"Bass" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Fantasia, Ricercata, etc.), among which are to be found two sonatas, the one entitled, "Prima Sonata, doppio soggietto," the other "Seconda Sonata, soggietto triplicato." They are written out in open score of four staves, with mezzo-soprano, alto, tenor, and bass clefs. To show how the sonatas of those days differed both in form and contents from the sonata of our century, the first of the above-mentioned is given in short score. It will, probably, remind readers of "the first (i.e. sonatas) that my (i.e. Dr. ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... moment. He was half sob, half song. The wine of glory flushed his veins as at the moment when he stormed with the crew of the Tremendous at the heels of Lushy. His eyes ran; his voice broke. Now it was a shrill treble, now a hoarse bass. ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... August 15th Wendesday I took ten men & went out to Beaver Dam across a Creek about a mile S W from Camp, and with a Brush Drag caught 308 fish, of the following kind (i'e) Pike, Samon, Bass, Pirch, Red horse, Small Cat, & a kind of Perch Called on the Ohio Silverfish I also Caught the Srimp which is Common to the Lower part of the Mississippi, in this Creek & in the Beaver Pond is emince beads of Mustles Verry large & fat- in my absence Capt Lewis Send ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... Sam Bass was born in Indiana, it was his native home, And at the age of seventeen young Sam began to roam. Sam first came out to Texas a cowboy for to be,— A kinder-hearted ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various
... battle of Winwidfield, Oswiu had vowed to build twelve minsters in his kingdom, and he redeemed his vow by founding six in Bernicia and six in Deira. In 669, Ecgberht of Kent "gave Reculver to Bass, the mass-priest, to build a monastery thereon." In 663, AEthelthryth, a lady of royal blood, better known by the Latinised name of St. Etheldreda, "began the monastery at Ely." Before Baeda's death, in 735, religious houses already existed at Lastingham, Melrose, Lindisfarne, Whithern, ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... not shared by other genera domiciled at the Zoological Gardens. One of the oldest lions observed in a strepitous bass that it was a great relief to him that his race had not been degraded by any such comparisons. He had some respect for hunters, but as for politicians he would not be seen dead with them at a pig fair. Asked whether he had read Mr. RAMSAY MACDONALD'S account of his lion-hunting ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 8, 1914 • Various
... of change ordinarily incorporated into rhythm may be absent from the series without affecting its perfection as a rhythmical sequence. In piano playing the accentual points of a passage may be given by notes struck in the bass register while unaccented elements are supplied from the upper octaves; in orchestral compositions a like opposition of heavy to light brasses, of cello to violin, of cymbals to triangle, is employed to produce rhythmical effects, the change being one in timbre, combined ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... our sculptors; Greenough has in clay a David which promises high beauty and nobleness, a bass-relief, full of grace and tender expression; he is also modelling a head of Napoleon, and justly enthusiastic in the study. His great group I did not see in such a state as to be secure of my impression. ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... feel the most acute humiliation should he take an occasional walk through a great rookery, such as that in Richmond Park. The black cloud of birds sweeps round and round, casting a shadow as it goes; the air is full of a solemn bass music softened by distance, and the twirling fleets of strange creatures sail about in answer to obvious signals. They are an orderly community, subject to recognised law, and we might take them for the mildest and most amusing of all birds; ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... the theatre, where we saw La Sonnambula well put on the stage, and well sung and acted by an Italian opera company. The prima donna, contralto, baritone, and bass were all good, but the scenery was occasionally somewhat deficient. The house, which is highly decorated—perhaps too much so for the ladies' dresses—looked well by night, though if it had been full ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... free as the sunshine trickling down the morning into these high windows of mine, free as yonder fresh young voices welling up to me from the caverns of brick and mortar below—swelling with song, instinct with life, tremulous treble and darkening bass. My children, my little children, are singing to the sunshine, and thus ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... face was quite red now, and his sentences were hurled out in a sarcastic bass, enough to wither the marrow of a weak man. But the schoolmaster was no weak man. His foot was entirely on his native heath, I assure you. He knew every inch of the ground, from the domination ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... situated at Launceston (2), Deloraine, Burnie, Emu Bay, Wynyard, Stanley, Smithton, Wilmot, Ringarooma, Derby, and Pyengana. In the south there are only two of any magnitude, one in Hobart, and the other at Bream Creek. A well-equipped factory has been established on King Island, in Bass Straits, a locality that has been ...
