"Banjo" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... came—he had just wandered from door to door since early childhood, seeking shelter with kindly mountaineers who gladly fathered and mothered this waif about whom there was such a mystery—a charming waif, by the way, who could play the banjo better than ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... An' some of 'em was brave an' some was not: The Paythan an' the Zulu an' Burmese; But the Fuzzy was the finest o' the lot. We never got a ha'porth's change of 'im: 'E squatted in the scrub an' 'ocked our 'orses, 'E cut our sentries up at Suakim, An' 'e played the cat an' banjo with ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... were tethered to trees hard by the schoolhouse, after which the party filed into the building, with Washington trailing along after them, rolling his eyes and wagging his head in rhythm with the music of violin and banjo. ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders Among the Kentucky Mountaineers • Jessie Graham Flower
... the villain, and strangle him. But perhaps, after all, variety business would suit best. Pontius Pilate in a kilt and philibeg would bring down the house with a Highland fling or gillie callum. And Atkinson in a long-stride table chair and banjo act would be ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... after Christmas until the day after New-year, is the negroes' saturnalia! There are usually eight days of incessant dancing, feasting and frolicking from quarter to quarter, and from barn to barn. Then the banjo, the fiddle and the "bones" are heard from morning until night, and from night ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... the torpedo room, bottled up under water where no sound could escape to attract the attention of the outside world, Mike Mowrey had tuned up his old banjo and the boys were having an ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... out. It lay in a little hollow, where a small stream ran through a sparse grove of young white oaks. A half dozen tents were pitched under the trees, horses and oxen were corraled at a little distance, and a group of men sat on camp stools or lay on blankets about a bright fire. The twang of a banjo became audible as they drew nearer, and they saw a couple of negroes, from some neighboring plantation, "breaking down" a juba in approved style, amid the "hi, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... whom the Buddhist strives to merge his strange serenity of soul; who is adored in the "Holy Places" by the Moslem, and lifted mystically above the heads of kneeling Catholics in cathedrals dim with incense, and merrily praised with the banjo and the trumpet in the streets of black English cities; who is asked for children by longing women, and for new dolls by lisping babes; whom the atheist denies in the day, and fears in the darkness of night; who is on the lips ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... the mixed entertainment that followed, in which dancing and singing, banjo playing, and a liberal display of the anatomy of the female "artists" formed the principal features, they sipped their beer and applauded loudly the efforts of those who ministered ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... banjo from the floor and began to strum a few wandering notes. Hutchinson winced ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... disappeared. Then he washed and wiped the glass, and put it back in its place ready for use. After this he threw himself upon the settee, took hold of his right leg with his left hand, by the ankle, dragged it up, and held it across his body rigidly as if it were a banjo, and began to strum imaginary strings with his right hand, while in a whisper he sang a song about a yaller gal somewhere in the south, with close-shut eyes and a long wide mouth, and so on, through ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... on the rice-fields an' the sun was droppin' low, She'd git 'er little banjo an' she'd sing "Kul-la-lo-lo!" With 'er arm upon my shoulder an' her cheek agin my cheek We useter watch the steamers and the hathis pilin' teak. Elephints a-pilin' teak In the sludgy, squdgy creek, Where the silence 'ung that 'eavy you was arf afraid to speak! ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... was the owner of a banjo, an instrument hitherto unknown to Margarita and in regard to which she was vastly curious, and at her request he and three of his mates blushingly sang for her some of the American negro melodies then so ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... potted. We don't set her out permanently, because the royal family like to have her on the table at state dinners. And she, poor girl, rather enjoys it. Apollo is generally to be found at these dinners either as a guest or playing a zither or a banjo behind a screen. Wherever he is, the sunflower turns and it affords considerable amusement among Jupiter's guests to watch it. Jupiter has christened Clytie the Sherlock Holmes of Olympus, because wherever Apollo ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... a banjo from her father, skates from Delia, she had longed for just such a new pair, and innumerable other articles bearing no giver's name, but coming, every one, from the same generous source Nan knew well enough. She absolutely lost her ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... literary ideal of the American Negro constitutes what is really an obstacle in the way of the thoughtful and progressive element of the race. His character has been established as a happy-go-lucky, laughing, shuffling, banjo-picking being, and the reading public has not yet been prevailed upon to take him seriously. His efforts to elevate himself socially are looked upon as a sort of absurd caricature of "white civilization." A novel dealing with colored ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... Except to please the white man, serve him when he's starving, And who has as much fun when he sees you carving The sirloin as you do, does this black man. Just think for a minute, how the negroes excel, Can you beat them with a banjo or a broiling pan? There's music in their soul as original As any breed of people in the whole wide earth; They're elemental hope, heartiness, mirth. There are only two things real American: One is Christian Science, the other ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... suppose you know that you have played the cat-and-banjo with Lucy's happiness for the ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... suffer!" she mocked him, languidly; and then, like a banjo-string, the tension snapped, and she gave a long, angry gasp, and her ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... heard a banjo in the distance and a cowboy sing. There was not a person in sight in the wide courts or on the porch. I did not have a well-defined idea about ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... my homage owns, Skilled on the banjo and the bones; For whom I would not fear to die, If death would pass ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... a circle round the fire and sing the old year out," suggested Rose gaily. "Myrna, get the banjo and the guitar. Shall I play on the piano, ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... musical worth as well, singing so well that he became leading bass in the choir and occupied the position with honor. With all his daily work as an artisan he found time to master and play successfully the violin, mandolin, auto harp and harmonica combined, banjo and guitar. He passed out of life April 26th, 1912, leaving a wife, son and daughter to mourn the loss of a talented father. So my musical family comes and goes and I am called upon to lose them first in one way and then in another. This was ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... reply according to time-honoured formula, and Charlie, who was expecting something quite different, was at no pains to hide his perplexity. "A banjo?" he ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... file, soft-shod, through his mind, while there drifted into the room furnished sounds and furnished scents. He heard in one room a tittering and incontinent, slack laughter; in others the monologue of a scold, the rattling of dice, a lullaby, and one crying dully; above him a banjo tinkled with spirit. Doors banged somewhere; the elevated trains roared intermittently; a cat yowled miserably upon a back fence. And he breathed the breath of the house—a dank savour rather than a smell—a cold, musty effluvium as from underground vaults mingled with the reeking ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... produce silence or darkness. On the contrary, as soon as Eliphalet and the officer went into the house, there began at once a series of spiritualistic manifestations, a regular dark seance. A tambourine was played upon, a bell was rung, and a flaming banjo went singing ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... longer. Then she went to sleep upon an odorous couch piled deep with all sorts of odd garments, her feet thrust into a tangle of lifeless satin pillows, her head upon the fur lining of some old cape, a banjo prodding her uncomfortably whenever ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... with us, he's so much about the house and garden. I suppose this place is very good for the angel-children, but I'm afraid that in a few days I'm going to wish I was back among the roses, with Allan and Johnny and a banjo and a moon!" ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... the sound of banjo and fiddle, as one by one the dusky musicians from the cabins ranged themselves along the wall of the big room, which had been cleared of its furnishings, and young feet came hurrying in when the old Virginia reel sounded through, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... on the list—he's got 'em on the list; And they'll none of 'em be missed—they'll none of 'em be missed. There's the banjo serenader, and the others of his race, And the piano-organist—I've got him on the list! And the people who eat peppermint and puff it in your face, They never would be missed—they never would be missed! ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... lately subjected—are extremely pleasing, and even handsome, set-off as they are by the clean collar which he has put on in anticipation of his approaching doom. Before sinking into childlike slumber, he listened with evident pleasure to a banjo which was being played outside a public-house in the vicinity of the gaol. The banjoist is now being interviewed, and believes that the air he must have been performing at the time was "The Lost Chord." The scaffold on which the unfortunate ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., November 29, 1890 • Various
... 200, (others are paid for by different institutions,) we saw the splendid painting by West, "Christ healing the Sick." We then visited the Musical Fund Hall, and heard the far-famed Ethiopian serenaders, Messrs. German, Hanwood, Harrington, Warren, and Pelham, upon the accordion, banjo, congo-tambo, and bone-castanets, in all of which they stand unrivalled in the world. They were representing Niggers' lives, with songs, &c. Home and to ...
— Journal of a Voyage across the Atlantic • George Moore
... upon the possibilities of plaintive Negro melodies, which they of course capitalized. In New York late in 1842 four men—"Dan" Emmett, Frank Brower, "Billy" Whitlock, and "Dick" Pelham—practiced together with fiddle and banjo, "bones" and tambourine, and thus was born the first company, the "Virginia Minstrels," which made its formal debut in New York February 17, 1843. Its members produced in connection with their work all sorts of popular songs, one of Emmett's being "Dixie," which, introduced by Mrs. John ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... to-night!" And Bob, perhaps remembering that we go back home to-morrow, winks at the little fellow and whispers, "You let me manage 'em! Stay up till broad daylight if we take a notion—eh?" And Billy dances off again in newer glee, while the inspired musician is plunking a banjo imitation on his enchanted instrument, which is unceremoniously drowned out by a circus-tune from Doc that is absolutely inspiring to everyone but the barefooted brother, who drops back listlessly to his old position on the floor and sullenly renews ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... growing near the sun dial shook their ruffles in the moonlight, and from near and far away came the sounds of Charleston, voices, the sound of traffic and then, a thread of tune tying moonbeams, magnolias, carnations and cherokee roses in a great southern bunch, came the notes of a banjo, plunk, plunk, and a voice from somewhere away in the back premises, the voice of a negro singing one of ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... had nothing better to do," he assured her. "And my patience is well rewarded. Hope you're keen on music. I've brought my banjo for the Rajah's edification. It's better than a tomtom anyway. I wonder if the fates have put us next to each other. I'll lay you five rupees to a sixpence that ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... tongue! Now the fat's in the fire, to be sho! Ever since I tuck you for better for wuss, I have been trying to larn you 'screshun! and I might as well 'a wasted my time picking a banjo for a dead jackass tu dance by; for you have got no more 'screshun than old Eve had, in confabulating with the old adversary! Why couldn't you temperlize? Sassing that white 'oman, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... my acquaintance, and being also a younger son of a retired colonel, the poem of Mr. Kipling, by a strange aberration of associated ideas, always seems to me to have been written with an exclusive view to his person. When he did not play the banjo he loved to sit and look at it. He proceeded to this sentimental inspection, and after meditating a while over the strings under my silent scrutiny ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... vicinity of her tent until supper-time, and changed their seats at table so that they might sit nearer to her in the marquee. When the meal was over, and the washing up and water carrying finished, nearly everybody collected for an amateur concert. Miss Hoyle had a banjo, which she played atrociously out of tune, but on which she nevertheless strummed accompaniments while the rest roared out "Little Grey Home in the West," "The Long, Long Trail," and other popular songs. It was certainly not classical music, but it was amusing; ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... vulgarities from musical comedies, melodies of the street corner; and the singer's voice redeemed and made music of them all. He was practising his songs for use at the hotels, where he sang and played the banjo in the evenings, to add to his income. He told Peter that he was, at the ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... darkies are very merry and full of fun. When their work is over they love to sing and dance to the music of the banjo. Some of their songs are very pretty. I will sing some of them to you when I come home. Good-bye, dears. I shall soon be ...
— Highroads of Geography • Anonymous
... hung the deadly nightshade at your cabin-doors, and your blood is turning to water. You are beginning to wither away. You shiver in the sunshine; you don't want to eat; your hearts are heavy and you don't feel like work; and when you come from the field you don't take down the banjo and pat and shuffle and dance, but you sit down in the corner with your heads on your hands, and would go to sleep, but you know that as soon as you shut your eyes she will cast hers on you through the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... said Joel, in a loud tone of disgust. "He's twanging his old banjo all the time, and Polly's got him to sing, and he's practising up. I wish ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... but already turbulent. The hot wind had passed, and the air was sweet and free from dust. As he moved along the street, Done's ear caught the squeak and the twang of fiddle and banjo coming through the confusion of voices. Step-dancing and singing were the most popular delights. The ability to sing a comic song badly was passport enough in digger society. The streets were lit ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... stage the boy sees the most charming performance he ever beholds. It consists of a regular play, with a ballet between the acts, and a minstrel performance introducing the celebrated scene of a negro teaching another negro to tune the banjo, where the pupil climbs up the back of his chair while endeavoring to ascend the scale; and all ending with a puppet-show, the whole being done by three young fellows. "Why-ee! 'twas ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... who wore her hair cropped and curling all over her head; who answered indifferently to the name of William or Bill; whose speech was heavy with the flowers of the vernacular; who could act in amateur theatricals, play on the banjo, rule eight servants and two horses, their accounts and their diseases, and look men slowly and deliberately between the eyes—even after they had proposed to her and ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... square up as it is till next term. It's all very well for fellows like you three, who have rich people, and can write home any time for a fiver; but I'm not so flush of cash.—Look here, Gull, have you got that banjo? Sing ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... if you can play them. They will sell readily if they are shown off. It is good you can play the banjo. We can play that and the accordion whenever we want to open up, and thus attract a crowd. Some use a bell, but music, even when it is poor, is better. Sometimes I used to sing a comic song or two for old Gulligan when we were on the road, but I didn't much care ...
— Young Auctioneers - The Polishing of a Rolling Stone • Edward Stratemeyer
... him nearly so well as the art student who plays a banjo in the orchestra because he needs the money. Peggy ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... spirituals. Our favorite spirituals were—Bringin' in de sheaves, De Stars am shinin' for us all, Hear de Angels callin', and The Debil has no place here. The singing was usually to the accompaniment of a Jew's harp and fiddle, or banjo. In summer the slaves went without shoes and wore three-quarter checkered baggy pants, some wearing only a long shirt to cover their body. We wore ox-hide shoes, much too large. In winter time the shoes were ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Maryland Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... adjuster, who was a frat-brother to Carl and Ray, though he came from Melanchthon College. A young lawyer, ever so jolly, with a banjo. A bantling clergyman, who was spoken of with masculine approval because he smoked a pipe and said charmingly naughty things. Johnson of the Homes and Long Island Real Estate Company, and his brother, of the Martinhurst Development Company. Four older men, ranging from thin-haired ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... bear if anybody so much as whispered when he was in one of his moods. I never forgot the night Bertram and I were up in William's room trying to sing 'When Johnnie comes marching home,' to the accompaniment of a banjo in Bertram's hands, and a guitar in mine. Gorry! it was Hugh that ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... who he was nor whence he came—he had just wandered from door to door since early childhood, seeking shelter with kindly mountaineers who gladly fathered and mothered this waif about whom there was such a mystery—a charming waif, by the way, who could play the banjo better that ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... watch from his pocket and Mr. Simms turned to look at the old banjo clock in his office, and both men quickly said in one voice: "Oh, no, Jake! You have plenty of time to get off and make ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... the world, so Lewis thought. He would sit by the half hour making tops, and whistles, and all sorts of pretty playthings. And Sam, too! he was always so full of fun and singing songs. What a singer he was! and it was right cheerful when Sam would borrow some neighbor's banjo and play to them. But they were all gone; and his sad, sweet-faced, lady-like sister Nelly, too, they were all taken off in one day by one of the ugliest negro-drivers that ever scared a little slave-boy's dreams. And it ...
— A Child's Anti-Slavery Book - Containing a Few Words About American Slave Children and Stories - of Slave-Life. • Various
... tells of an astonishing young lady who played the banjo. He has been more fortunate than myself, for I have never had such good luck. They have no accomplishments at all. Housekeeping they have not very much of. You see, houses are small, and households also are small; there is very little furniture; and as the cooking is all the same, ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... get something from his baggage," announced Ned, looking from the window. Tom saw his rival taking something from one of the packs slung across the back of a mule. Soon the circus agent hurried back into the king's hut, and a moment later there was heard the strains of a banjo being picked by an unpracticed hand. It was succeeded by a rattling ...
— Tom Swift in Captivity • Victor Appleton
... flowers. Toward nine the three miners said that as they had brought their instruments they might as well tune up, for the boys and girls would soon be arriving now, and hungry for a good, old-fashioned break-down. A fiddle, a banjo, and a clarinet —these were the instruments. The trio took their places side by side, and began to play some rattling dance-music, and beat ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... alcove, in a glow of pink light from above, was a life-sized group of musicians—statues in colored metal of a Spanish girl playing a mandora, an Italian with a slender calascione, a Russian playing his jorbon, and an African playing a banjo. Luxurious couches hung by spiral springs from the ceiling to a convenient height from the floor, and here and there lay rugs of rare beauty and great ottomans ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben
... in a trance, and could only find existence, expression, in the ecstasy of tone, that would catch our souls with his into the very seventh heaven of harmony. Or, in merry mood, I have seen him take a banjo, for he could play on any instrument, and as with deft fingers he would strike some strange new note or chord, you would see his eyes brighten, he would begin to smile and laugh as if his very soul were tickled, ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... comedians, whose home was in the United States and who were going to Australia for the purpose of filling an engagement at Sidney, and to whose ability as musicians and skill in handling the guitar and banjo we were indebted for a great deal of pleasure before reaching our destination; Colonel J. M. House and a Mr. Turner, both from Chicago, where they did business at the stock yards, and who were hale and hearty fellows, a little beyond the meridian of life, and ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... about with a comb and a piece of tissue-paper at my lips like any kid. I once made a banjo out of a cigar-box and bale wire, and while I was in the Kougarok I walked ten miles to hear a nigger play a harmonica. I did all sorts of things to coax music into this country, but it is silent and unresponsive, absolutely dead and discordant." He made ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... one is often attracted by the notes of fresh, young voices, where soft lights glow through open casements, or the singers sit under the vine-traceried verandah of a "stoup," accompanying the melody with guitar or banjo. Occasionally stentorian lungs roar unmelodious music-hall choruses that jar by contrast with sweeter strains, but sentiment prevails, and who can wonder if there are sometimes tears in the voices that sing "Swanee River" and "Home, ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... attraction of the evening, however, was the minstrel show. On a raised wooden platform sat the performers with blackened hands and faces. They wore grotesque garb and each one fingered a guitar, mandolin, or banjo. ...
— Entertaining Made Easy • Emily Rose Burt
... impossible for him, Sidney had intermittent instruction from professors of both sexes at home. But he learnt practically nothing except the banjo. Horace had to buy him a banjo: it cost the best part of a ten-pound note; still, Horace could do no less. Sidney's stature grew rapidly; his general health certainly improved, yet not completely; he always had a fragile, interesting air. Moreover, his deafness did not ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... chums occupied Dormitories Nos. 11 and 12, and there they found several of the other students awaiting them, including Luke Watson, who was noted as a singer and banjo-player, Bertram Vane, always called "Polly," because his manner was so girlish, and little Chip Macklin, who had been the school sneak but who had now turned over ...
— Dave Porter in the Far North - or, The Pluck of an American Schoolboy • Edward Stratemeyer
... in a Methodist revival meeting. They have, too, dances and music peculiar to themselves—jigs and country dances which seem to have no method, yet which are perfectly adapted to and rhythmic with the inspiring abrupt thud of the banjo and the bones. As they dance, they shout and sing, slap their hands and knees, and lose themselves in the enthusiasm of the moment. The negroes look forward to Christmas not less as the season for present-giving than that of frolicking and jollity. Early in ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... banjo, while a boyish trooper with tough black hair sat near him and kept time with his heels. "It's a cottonwood-tree I was speakin' of," observed Jones. There was one—a little, shivering white stalk. It stood above the flat where the barracks were, on a bench twenty or thirty feet higher, on which ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... their meal was finished, and tin cups and plates had been put aside, the officer took from its nail an old banjo, and began strumming. Presently he was singing, and his rich, clear voice, admirably suited to the time, place and surroundings, filled the little cabin and floated across to the green where the Indians camped. Song followed song, ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... was that it was meant to convey. But I think the idea is that if the schoolmaster had long before abandoned the study of medicine, for which he was not fitted, and gone in, let us say, for playing the banjo, he might have become end-man in a minstrel show. ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... a bow may be traced to a remote period among various Oriental peoples. An example of their simplest form exists in the ravanastron, or banjo-fiddle, supposed to have been invented by King Ravana, who reigned in Ceylon some 5,000 years ago. It is formed of a small cylindrical sounding-body, with a stick running through it for a neck, a bridge, and a single string of silk, ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... about, and watches the trains, as if he had never seen any before. I suppose there are none in the country he comes from. Between whiles he sometimes plays on his banjo and sings a bit for us. I cannot quite make him out; but as he is very quiet and well-behaved, and never interferes with nobody, it ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... serial style, at the most interesting point, without even the promise of a "continuation in our next." Finally, however, the singers had sung themselves hoarse in the damp night air, the last "Spanish Cavalier" had been safely restored to his inevitable true-love, and the sound of voices and banjo floated away over the water. Mr. Pierce's moment ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... mists of time were brought again to mind; anecdotes illustrative of various types of maritime character succeeded to each other in brisk succession, till Maclean, without warning, finding his voice, burst into incongruous melody. One song suggested another; a banjo was produced, and tuned to the noise of clinking glasses; and every moment the ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... de fields at night, dey was glad to jus' go to bed and rest deir bones. Dey stopped off f'um field wuk at dinner time Saddays. Sadday nights us had stomp down good times pickin' de banjo, blowin' on quills, drinkin' liquor, and dancin'. I was sho' one fast Nigger den. Sunday was meetin' day for grown folks and gals. Boys th'owed rocks and ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... nerve in his body was singing its song of fear like a banjo string, Coulter closed the album. The honeymoon, if that was the right term for it, was over. He knew now which was ...
— A World Apart • Samuel Kimball Merwin
... the child, likewise sawed one stick upon another in imitation of playing the fiddle. And there's Little Babe of Lonesome Creek who delights in a gourd banjo. His grandsir, finding a straight, long-necked gourd among those clustered on the vine over kitchen-house door, fashioned it into a banjo for the least one. Cut it flat on one side, did the old man, scooped out the seed, then covered the opening with a bit of brown paper made fast with flour paste, ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... is for the most savage natures. The boor that couldn't appreciate the Taj Mahal, or the sculpture of Michael Angelo, might be swept off his feet by the music of a master, though he couldn't understand its story. Besides, I've carried a banjo and a cornet to the ends of the earth with me. I saved my life with the cornet once. A lion got inside my zareba in Rhodesia. I hadn't my gun within reach, but I'd been playing the cornet, and just as he was ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... plumbs for years. And when I see Josiah wuz sot on hirin' him to do the job I felt dretful, for he wuz no more fit for it than our brindle cow to do fine sewin', or our old steer to give music lessons on the banjo. He wuz a creeter I never liked, always tryin' to invent sunthin' and always failin. But Josiah insisted on havin' him because he wuz so ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley
... to resent the tone. "By golly, I can't think what I done with it after I used it on Banjo. Seems like I stood it ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... tongue and a ready, rude wit, and talked to his audience with a delicious mingling of impudence, deference, and patronage, commenting upon them generally, administering advice and correction in a strain of humor that kept his hearers in a pleased excitement. He handled the banjo and the guitar alternately, and talked all the time when he was not singing. Mary (how much harder featured and brazen a woman is in such a position than a man of the same caliber!) sang, in an untutored treble, songs of sentiment, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... trust those gilt-edge Britishers," said Jean Graham with authority. "There was old man Peters who took one of them in, and he'd sit in the store nights making little songs to his banjo, and talking just wonderful. Said he was a baronet or something, if he had his rights, and made love to Sally. Old fool Peters believed him, and lent him three hundred dollars to start a lawsuit over his English ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... this passed through my mind in a flash, almost subconsciously, and before I had time to check my impressions, or even properly verify them, I made an involuntary movement, catching the tight rope in my hand so that it twanged like a banjo string, and in that instant the creature turned the corner of Sangree's tent and was gone ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... cabin in the quarters to which Ben took her. And it was very pleasant to lean over and watch him at work making things for the little house—a chair from a barrel and a wonderful box of shelves to stand in the corner. And she knew how to say merry things, and later outside his door Ben would pick his banjo and sing low and sweetly in the musical voice of his race. Altogether such another ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... traps might wreak on any passing through the gorge below. Rather, doubtless, the memory of those sinister sentinels gave him a sense of safety, on which his serenity was founded. In his lap was a banjo which he thrummed vigorously, with rhythmic precision, if no greater musical art, and head and body and feet, all gave emphasis to the movement. At intervals, his raucous voice rumbled a snatch of song. ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... appearance some years ago in the pages of the Pall Mall Magazine. Since then (I am assured) they have put a girdle round the world, and threaten, if not to keep pace with the banjo hymned by Mr. Kipling, at least to become the most widely-diffused of their author's works. I take it to be of a piece with his usual perversity that until now they have never been republished ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... peculiar artistic dexterity, they bring into prominent and most ludicrous display. The languishing elegance of some, the painstaking laboriousness of others, above all, the feats of a certain enthusiastic banjo-player, who seemed to me to thump his instrument with every part of his body at once, at last so utterly overcame any attempt at decorous gravity on my part that I was obliged to secede; and, considering what the atmosphere was that we inhaled ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... stages of the work, gasoline lamps and Kitson lights were used. The former, of the familiar banjo type, and a modification of this, with a section of wrought-iron pipe for the reservoir, were very unsatisfactory, and were out of repair and leaking a large proportion of the time. The Kitson lights were given only a short trial, ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 - The Bergen Hill Tunnels. Paper No. 1154 • F. Lavis
... this narrative, and felt so strong a disposition to make further inquiries, that he made up his mind to question the sailor, and was about to address him when a small bell tinkled, the music ceased, and three Ethiopian minstrels, banjo in hand, advanced to the foot-lights, made their bow, and then seated themselves on the three chairs, with that intensity of consummate, impudent, easy familiarity peculiar to ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... was an umbrella-lamp bestowed by a boarder whom Mrs. Oliver had nursed through typhoid fever; a banjo; plenty of books and magazines; and an open fireplace, with a great pitcher of yellow wild-flowers standing ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... I see um. Dey put um on banjo table and sell um just lak chicken. Nigger ain't no more den chicken and animal, enty? (isn't ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... bath-sheet were warmed you would run no chance of being chilled. The 17th June, 1865, was a Saturday. The violin is not an easy instrument to learn, and requires a good ear; but we should recommend it in preference to the banjo or the concertina. The guitar is also unsuited ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 357, October 30, 1886 • Various
... a circus, he would make fun for old and young; again, as a wandering minstrel, he twanged the strings of his banjo and sung a merry song, and so on through all his travels, he would lighten the cares of others, and make them forget their sorrows, and fill ...
— Denslow's Humpty Dumpty • William Wallace Denslow
... the loss of identity, which is the same thing, I take to be one of the remaining terrors in European minds meditating on death. Of all the imagined forms of survival, only one is obviously more horrible than the night of nothing, and that is the state in which Beethoven twangs a banjo and Gladstone utters the political forecasts of a distinguished journalist. It may be that my affection for the "narrow ego" is too violent, but, for myself, I do not find M. Maeterlinck's consolations more genuinely consoling than other philosophy. On the second ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... surprising quantity of wholesome nourishment had been consumed, someone said, 'Let's sing!' and a tuneful hour followed. Nat fiddled, Demi piped, Dan strummed the old banjo, and Emil warbled a doleful ballad about the wreck of the Bounding Betsey; then everybody joined in the old songs till there was very decidedly 'music in the air'; and passers-by said, as they listened smiling: 'Old ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... are consolations. You are an Englishman (I believe); you are a man of letters; you have never been made C.B.; your hair was not red; you have played cribbage and whist; you did not play either the fiddle or the banjo; you were never an aesthete; you never contributed to -'S JOURNAL; your name is not Jabez Balfour; you are totally unconnected with the Army and Navy departments; I understand you to have lived within your income - why, cheer up! here are many legitimate causes of congratulation. ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Oakland did nobly. People shared their beds with absolute strangers, and while the newcomers in the park camps were dead to the world, those who came the day before cheered up considerably. One camp of young men got out a banjo and sang for the entertainment of ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... ante-bellum way. Seated upon broken-down chairs, or strewn upon the grass in various attitudes, these dusky children of misfortune watched the performance of an exceedingly black old uncle, who, sitting upon a bench before his cabin, was picking the strings of a banjo almost as old as himself. His bald head, surrounded by a fringe of gray wool, shone brightly in the firelight, he was rocking his body rhythmically backwards and forwards, and keeping time with one foot upon the hard earth. As we came into the circle of firelight we were discovered, and there was ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... almost anny time he ixpicts to see a black face peerin' through a window an' in a few years I'll be takin' in laundhry in a basement instead iv occypyin' me present impeeryal position, an' ye'll be settin' in front iv ye'er cabin home playin' on a banjo an' watchin' ye'er little pickahinnissies rollickin' on th' ground an' wondhrn' whin ...
— Mr. Dooley Says • Finley Dunne
... society. In these ambitions I succeeded. For one of my age I had more than an average love of business. Indeed, I deliberately set about learning to play the guitar well enough to become eligible for membership in the Banjo Club—and this for no more aesthetic purpose than to place myself in line for the position of manager, to ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... and listen at the curious sounds from within, resembling very much the noise made by a pack of curs after a rabbit they did not hope to catch; or, perhaps, more like a plantation jamboree when all the strings of the banjo were broken but one and it had been ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... handsome black fellow, with white teeth and bright eyes, and he could play the fiddle and pick the banjo, and knock the bones and cut the pigeon-wing, and, besides all that, he was the best hoe-hand, and could pick more cotton than any other negro on the plantation. He had amused himself by courting and flirting with all of the negro girls; ...
— Diddie, Dumps, and Tot • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... it should; Even a homely voice sounds good That sings a cheerful, gladsome song That shortens the way, however long. A screechy fife, a bass drum's beat Is wonderful music to marching feet; A scratchy fiddle or banjo's thump May tickle the toes till they want to jump. But one musician fills the air With discords that jar folks everywhere. A pity it is he ever was born— The discordant fellow who toots his ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... Trafalgar Square They pour from every quarter, banging drums And tootling penny trumpets: to a blare Of tin mouth-organs, while a sailor strums A solitary banjo, lads and girls, Locked in embraces, in a wild dishevel Of flags and streaming hair, with curdling skirls Surge in a ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... even a granddaughter of tender years, wheeling and balancing in the same set. And so the fiddles played, the stars shone, the waters babbled, until the lanterns flared and sputtered out, and the banjo-picker held up fingers raw and bleeding. Then with a last final swing and flourish, everybody scattered for homeward ways, glad of the day's pleasure—and tired enough to be ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams |
