both men heard it—the well-known whistling whooce of the bomb—the vicious crack as it burst; both men felt the ground trembling through their beds. That was the overture . . . the play was about to commence. ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... thoughts, rather than the old "Scorn!—to be scorned by one that I scorn." And when the glorious tones of the anthem ceased, and the calm steady voice of the chaplain was heard alone, uttering in the sudden hush the grand overture ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... not be necessary for him to tell me his debts, because he thinks I know them so well. He tells me, that for the match propounded of Mrs. Mallett for my Lord Hinchingbroke, it hath been lately off, and now her friends bring it on again, and an overture hath been made to him by a servant of hers, to compass the thing without consent of friends, she herself having a respect to my Lord's family, but my Lord will not listen to it but in a way of honour. The Duke hath for this weeke or two been very kind to him, more ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... but still this friendly overture might be merely a feint to open the way for a home thrust. Sam was silent. So Yan said, presently, "We ain't allowed to use anything but what the Indians had or ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... gifted performer, but never until that day did I accompany myself with words. Boy like, I had chosen for my "piece" a poem sweetly expressive of those peaceful virtues which I most heartily despised. So that my performance, at the inauguration of the strike, as Mr. Hinman conducted the overture, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... rapid, the 4-4 measure will probably be given only two beats, but in an adagio movement, as, e.g., the first part of the Messiah overture, it may be necessary to beat eight for each measure in order to insure rhythmic continuity. There are many examples of triple measure in which the movement is so rapid as to make it impracticable to beat three in a ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... reached the remote Opera House, fought their way past the misanthropic door-keeper, and gained their seats, are first reduced to a state of mental chaos by the performance of a maddening overture, and are then fitted to appreciate the play, which ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various
... this piece, though it enchanted the musical part of the audience, disgusted the promenaders, and was received but coldly. This, however, was made up for when the drumming, smashing, and brass-blurting of the overture to "Zampa" was noised forth: this was encored with ecstacies, and so were some of the quadrilles. Happy musical taste! Beethoven's septour, arranged as a set of quadrilles, is a desecration unworthy of Musard. For ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... the deep-toned organ, and a full choir of voices, which gradually decayed upon the ear, until it died away in distant sound, as if a flight of angels had raised the song in their ascent to heaven. Yet the chords hardly ceased to vibrate after the expiration of this overture, which ushered in a composition in the same pathetic style; and this again was succeeded by a third, almost without pause or intermission, as if the artist's hand had been indefatigable, and the theme never to ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... much thought of the coming spectacle, till the conductor's rap was heard upon his desk, and the orchestra broke into the overture to Mozart's Nozze. Before they were half through, it was clear that we should not enjoy that evening the delight of perfect music added to the enchantment of so brilliant a scene. The execution of the overture was not exactly bad. But it lacked absolute precision, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... amazement. Demetri Agryopoulo, salaried hanger-on to the Persian embassy, was glaring like a roused wild beast at these two shadowy figures in the shadow of the orchestra. The band was crashing away at the overture to 'Tannhaeuser,' the people were laughing and chattering as they circled, and not an eye but Barndale's regarded this drama in the corner. The Greek's hand was in his bosom, where it clutched something with an ugly gesture. His face was in the sideway glare ...
— An Old Meerschaum - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... ballot-box, and fight their way to the polls through negroes and others who are not the best of company even at the polls, to say nothing of the disgrace of association with them. You would paralyze one-third at least of the women of this land by the very vulgarity of the overture made to them that they should go struggling to the polls in order to vote in common with the herd of men. They would not undertake it. The most intelligent and trustworthy part of the suffrage thus placed upon the land would never be available, while that which was ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... it, and not restricted to what adults think good for them. Just at present our young people are going mad over ragtimes, apparently because syncopated rhythms are new to them. If they had learnt what can be done with syncopation from Beethoven's third Leonora overture, they would enjoy the ragtimes all the more; but they would put them in their proper place as ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... wars of the Indian tribes is scarcely more than a truce. Nevertheless, it is concluded with considerable form and ceremony. The first advance toward a cessation of hostilities is usually made through the chief of a neutral power. The nation proposing the first overture dispatches some men of note as embassadors, accompanied by an orator, to contract the negotiation. They bear with them the calumet[279] of peace as the symbol of their purpose, and a certain number of wampum ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... not buried in matter. This is the spirit- [1] ual dawn of the Messiah, and the overture of the angels. This is when God is made manifest in the flesh, and thus it destroys all sense of sin, sickness, and death,—when the brightness of His ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... by certain signs and sounds gave me to understand that, if it pleased me, he would dress first and then leave me to dress afterwards, leaving the whole apartment to myself. Thinks I, Queequeg, under the circumstances, this is a very civilized overture; but, the truth is, these savages have an innate sense of delicacy, say what you will; it is marvellous how essentially polite they are. I pay this particular compliment to Queequeg, because he treated me with so much civility and consideration, while I was guilty of great rudeness; ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... him. He did not know them, but he was accustomed to being known. His life had never been a cautious one. He was too modern to be very reticent, and he liked to be wicked in the eye of the crowd. Secret wickedness held little charm for him. He preferred to preface his failings with an overture on the orchestra, to draw up the curtain, and to act his drama of life to a crowded audience of smart people in the stalls. When they hissed him, he only pitied them, and wondered at their ignorance. ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... be delayed, and voicing their disapproval by lusty clapping, stamping, whistling and cat-calls, they are equally ready with noisy approval if the dramatic fare tickle their palate.[49] The tibicen, as he steps forth to render the overture, is greeted uproariously as an old favorite. The manager perhaps appears and announces the names of those taking part, each one of whom is doubtless applauded or hissed in proportion to his measure of popularity. Differences of opinion as to the ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... argument are excluded from the terms of Church Fellowship, on the very face of "Reformation Principles Exhibited;" and the Auchensaugh Covenant expunged from the formula of terms of communion, without submitting them in overture to the people for inspection. We say these steps of defection and apostasy are chargeable to the account of those who made the breach in 1833: First, Because the senior and leading ministers in that ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... was extracted, as quite out of place, and sublimity was made to give way to a more temperate and stoical standard. In due time the Rationalists effected their purpose. Secular music was introduced into the sanctuary; an operatic overture generally welcomed the people into church, and a march or a waltz dismissed them. Sacred music was no longer cultivated as an element of devotion. The oratorios and cantata of the theatre and beer-garden were the Sabbath accompaniments of the sermon. The masses consequently began to sing less; ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... the guests assembled; the great dramatic experiment stood on its trial. Magdalen had made the most of her opportunities; she had learned all that the manager could teach her in the time. Miss Garth left her when the overture began, sitting apart in a corner behind the scenes, serious and silent, with her smelling-bottle in one hand, and her book in the other, resolutely training herself for the coming ordeal, ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... scenery, although only a prelude, only an overture to the transcendent oratorios of landscape which were to follow, was in itself a horribly sublime creation. Not twenty minutes after the snapping of the towline the boat had entered one of those stupendous canons which form the distinguishing characteristic ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
Copyright © 2024 Free Translator.org
|
|
|