— Australia The Dairy Country • Australia Department of External Affairs
... the privilege of climbing it. He next visited the Tower. The day seemed to consist of twenty-four thousand hours. He dined at the Trocadero Restaurant, solitary at a table under the shadow of the bass fiddle of the orchestra; and finally he patronised Maskelyne and Cook's entertainment, and witnessed the dissipation of solid young women into air. He reached home, as it was humorously ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... resumed his deepest nasal bass: "It is only, then, because you don't fancy her now so much as you did last year—fact, you are soured on her and fly off the handle. Such things do happen. The same thing has happened to myself, sir. In my days of ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... requested my father to play some other dance-music, of which our music-books, in their jigs and murkies, [Footnote: A "murki" is defined as an old species of short composition for the harpsichord, with a lively murmuring accompaniment in the bass.—TRANS.] offered us a rich supply; and I immediately found out, of myself, the steps and other motions for them, the time being quite suitable to my limbs, and, as it were, born with them. This pleased my father to a certain degree; indeed, he often, by way of joke for himself and us, let the "monkies" ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... right style," said Erling the Lop-Sided down in his boots; for he had naturally a shrill voice and gave himself great pains to produce a manly bass. ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... some fish more lucky than his fellows would splash over the side of the net and escape to liberty and the deep sea; now and then a fisherman with a sudden dash of his hand would single out a specimen choicer than the rest, a blue-fish, a chicken cod, or a sea-bass. ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... proceeding, and departure from Port Jackson. Visit Twofold Bay. Natives seen. Passage through Bass Strait and along the South Coast to King George the Third's Sound. Transactions there. Voyage to the North-West Cape, and Survey of the Coast between the North-West Cape and Depuch Island, including the examinations of Exmouth Gulf, Curlew River, and ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... among the shadows of evening. A chorus of fresh and accurate voices was pouring forth from the garden, the pure young tenors and altos weaving their melodies like network over the sustained, vibrating, vigorous bass voices. It was the antiphony of the youthful promenaders to the drinkers, the diastole of the heart above the stomach, the elisire d'amore in rivalry with beer. Amid this scene I recognized my waiter, illuminated fitfully like some extraordinary firefly as he sprang into ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... he's done it. Perch, porgies, cunners, black-fish, weak-fish, maybe a bass or a sheep's-head, but more cunners than any thing else, unless we strike some flounders at the ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard
... endured the torture with singular resolution, and continued obstinate in the denial of a crime, of which, it is believed, he really was not guilty. Instead of obtaining his liberty, he was sent to the Bass, a very high rock surrounded by the sea; at this time converted into a state prison, and full of the unhappy Covenanters, He there remained in great misery, loaded with irons, till the year 1677, when it was resolved, by some new examples, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... and, yielding to temptation, he turned his head from the growing light to indulge in another half-hour's slumber. Suddenly, a discordant note, jarring through the deep-toned harmonies, struck his ears, which were quick to distinguish between the bass roar of the canyon and the higher-pitched calling of the rapid at its entrance. What had caused it he could not tell. He dressed with greatest haste and was striding down into the camp when Mattawa Tom and Gillow ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... moments it is well worth dying. One minute flying through the air—the old catapult tackle—and the next a crashing of bone and sinew. We rolled over, head on, and across the floor. Curses and execrations; the deep bass voice of Hobart: ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... a few examples had I met previous to my encounter with him. He had a droll impediment in his speech which gave to his actions and gestures a turn irresistibly comic, and then he told an excellent story, played the trombone, triangle, and bass viol, spoke Spanish well, drove one of the circus wagons, translated the bills, turned an occasional somerset in the ring, cracked jokes in Spanish with the Mexican clown, took the tickets at the entrance with one hand, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... to the long stake driven into its bed, or secured by the rude anchor of stone appended to a cable of twisted bark, the light canoe or clumsy periagua of the peasant fisherman, who, ever and anon, drew up from its deep bosom the shoal-loving pickerel or pike, or white or black bass, or whatever other tenant of these waters might chance to affix itself to the traitorous hook. It is true that his view of these objects was only occasional and indistinct; but his intimate acquaintance with the localities beyond brought every thing before Captain de Haldimar's ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... had been attended to, and Georgie had had his dinner, there came hot towels and tappings on his face, and other ministrations. All was done about half past ten, and when he came downstairs again for a short practice at the bass part of Beethoven's fifth symphony, ingeniously arranged for two performers on the piano, he looked with sincere satisfaction at his rosy face in the Cromwellian mirror, and his shoes felt quite comfortable again, and his nails shone like pink stars, as his hands ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... Three Corners, and have the regimental commanders close all gaps in the line; in case of attack we must be able to exhibit a solid front. A moment, Major Mason,—you are to bear my report to Johnston." There followed the rapid scratching of a pen, and a subdued murmur of voices. Then the deep bass of the general again broke in: "You may as well clearly understand the proposed plans, gentlemen, so you can execute my orders with intelligence. They are extremely simple; our main attack will be directed against the enemy's left ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... 's come to know him so well that after he's made a few casts 'n' hooked one or two that's got away, they know his tricks so well they just passes the word 'round, 'n' it's 'pike' for th' pike, 'beat it' for th' bass, 'trot' for th' trout, 'n' 'skip' for the salmon, until now, after th' first day or two, 'bout all Warry can get in reach of ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... helm of a ship like a certain English composer?"—said the double bass to the trombone in the orchestra of Covent Garden Theatre, while resting themselves the other evening between the acts of Norma.—The trombone wished he might be blowed if he could tell.—"When it is A-lee" quoth the bass—rosining his bow with extraordinary ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... learned a trade. Edmund was sent to Concord and became a cordwainer or shoemaker. Davy Fiske was a weaver, and soon after the fox hunt I was apprenticed to Robert Harrington, to learn the blacksmith's trade. He was a large, strong man, of a kindly nature, and was an excellent bass singer. As we worked together in his shop, with his son Thaddeus, we frequently sang psalm tunes, and his younger son Dan piped ...
— Ben Comee - A Tale of Rogers's Rangers, 1758-59 • M. J. (Michael Joseph) Canavan
... Japanese artists who, in referring to European taste in Art, used a word equivalent to barbarous. The average free-born Briton travelling round the world carries with him, or is supposed to carry with him, his Bible, and a taste for Bass's beer and beefsteak. According as a country does or does not possess these essentials, and according as its own attributes of civilisation are removed from his own standards of perfection, so does he regard its inhabitants as more or less barbarians. (I was rather amused ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... two almost at the journey's end, and a dignified white-haired minister, who said some good things in a drony, sleepy tone. The piano was played by a homely young woman who wore unfashionable clothes, and made frightful mistakes in the bass occasionally; but that did not seem to trouble the singers, who sang with the heart rather than with ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... his breath a sweet wandering melody. And suddenly he sprang up, and ran to the piano. He played the air with his left hand, embroidering it with delicate arabesques and variations, catching a bass here and there with a flying touch, suggesting marvellously what had once been a rich and complete whole. The injured hand, which had that day been very painful, lay helpless in its sling; the other flashed over the ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... stone-work of the walls and of the pavement was a dull black; but here there were no flowers, nor bright-colored hangings over the inner doors, nor brightness of any sort or kind. The carving of the stone was extraordinarily rich, to be sure; but the bass-reliefs which covered the walls were wholly of a gloomy sort—being for the most part representations of the slaughter of men in sacrifice, and the tearing of hearts out—so that the eight of them made me shiver, notwithstanding the warmth of the sun. From the centre of the court-yard abroad ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... passed since Rick's last visit to Seaford. He had gone there on a Sunday afternoon to try his hand at surf casting off Million Dollar Row, a stretch of beach noted for its huge, abandoned hotels. It was a good place to cast for striped bass during the right season. ...
— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine
... Archie turned into Yardley gate, his so'wester still on his head framing his handsome, rosy face; his loose jacket open at the throat, the tarpaulins over his arm. He had been outside the inlet with Tod—since daybreak, in fact—fishing for bass and weakfish. ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... deal, his mind is nevertheless strong enough to overcome it all, to assimilate it, to incorporate it with the system of his thoughts, and to subordinate it to the organic relative unity of his insight, which is vast and ever-growing. By this means his own thought, like the bass in an organ, always takes the lead in everything, and is never deadened by other sounds, as is the case with purely antiquarian minds; where all sorts of musical passages, as it were, run into each other, and the ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... Music begins. It is a small orchestra to be sure. But if you have two double-basses and enough fiddles on top you can manage to make the flowing of a river sound quite well. The music makes you think of the Styx (which is a deep bass, never ending, four in a bar, sort of river) before ever Uncle Edward and Alice draw you the curtains and show you the picture. Rather an awesome picture it is with the cold blue river and the great black cliffs and the blacker cypresses that grow along its banks. There are ...
— The Harlequinade - An Excursion • Dion Clayton Calthrop and Granville Barker
... purchased a stove and requested permission to put it up in the meeting-house on trial. After much difficulty the committee consented. It was all arranged on Saturday afternoon, and on Sunday we took our seats in the Bass, rather earlier than usual, to see the fun. It was a warm November Sunday, in which the sun shone cheerfully and warmly on the old south steps and into the naked windows. The stove stood in the middle aisle, rather in front of the Tenor Gallery. People came in and stared. Good old Deacon Trowbridge, ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... rather cool and dry; fire heat to be avoided, except when necessary to prevent the temperature falling below 40, or to dispel damp. Every plant intended for early bloom to be arranged in the best form. The system of arranging a piece of twisted bass under the rim of the pot, to which loops are fastened to secure the shoots and the better formation of the plant, obviates the too-extensive use of sticks, a superfluity of which is ...
— In-Door Gardening for Every Week in the Year • William Keane
... who make one instrument produce the sounds of another, or, at all events, who extract from it some previously unknown effect, who carry all before them. The present phenomenon in this way is Bottesini, who, grasping a huge double-bass, the most unwieldy of instruments, tortures out of it the notes of a violin, of an oboe, and of a flute. A season or two ago, M. Vivier took all London by storm, by producing a chord upon the French ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... remonstrances of my conscience—and of Maister Wiggie—and of the kirk-session. Whenever any thing is carried on out of the course of nature, especially when accompanied with dancing and singing, toot-tooing of clarionets, and bumming of bass-fiddles, ye may be as sure as you are born, that ye run a chance of being deluded out of your right senses—that the sounds are by way of lulling the soul asleep—and that, to the certainty of a without-a-doubt, you are in the heat and heart ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... new happiness; there was no silence there for those who could hear, no solitude for those who could see. And he was riding into it with a young companion who saw and heard and loved and understood it all. Nothing escaped her; no frail air plant trailing from the high water oaks, no school of tiny bass in the shallows where their horses splashed through, no gopher burrow, no foot imprint of the little wild things which haunt the water's ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... the copper-sulphate treatment on the different animal life was as follows: numerous 'pollywogs' killed, but no frogs; numerous small (less than two inches long) black bass and two large ones (eight inches long) killed; about ten large 'bullheads' were killed, but no small ones; numerous small (less than two inches long) 'sunfish' were killed, but ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various
... part of the range in the early part of each week, and passed the latter part, it was supposed, around the base of Sierra Grande. This was Monday, and that same evening, as we were about to retire, I heard the deep bass howl of his majesty. On hearing it one of the boys briefly remarked, ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... gome to bass Dat in dis liddle town De Deutsch vas all exshpegdin Dat Mishder Schmit coom down, His brinciples to fore-setzen Und his idees to deach, (Dat is, fix oop de brifate pargains) Und telifer a ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... harmonica, and suspended in a circular frame about four feet high and five feet wide; within which the performer stands, and extracts a succession of soft tones, by striking on the gongs with two small sticks. Another circular instrument (the boundah) serves as a bass; it contains an equal number of different-sized drums, on which the musician strikes with violence, with a view perhaps to weaken the shrill, discordant notes of a very rude species of flageolet, and of an equally imperfect kind of trumpet, which are usually played with a total ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... home would be a delight to her, and, of course, Mr. Harris, you are able to gratify yourself in these little matters now. Things are not what they were in the early days, Jack, when I preached in Tom Morrison's log-house, and you led the bass at the services. I'll warrant that voice of yours could sing yet if you gave it ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... accompanying the drama and various festivities, and viols of diverse kinds were freely used. Shakespeare, in Twelfth Night, has Sir Toby enumerate among Sir Andrew Aguecheek's attractions skill on the viol-de-gamboys, Sir Toby's blunder for the viola da gamba, a fashionable bass viol held between the knees. A part was written for this instrument in Bach's St. Matthew Passion, and a number of celebrated performers on it are recorded in the eighteenth century. Two of these were ladies, Mrs. ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... the echoes of the pistol shots, as the bass bellow of his sire might dominate the feeble bleatings of a new-born calf. A vivid flash split the night. In the momentary illumination details were limned sharply—the buildings, the groups of men on one side, the running ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... apostate minister! Make my matters hot for me? quo' she! the shameless limmer! And true it is, that he could repose me in that nasty, stinking hole, the Canongate Tolbooth, from which your mother drew me out—the Lord reward her for it!—or to that cold, unbieldy, marine place of the Bass Rock, which, with my delicate kist, would be fair ruin to me. But I will be valiant in my Master's service. I have a duty here: a duty to my God, to myself, and to Haddo: in His strength, I will ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of a work which, unfortunately, can only be butchered on a piano. Of all Wagner's music the Walkueren Ride is least adapted to our homely instrument. Nevertheless the wild clatter, the exciting crepitation of the treble, the thunderous booming of the bass, and above all the tremendous crash with which it ends, always stimulates me to fresh mental effort. I saw plainly, as I listened, that my surmise was correct. I saw that I had no need to wait for the explanation of the phrase: "An author? Ah!" I saw, in short, that Mr. Carville, whatever ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... my wet oilskins as the yacht plunged from the back of an enormous swell, and I was so busy noting the beauty of the hand that I had no eye for the sallow face that peeped from the companion. Leith's bass voice rose above the noise of the waves, and there was ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... without remorse: it was an exit which would have moved the bass-violist of a theatre orchestra. Sighing, she went to her own room by way of the kitchen and the back-stairs, and, having locked her door, brought the padlocked ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... of twenty now,—he said. He made various youthful proposals to me, including a duet under the landlady's daughter's window. He had just learned a trick, he said, of one of "the boys," of getting a splendid bass out of a door-panel by rubbing it with the palm of his hand. Offered to sing "The sky is bright," accompanying himself on the front-door, if I would go down and help in the chorus. Said there never was such a set of fellows as the old boys of the set he has been with. Judges, mayors, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... and not unmusical, and what he lacked of finer qualities he made up in volume and force. His visitors joined in the singing, Kalman following the air in a low sweet tone, French singing bass. ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... pusxveturilo. Barter intersxangxi. Barytone baritono. Basalt bazalto. Base fundamento. Base (mean) malnobla. Basely perfide. Baseless senfundamenta. Basement subetagxo. Baseness perfideco. Bashful modesta. Basin pelvo. Basis fundamento. Basket korbo. Bass (music) baso. Bastard bastardo. Baste surversxi. Bastion bastiono. Bat (animal) vesperto. Bath banilo. Bathe bani sin. Baths (place) banejo. Battalion bataliono. Battery (milit.) baterio. Battle batalo. Battle, fight a batali. Battledore pilkraketo. Bauble bagatelo. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... it necessary to assume a critical attitude. He tells us, for instance, that whether or not Longfellow was a genius of the first order, it must be admitted that he loved social pleasures and was a good eater and judge of wines, admiring 'Bass's ale' more than anything else he had seen in England! The remarks on Excelsior are even still more amazing. Excelsior, says Mr. Robertson, is not a ballad because a ballad deals either with real or with supernatural people, and the hero of the poem cannot ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... appear on the platform was a flute-player of consumptive appearance, who most conscientiously dribbled away—what am I saying?—piped, I mean—a piece also of consumptive tendency; two persons shouted bravo! Then a stout gentleman in spectacles, of an exceedingly solid, even surly aspect, read in a bass voice a sketch of Shtchedrin; the sketch was applauded, not the reader; then the pianist, whom Aratov had seen before, came forward and strummed the same fantasia of Liszt; the pianist gained an ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... Aufhausen he overtopped by a head, and all his limbs were coarse and uncouth. And at this time also he lost his boyish voice and assumed a rasping bass. ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... he must die. Whereon this Miller both of corn and meal An hundred times more than before did steal; For, ere this chance, he stole but courteously, But now he was a thief outrageously. The Warden scolded with an angry air; But this the Miller rated not a tare: He sang high bass, and swore ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... the melancholy fiddlers. If this comedy can stir the croaking bass-viol to any show of mirth, our work tops Falstaff. Glum folk with beards had best withdraw. Only the young in heart will catch the slender meaning of our play. Let's light the candles and draw ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks
... result of his discoveries. This little instrument, taken singly, gives whatever grave sound you may wish to produce, as a third, a fifth, or an octave. If the grave tonic is not heard in the bass Jew's harp, it must be attributed, not to the defectiveness of the instrument, but to the player. In examining this result, you cannot help remarking the order and unity established by nature in harmonical bodies, which places music in the rank of exact sciences. The Jew's harp has three different ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 269, August 18, 1827 • Various
... breathing rather hard, and his words were tripping. Managing his voice ill, the tones of it ran away from bass to shrill treble. She saw it all at a glance, and realised that Martin had been blundering on, in pure ignorance and pure love, all these weary weeks. She sat down silently and her mind moved like light along the wide gamut of fifty emotions in a second. Anger and sorrow strove together,—anger ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... It's cheap and we'll have a lot of it. Look at how the Japanese live on it day after day and keep fat and strong. Then there's cheap fish; rock cod and such to make good chowders of or to fry in pork fat like the bass and trout I used to have back home. Then there's baked beans. We ought to have them at least twice a week in the winter. But this summer we'll live mostly on fish and vegetables. I can get them fresh ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... managed to frown him down, and went on trying to placate me. But through the argument I could hear the old man muttering in his collar a kind of double bass pizzicato: "Suffragettes! Fanatics! Hysteria! ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... the Esplanade stood out in cut outlines against the warm windows of the Reading-room. Above, the open windows were tenanted by boys who pillowed their heads on one another and sent their treble or bass notes down to swell ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... of the choir loft one could scan to his heart's content quite unobserved the beauties at their devotions. The college choir of my time contained sometimes boys who had interesting careers. The organist who, while he manipulated the keys, growled at the same time an abysmal bass, afterward became a zealous Catholic, dying in Rome as Chamberlain in the Vatican of Pope Leo XIII. Horace Howard Furness was the principal stay of the treble, his clear, strong voice carrying far; my function was to afford to him ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... gently round behind his chair, reached out for the pipes where they lay in a corner at the old man's side, and catching them up softly, put the mouthpiece to his lips. With a few vigorous blasts he filled the bag, and out burst the double droning bass, while the youth's fingers, clutching the chanter as by the throat, at once compelled its screeches into shape far better, at least, than his lips had been able to give to the crude material of Gaelic. He played the only reel he knew, but ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... Turpentine, Cream of Tartar, and other articles. The Streets mostly with Water running thro' 'em, like unto Rotterdam, all going to and fro done in Boats called Gondoles,—a dismal, Hearse-looking kind of Wherry, with a prow like the head of a Bass-Viol, and rowed, or rather shoved along with a Pole by a Mad, Ragged Fellow, that bawls out verses from Tasso, one of their Poets, as he plies his Oar. The great Sight at Venice, after the Grand Canal and St. Mark's Place, is the Carnival, which begins on ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... in the form of a chain of mountains the figure of Gaea in blue-green moonlight. Her song, sung by bass voices behind the scene, is about her children, the elect, the conquerors of the world, a race of men steeled by suffering, that struggle from darkness to light; who, lost and wandering during life, with vehement longings, yet remain blind, ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... ears the sound of numerous voices singing in front of the house. Among these, two made themselves prominent by their peculiarity: one was a very strong bass, the other a wheezy thin piping. Thomasin recognized them as belonging to Timothy ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... assisted by a bass solo and intermittent thunder in the wings, was making a deafening din. One of the shadows on the sea backing took out its handkerchief and wiped ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... million sq km note: includes Arabian Sea, Bass Straight, Bay of Bengal, Great Australian Bight, Gulf of Oman, Persian Gulf, Red Sea, Strait of Malacca, and other ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... with songs and dances, after the fashion and accompanied by the music of the provinces they represented,—the Poitevins playing on bagpipes; the Provencales on the viol and cymbal; the Burgundians and Champagners on the hautboy, bass viol, and tambourine; in like manner the Bretons and other provincialists. After the collation was served and the feast at an end, a large troop of musicians, habited like satyrs, was seen to come out of the opening of a rock, well ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre
... her in a body and hung over the banisters at a perilous angle, straining their ears in the direction of the drawing-room. Nothing but a murmur of voices floated up, punctuated by an occasional deep bass laugh. When they heard the front door close, with one accord they invaded Harriet Gladden's room, which commanded the walk, and pressed their noses against the pane. A short, thick-set man of German build was waddling toward the gate ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... unfortunate sex who had reached beau ideal. One was harsh, another finicking; a third loud; a fourth enthusiastic; a fifth timid; and all failed in tact except Mr. Hardie. Then, other male voices were imperfect; they were too insignificant or too startling, too bass or too treble, too something or too other. Mr. Hardie's was a mellow tenor, always modulated to the exact tone of good society. Like herself, too, he never laughed loud, seldom out; and even his smiles, like her own, did not come ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... notes and twiddle on the high!" laughed Lloyd, under her breath. "Listen, Mistah Shelby. She's playing the same chord in the bass straight through." ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... the dulcet piping of Gabriel's flute, Boldwood supplied a bass in his customary profound voice, uttering his notes so softly, however, as to abstain entirely from making anything like an ordinary duet of the song; they rather formed a rich unexplored shadow, which threw her tones into relief. The shearers reclined against each ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... shoulders, shouting, "Don't kill the orator's son!" and bore him through the crowd, and placed him upon the staging at his father's feet. It required the utmost efforts of Daniel Webster to control that multitudinous throng. "Stand back, gentlemen!" he repeatedly shouted with his double-bass voice; "you must stand back!" "We can't stand back, Mr. Webster; it is impossible!" cried a voice in the crowd. Mr. Webster replied, in tones of thunder: "On Bunker Hill nothing is impossible." And the ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. I, No. 3, March, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... misgiving the paint transferred from the bottom of my little scow to the tops of the stones thus early in the journey. But I was soon making fair headway, and taking trout for my dinner as I floated along. My first mishap was when I broke the second joint of my rod on a bass, and the first serious impediment to my progress was when I encountered the trunk of a prostrate elm bridging the stream within a few inches of the surface. My rod mended and the elm cleared, I anticipated better sailing when I should reach the Delaware itself; but I found on this ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... greatest present which has been made to the musical world this century, not excepting the Piano-forte. If its tone approaches that given by the finger as nearly only as the harpsichord does that of the harp, it will be very valuable. I have lately examined a foot-bass newly invented here, by the celebrated Krumfoltz. It is precisely a piano-forte, about ten feet long, eighteen inches broad, and nine inches deep. It is of one octave only, from fa to fa. The part where the keys are, projects ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... give him a sealed bond, obliging himself to repay the loan when the Bass and the Isle of May are set upon Mount Sinai; or the Lomond hills, near Falkland, are removed to ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... there. Harry made a little choking noise deep in his throat, and my heart started pounding like a bass drum. ...
— The Man the Martians Made • Frank Belknap Long
... strawberries, he climbed the hills in search of birds' eggs and small game. About noon he returned with the good news of having discovered a spring of fine water in an adjoining ravine, beneath a clump of bass-wood and black cherry trees; he had also been so fortunate as to kill a woodchuck, having met with many of their burrows in the gravelly sides of the hills. The woodchuck seems to be a link between the ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... filthy embarkation. We made up for lost time by sleeping on deck a good part of the forenoon. When I woke, Simpson was still sleeping the sleep of the just, on a coil of ropes and (as appeared afterwards) his own hat; so I got a bottle of Bass and a pipe and laid hold of an old Frenchman of somewhat filthy aspect (fiat experimentum in corpore vili) to try my French upon. I made very heavy weather of it. The Frenchman had a very pretty young wife; but my French always deserted me ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... imagining that, then. Now imagine something else. The violins are playing a melodious plaint; the flutes are singing gently; the double bass ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... follow mentally the services that were being performed in the chapel, and whose "Amens" and louder notes pealed up to him, devoid of the clear young tones that had sung their last here below, but swelled by grand bass notes that as much distracted Ebbo's attention as the memory of his guest's conversation; and he impatiently ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... got a consait that men and women ain't built out of the same kind of timber. Look at my hand—a great pile o' bones covered with brown luther, with the hair on,—and then look at yourn. White oak ain't bass, is it? Every man's hand ain't so black as mine, and every woman's ain't so white as yourn, but there's always difference enough to show, and there's just as much odds in their doin's and dispositions as there is in their hands. I know what women be. I've wintered and summered ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... Phillip—he would have scorned the boyish 'master'—was a gentleman, from the perfumed locks above to the polished patent leather below. There was ton in his very air, in the 'ah, ah,' of his treble London tone of voice, the antithesis of the broad country bass. He had a firm belief in the fitness of things—in the unities, so to speak, of suit, action, ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... interest grew. The performers appealed to each other, to the audience, to the heaven above; they took counsel with each other, the conspirators drew together in a knot; it was just an opera, the drums coming in at proper intervals, the tenor, baritone, and bass all where they should be—except that the voices were all of the same calibre. A woman once sang from the back row with a very fine contralto voice spoilt by being made artificially nasal; I notice all the women affect that unpleasantness. At one time a boy of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... party of pleasure. For instance, at Arras, on the square devoted to executions, a gallery was erected for spectators with a room for the sale of refreshments, and, during the execution of M. de Montgon, the "Ca ira" is played on the bass drum. (Paris, II., 158, and I., 159.) A certain facetious representative has rehearsals of the performance in his own house. "Lejeune, to feed his bloodthirsty imagination, had a small guillotine put up, on which he cut off the heads of all the poultry consumed at his table.... ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... became obedient unto death for our salvation. The affecting account of His sufferings and death is then sung by three priests[40] belonging to the pontifical choir, and habited as deacons in alb and stole. The history itself is sung by a tenor voice, the words, of our Saviour by a bass, and those of any other single voice by a contralto, called the ancilla, as he sings the words of the maid to S. Peter: the choir sings the words of the multitude[41]. The church, mourning over the sufferings of her divine Spouse, does not allow the incense, lights, ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... a resemblance in the words and general style, but in the music. Indeed, it seems to me that most of the fine air of "O'Donnell Aboo!" as it is now sung is based on Mazzinghi's music—either that for the first, second, or bass voice, or upon the concerted part for the three voices at the end of ...
— The Life Story of an Old Rebel • John Denvir
... infinite occupation. Once it was sent to London, 'to bring back on the tinfoil the tones of a lady distinguished for clear vocalisations; at another time Sir Robert Christison was brought in to contribute his powerful bass'; and there scarcely came a visitor about the house, but he was made the subject of experiment. The visitors, I am afraid, took their parts lightly: Mr. Hole and I, with unscientific laughter, commemorating various shades of Scotch accent, or ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Contrabassoon (Fr. contrebasson; Ger. Kontrafagott), a wood-wind instrument of the double reed family, which it completes as grand bass, the other members being the oboe, cor anglais, and bassoon. The contrafagotto corresponds to the double bass in strings, to the contrabass tuba in the brass wind, and to the pedal clarinet in the single ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... build, and eight acres outside for inclosures, besides a large "commonty" for the use of the people. A quite pretentious wharf lined the river, and from this, on any summer afternoon, a string of soldiers and idle citizens might be seen—among whom was Dobson—casting hook and troll for bass, trout, pickerel and herring, with which the river swarmed. On one occasion Brock helped to haul up a seine net in which were counted 1,008 whitefish of an average weight of two pounds, 6,000 being netted in ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... as fast as I could, banging the proper keys with my two sticks, and made a shift to play a jig, to the great satisfaction of both their majesties; but it was the most violent exercise I ever underwent; and yet I could not strike above sixteen keys, nor consequently play the bass and treble together, as other artists do; which was a great disadvantage ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... the hedge will grow its own way in spite of pedants' shears. 'If the whole body were an eye, where the hearing?' The monotony of a church in which uniformity was the ideal would be intolerable. The chorus has its parts, and the soprano cannot say to the bass, 'I have no need of you,' nor the bass to the tenor, 'I have no ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... last year when we mixed two herds," said Quince, who had taken the bait like a bass and was now fully embarked on a yarn. "We were in rather close quarters, herds ahead and behind us, when one night here came a cow herd like a cyclone and swept right through our camp. We tumbled out of our blankets and ran for our horses, ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... quite forgotten the old choir, with their fiddles and bass-viols,' said the home-comer, musingly. 'Are they still going on the same ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... strict attention to propriety, when the master of the band summoned McFittoch to his post, by the following ireful expostulation:—"What are ye about, sir? Mind your bow-hand. How the deil d'ye think three fiddles is to keep down a bass, if yin o' them stands girning and gabbling as ye're doing? ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... followed by Jurisprudence, a sleek, rosy-faced dame, fed with fees, and hung about with commentaries—she coughed through a tedious solo; and Chicanery played the bass-viol. ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... "Gentleman bass already," said Sanno, soothingly. "Kimono? So?" he joined forces with the nesan to get Percival out of his clothes and into the fresh-flowered kimono that lay ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... ivories shone at door and windows where the slaves gathered to "see the whi' folks dance." But prominent and conspicuous, in a suit as nearly resembling his master's as might be, and in a position at the immediate right hand of the slave who played the bass viol, stood Caesar, the general's favorite man-servant. He bore himself with the same courtly dignity, the same dignified courtesy, and had stationed himself beside the viol in order to have a more ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... who had followed with more measured tread, now mingled his hearty bass voice in the conversation. His mental attitude was friendly, but inquisitorial; as seemed to him to befit one charged with the cure of souls. He proceeded to ask questions, beginning with inquiries conventional and domestic, but verging presently on points of faith. Babcock, to whom ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... sky above it was shaded from pink to purple. Tymphrestos in the west was bathed in the light of the sun that had gone down behind it. The whole surrounding was most stirring, and there was ever sounding in our hearts that deep bass note: "What they ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... peaceable servant of the sanctuary, and fancied, as he marched mace in hand to the music of the organ, that he was a daring officer leading a forlorn hope. That very afternoon he had had a heated discussion in the vestry with Mr Milligan, the bass, on a question of gardening, and the singer, who still smarted under the clerk's overbearing tongue, was glad to emphasise his adversary's defeat by paying attention to ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner |
